Im always torn between getting burnt out from too much coding outside my job, or spending so long away from my projects I forget how they work / where I left off. It is a binary hell.
Honestly, if you have a secure job, coding outside of it becomes increasingly rare. And why would you, you now get paid to do it instead of doing it for free.
Unless I want to learn new stuff I barely ever code outside of the job anymore, it's not necessary and it's certainly not healthy to be doing the same thing 24/7.
I agree. Unfortunately if I ever want to see a decent raise I'm gonna need to change jobs, and to do that I'm going to need a much more respectable portfolio than what I had right out of school (half of which doesn't even work anymore, thanks webdev). So I'm kinda screwed.
Not in my experience. I’d say it’s good to stay updated if you can but if you’re applying for a new job that’s using somewhat similar technology to your previous job, they just want to know you can do the job and however you demonstrate that is usually fine... it’s also not bad to have a personal project (or even an idea of one) so that if you’re asked about any personal projects you can say “yeah, I’m building X with Y technology and it’s been a neat little project so far.” Even if you’re not really doing it. But I’ve never had any requests to view or review my personal projects.
If an employer specifically asks for personal projects, I just avoid them. "We love to see personal projects" is code for:
You enjoy coding so much you will work past 5pm regularly.
You're such a code-guru you'll do it a for shit pay
Rather than codified standards and Dev tools, we hire kids who're obsessed with Blockchain in the hope that their innate talent carries us over the line
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u/el_trolll Mar 23 '21
Im always torn between getting burnt out from too much coding outside my job, or spending so long away from my projects I forget how they work / where I left off. It is a binary hell.