New Software Engineers Ask Me This The Most

are you looking to become a software engineer or perhaps you already are and you're looking to switch jobs into a different field within software engineering if so this question has probably crossed your mind before and that's should you be doing programming outside of work this is a question that I get all the time and I wanted to talk about it from a few different perspectives which is why I left it as general as it is when I received that question in this video we'll explore that question from the perspective of does your job actually give you enough on-the-job training to go learn things that are relevant for programming we'll look at that from a visibility perspective say from a recruiter and whether or not you're going to stand out and then we'll also mix in work-life Balance because of course that's really critical for us to think about the software Engineers so I try to remain as unbiased as possible and that's why I wanted to start this video off with sharing with you my experience as a software engineer and work in programming that I've done outside of my actual job I've personally found that I've been building projects as soon as I was able to program so this is you know before University or anything like that I've been building things on the side and trying to learn that way while I was in school I was doing the same thing and then while working full time I continued to do the same thing as well for me I actually landed my first internship position that was intended for more senior developers because I had actually been programming a little video game on the side you'll hear on some of the other content that I put out that I do attribute a lot of My Success as a software developer to being able to create things on the site as well in fact there's actually projects that I put together just for the sake of being able to create content around them so if you're watching things on my channel sometimes that's going to be side projects outside of work and sometimes those are projects I create just for Content creation so for me I've always been creating programs and developing things on the side outside of work so let's approach this question do I need to be developing things outside of work from the perspective of someone who's trying to get started as a software engineer so if you're actually in this situation I want you to think about you applying for a job from the other side of things and what I mean by that is think about being the recruiter think about being the person who's going to to be looking through resumes and actually doing the hiring so it's probably pretty rare that in the job description itself it says You must be programming things outside of school or outside of work so if the question is whether or not that's a hard requirement the answer is most likely no that's not a hard requirement but if you're thinking about being a recruiter being someone who's looking through resumes and trying to filter through candidates for companies that have a large volume of resumes and applicants that they have to go through they do need some way to filter them down to something reasonable that they can start to actually schedule interviews and take people to the next step of being able to understand their background and whether or not they're qualified so my suggestion is that you always want to try and find ways to stand out against the other people that are applying for jobs now does that mean that you have to be going to create things outside of work and outside of school no you can do this in many different ways but I do think that if you have things on the side that you're able to demonstrate hey I built this I've been able to put different systems together whether or not that's you know mobile applications or websites and things like that desktop applications by having things that you've created on the side it can really help with the portfolio to demonstrate to recruiters and interviewers that you actually have experience putting things together but for other people they might look at opportunities like taking boot camps or getting certifications and doing that kind of work on the side to be able to say hey look I have some type of credential that's related to the job that I'm trying to apply for and therefore that should help me stand out as well I think there's lots of different options like this that you can pursue that don't have to be coding things outside of work necessarily and you can mix and match different you know varieties of these things but I do ultimately think that you want to find some way to try and stand out against your competitors applying for these positions I do know that I've hired interns before they're still in school they haven't made many projects on the side or anything like that and this kind of feels like it's before the wave of people going for boot camps and certifications and all that kind of stuff and basically just you know according to the different classes and stuff they've taken and because of the volume of the applicants we had at the time I've absolutely hired people without having any of these things on their resume but I can certainly say that as we had more and more applicants applying and we didn't have as much time to kind of go through all of them that were coming in we did start to add in higher bars that people had to pass and sometimes that might have included things like you know different projects they worked on or just something that we could see some amount of progress or initiative that they were interested in learning and that doesn't mean that that's necessarily the right way to do it and I feel like there are many ways to do it but ultimately when there's too many volume of applicants you need something to help reduce that volume okay what about trying to learn on the job and does your job actually provide you enough opportunities to learn different Technologies and things like that to help you grow in your career now I don't think there's going to be a universal answer to this question because everyone's job is going to be different and the things that you think are valuable in your career as a software engineer those are going to vary from person to person as well now just to make up a totally contrived example if you were someone that was working on a team that happened to only be working like supporting something very Legacy you were dealing with Technologies from 15 years ago and there's no real opportunity to you know kind of bring that technology forward your job is just to maintain it make sure it doesn't continue to break and when it does break you're just fixing bugs if you were on a team like this for many years I might say hey look maybe that's not a great opportunity for you to be learning things that are valuable in your career I mean maintaining Legacy systems is valuable but beyond that not having exposure to new technologies and things like that it might be an opportunity to say maybe I do want to look at things outside of work or you might be able to ask your manager is there something else I could be doing on top of this to try and learn about these other things and just to give you another example I actually have multiple people on the teams that I'm currently managing that they're actually interested in different aspects of programming and we don't have those available on our current team but we do have partner teams that we work with very closely and we've actually scheduled some work that some of my employees could work on as part of their team so does it have to happen outside of work for these learning opportunities no but you need to be in an environment where you're manager and sort of the the culture and your team actually affords opportunities like this so I feel very fortunate that you know within our group we feel that that's okay and as an engineering manager I think that it helps really Drive engagement up because people get to focus on things that they're interested in and we do balance that with our core team deliverable so it's not like people totally shifted gears it's just an opportunity for them to have exposure to things on the side and ultimately I would say that if you don't have an opportunity like this and you're feeling like you're kind of Trapped In Your Role because you're not being exposed to these other things I would recommend that you think about that hard and decide whether or not that's a good fit for you if you're feeling like your current position is holding you back from being exposed to the different technologies that are important for you as a software engineer in your career it might be time to start looking around and seeing if you can get exposed to some of these things if you're not able to find some opportunities to learn them on the sides that you are qualified to be able to have those types of positions that might actually mean like it feels like you're taking a bit of a step back or doing some lateral movement to another position another company but that's okay because if it is a little bit of a step back just because you're not exposed to some of these things it's not like a reset on your entire skill set as a software engineer so it might feel like one little step back but it'll actually allow you to have many big steps forward so no you don't have to be forced to learn things outside of work hopefully your work environment actually affords you some opportunities to do some of these things like being exposed to different Technologies Maybe by helping out other teams and things like that but ultimately you need to make a decision whether or not you're in the right place for yourself and your career and of course I wanted to touch on work-life balance because I think this is super critical and actually earlier this year there was a really popular or inFAMOUS tweet I suppose that went out that said something along the lines of like you know don't bother applying for the senior uh engineering role if your GitHub doesn't look like this and the internet reacted as the internet does so people were totally up in arms about this because it was basically implying that outside of work you must be committing to GitHub open source projects things like that or whether or not they're open source or not I suppose just having you know public GitHub Pages where you're you're committing code regularly the idea was that you are a very active developer outside of your role and it was measured strictly through GitHub commits so not only were tons of people just saying like hey like I commit code all the time and it's not something you're going to see on these GitHub Pages a lot of people are actually talking about work-life balance and their point was that if a company is only going to be hiring them because they're looking at basically them being a machine that's only cranking out code 24 7 they were like that's probably not a place I want to work at and I kind of want to bring this full circle because in the beginning I was talking mostly about individuals that are trying to get started in software engineering and some of the people commenting on this we're actually experienced people in the field of software engineering for many years so I think that in the beginning when you're getting started and you're trying to get you know that leg up on the other competitors for the job applications you're going for you probably want to invest a little bit more time so that you can stand out and that's why I was mentioning things like doing projects on the side and for some other people it might be boot camps or courses or certifications and stuff like that you're kind of looking for any Edge that you can have against the competitors applying for these positions and that's because your resume at that point in time probably doesn't have a whole lot on it if you're just getting started but the people with a lot more experience they don't have to lean on some of these extracurricular activities as much if they're interested in them great you know if they're passionate about trying to explore some of this stuff outside of work create yes that's helpful but I don't think it's necessary at all and I think that it becomes less and less of a thing that you need to lean on the more experience you have on your resume so I totally agree with a lot of these people that were making comments saying like hey look I code at work I'm a software engineer during the day and at night I am a you know I am a family man or family woman I am a person that likes to play sports I'm whatever you are your own person outside of work hours and that does not mean that you have to be a software engineer and I think that is totally fair and I think that it would be totally silly for companies to expect that people have to be software Engineers Around the Clock even outside of working hours again for me my story is a little bit different because I do actually enjoy programming outside of work it's a little bit unusual but I do have other Hobbies like I enjoy bodybuilding outside of that as well it's just that a lot of my personal time is still actually spent developing software and if I'm not developing it I'm on a camera talking about it or writing blog posts about it so I do think that work-life balance is really critical and like I said I think that that dichotomy that we have especially talking through this video was that early on in your career when you don't have a lot to lean on for your resume you may want to find extra opportunities and when you are more seasoned in your career you shouldn't have to lean on these as much because your resume should be able to speak for itself so that wraps up one of the questions that I'm asked most frequently which is do I have to be programming outside of work I realize the answer wasn't a you know clear-cut yes or no black and white answer somewhere in the middle depending on where you are in your career but I do think that it's never required I just think that it can be extra beneficial in some situations so thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed and we'll see you next time foreign