No, please. I have many issues with this, coming from the applicant's perspective.
He could have taken his masters program as his full time hobby. There is a reason he went to masters. He loved what he was studying. It only makes sense for all projects for him to work on are ones that are for the masters program.
caveat: I believe this holds more-so for Ph.D. people than masters, as masters is still half class based. However, masters students have research projects that take up the other half of their time.
Or, he could have had consistently heavy course loads. The reason that many famous entrepreneurs drop out is because they do not have enough time to do both school and their amazing side project (note, their one amazing side project). This is rare.
Have you considered that >90% of CS graduates are not going to be superstar programmers? At my University, I do not know of any other students doing their own side projects, outside of research projects with professors (this isn't to say I'm the only one, but given what I know, I'd be willing to bet there are fewer than 5 doing something cool).
One of my master theories is that I do need an online presence codewise and blogwise to demonstrate my competence and my passion for building cool stuff. However, to start building projects on GitHub or fixing bugs, you need a pretty descent level of competence. Universities such as mine first immerse you in Java, teach some theoretical CS (algorithms, ...), then have a class on various programming languages then have the upper division courses on C or C++. If you notice, most super cool open source projects these days revolve around C++ at a level that we don't learn, JavaScript, a language that is booming on popularity now but is only touched on in Universities, and Python, which is used in some Universities (those fortunate people) instead of Java. I doubt JavaScript will be seriously taught in Universities for many years. Maybe the Ivy's will have it down, but not everybody goes there. From this we can draw the conclusion that most students wont have the competence to commit to open source projects unless they go off and seriously learn on their own time. Students like that may only build simple projects for themselves and not put it up for show (it's so simple, surely somebody has better functionality somewhere, right?). Why blog? Students like that have nothing profound to talk about.
One of my issues with the frequenters of hacker news is that every programmer expects everybody else to be at least as competent as they are. Not everybody has as high of a drive to code nonstop. I don't. After classes, after oodles of homework and self-teaching the 90% they didn't teach me in class, I want to read books. I enjoy reading. I enjoy hanging out with my friends.
I, unlike most of my fellow students, have realized that dream jobs have ridiculous expectations. I can see why, too: if everybody wants the job, and they are doing something legitimately cool, then it's only reasonable they should have the pick of the litter. However, is your job a dream job? I hate seeing every single application say "two years of experience required" or five. I've been fortunate enough to get internships for the past two summers. Is every graduate expected to take some bullshit big biz job for 2 years, learning very little and becoming embittered by the industry? This is worthless. Some enjoy it, I don't. It'd be better for small companies to take on a promising looking graduate at a slightly less pay and have them expand their knowledge at the company.
Yes, I deserve your job. I'm more than competent enough for it. If I don't have the knowledge you need now, I would be able to learn it in depth within two weeks (give me the full days to learn it). I love what I'm doing, but I love other things too. Having other hobbies besides coding is healthy. Just because you know all the current buzzwords (node, django, backbone, Go, ?) does not mean you are a better coder and does not mean another person without this knowledge is worthless.
Touche (pretend it's got an accent) ... and somehow I suspect we wouldn't have to drag your capabilities out of you during an interview. You felt strongly enough to write a short essay, but the line that caught my eye is "self-teaching the 90% they didn't teach me in class". That's exactly why I look for side projects - because most of us use them (in part) as a means to learn something we think might be of value. And we aren't always right, but sometimes learning what's not worthwhile is also worthwhile.
So when do you graduate? Where do you want to live when you're done with college? What kind of position do you want? So how about zero years of experience for someone that's proven to be intellectually curious? What do you want your life to look like in ten years? You've piqued my interest ... care to talk?
I have to admit I cringe a little when I see a recent college grad who is literally only aware of what he learned in his classes. I've been a developer now for 12 years and have interacted with college grads frequently. I can honestly say, the grads who never programmed until CS 101, and only ever programmed for their classes are almost always inferior to their counterparts who explored, experimented and maintained a genuine curiosity of what's out there. Software changes so rapidly, and it always will. You simply must keep abreast of it, at least a little bit. For sure maintain other hobbies and balance your life, but this industry does demand a bit more just by its nature.
> Have you considered that >90% of CS graduates are not going to be superstar programmers? At my University, I do not know of any other students doing their own side projects, outside of research projects with professors (this isn't to say I'm the only one, but given what I know, I'd be willing to bet there are fewer than 5 doing something cool).
Surely you realize that the point of these questions is to try to weed out that 90% as much as possible. A potential superstar coming out of college doesn't cost that much more in salary, so you want to get one if you can (another way to put it: hiring mediocre programmers won't save you money overall). You may see a bias on hacker news because people here are disproportionately working on (subjectively) interesting projects, so they think they can get potential superstars on board.
Btw, I'd encourage you to apply to those jobs anyway with a candid cover letter. You made a good impression here. But your concerns here are also a reason to take networking seriously and go to conferences, departmental seminars, local user groups etc. You have to know people before they can know you're good (and yes, I'm aware of the inappropriatness of replying to your comment with "immerse yourself EVEN MORE!" The trick is to do it strategically so it's not any more time overall).
Edit: "these questions" = asking about side projects
He could have taken his masters program as his full time hobby. There is a reason he went to masters. He loved what he was studying. It only makes sense for all projects for him to work on are ones that are for the masters program. caveat: I believe this holds more-so for Ph.D. people than masters, as masters is still half class based. However, masters students have research projects that take up the other half of their time.
Or, he could have had consistently heavy course loads. The reason that many famous entrepreneurs drop out is because they do not have enough time to do both school and their amazing side project (note, their one amazing side project). This is rare.
Have you considered that >90% of CS graduates are not going to be superstar programmers? At my University, I do not know of any other students doing their own side projects, outside of research projects with professors (this isn't to say I'm the only one, but given what I know, I'd be willing to bet there are fewer than 5 doing something cool).
One of my master theories is that I do need an online presence codewise and blogwise to demonstrate my competence and my passion for building cool stuff. However, to start building projects on GitHub or fixing bugs, you need a pretty descent level of competence. Universities such as mine first immerse you in Java, teach some theoretical CS (algorithms, ...), then have a class on various programming languages then have the upper division courses on C or C++. If you notice, most super cool open source projects these days revolve around C++ at a level that we don't learn, JavaScript, a language that is booming on popularity now but is only touched on in Universities, and Python, which is used in some Universities (those fortunate people) instead of Java. I doubt JavaScript will be seriously taught in Universities for many years. Maybe the Ivy's will have it down, but not everybody goes there. From this we can draw the conclusion that most students wont have the competence to commit to open source projects unless they go off and seriously learn on their own time. Students like that may only build simple projects for themselves and not put it up for show (it's so simple, surely somebody has better functionality somewhere, right?). Why blog? Students like that have nothing profound to talk about.
One of my issues with the frequenters of hacker news is that every programmer expects everybody else to be at least as competent as they are. Not everybody has as high of a drive to code nonstop. I don't. After classes, after oodles of homework and self-teaching the 90% they didn't teach me in class, I want to read books. I enjoy reading. I enjoy hanging out with my friends.
I, unlike most of my fellow students, have realized that dream jobs have ridiculous expectations. I can see why, too: if everybody wants the job, and they are doing something legitimately cool, then it's only reasonable they should have the pick of the litter. However, is your job a dream job? I hate seeing every single application say "two years of experience required" or five. I've been fortunate enough to get internships for the past two summers. Is every graduate expected to take some bullshit big biz job for 2 years, learning very little and becoming embittered by the industry? This is worthless. Some enjoy it, I don't. It'd be better for small companies to take on a promising looking graduate at a slightly less pay and have them expand their knowledge at the company.
Yes, I deserve your job. I'm more than competent enough for it. If I don't have the knowledge you need now, I would be able to learn it in depth within two weeks (give me the full days to learn it). I love what I'm doing, but I love other things too. Having other hobbies besides coding is healthy. Just because you know all the current buzzwords (node, django, backbone, Go, ?) does not mean you are a better coder and does not mean another person without this knowledge is worthless.