Doctors Don’t Do Side Projects

A few people when discussing side work by developers trot out the argument “No one asks a surgeon if he or she does side work!” This argument is flawed in a few major ways.

I’ve seen more than one recruiter ask about side projects.

“What do you have on your github?”

“What open source projects have you contributed to?”

Questions of that nature. And I’ve seen more than one person say (and justifiably so) “Hey just because I don’t have a github I can show you doesn’t mean I’m not a good developer! You wouldn’t ask a surgeon if he or she performs surgery in their spare time!” While I get the gist of their argument I feel in the interests of subtlty and nuance that I should add a few words to the public record.

First, I understand where the question comes from. Software development, like being a surgeon or any sort of physician, requires constant learning. You can’t just learn a certain domain of knowledge and stop there. As I’ve said to a few junior developers if you’re not content feeling like a fool most of the time then software development isn’t necessarily the job for you. You have to learn new things all the time and as you’re learning you’re going to feel dumb. Seeing side projects is one form of proof of people who are not only ok with learning new ideas but who constantly seek out learning. So for recruiters to ask us this doesn’t seem a billion miles off the mark.

That said, the other part of the argument “You wouldn’t ask a surgeon if he or she performs surgery in their spare time” well this is flawed in a few aspects.

1.) For the most part no one will live or die because of any software I’ve ever written. Let’s face it: as a software developer most of the time the consequences of my mistakes are annoyance and lost dollars but never lost lives.

2.) Legally, doctors (and lawyers and engineers) are professionals. This has a specific legal meaning but it mostly means that if they fail in the performance of their job they can be sued for malpractice. This, all by itself, would seem to be an excellent reason for not practicing one’s profession outside of normal work hours.

3.) Surgeons specifically and to a lesser extent other professionals require a specific, not-cheap-to-reproduce environment called a surgical theater. I don’t know about anyone else but while I’m finicky about my coding setup it’s relatively cheap and easy to put together.

4.) Surgeons are licensed by the state. Lawyers and engineers also have state licensing procedures. As long as there is no external authority to certify someone’s coding skills we’ll have to put up with the nonsense of coding tests and “show me work you’ve done after hours”.

So while there are some excellent reasons to be annoyed by the “do you code in your spare time question” the “no one asks surgeons” analogy is flawed and incorrect and it needs to be retired.