nope. tech is so fast moving if you're not at least experimenting with your own code then you're not going to be a good fit. we tend to also hire engineers who have contributed to open source.
I got irrationally angry about this at a previous job. Everyone was all excited management was having us all do a "hackathon" and I am loud and grumpy about how this should just be part of the normal course of business.
We found solutions and tools that better solve problems but to this day have still not been implemented.
Not everything needs a novel solution but not making room for innovation because the company is operating as a feature factory is boring.
No kidding. I'd be happy to walk through the stuff I have on github but I also don't want my coworkers measured by whether they do the same.
If anything, personal projects can end up being distractions from focusing singularly on work. Even though I'm entirely in favour of them, I also remember when I had a newborn at home and a family member in hospital, and such projects were not at all feasible.
there's also the issue where the stuff i put on github is for hacky throwaway stuff and not representative of my professional standards for a "real" job. it'd be like interviewing a chef and judging their abilities based off of what they made themselves for dinner last night rather than what they cook in a restaurant
I had to learn cobol last year. Not hard if you have read lots of books from the 70s and 80s and have a strong background in algorithms. It is expensive and annoying to maintain these systems, but until there's a business case to replace the underlying application, he's safe
