Why do people like hiring managers at companies seem to think that because you are paid to code you spend your spare time coding?
You don't expect a surgeon to operate all day then go home and randomly start cutting people up, so don't expect a code surgeon to spend all day coding to go clock off the start hacking away at shit either!

*slowly puts down the scalpel*

Because they send hours to the client

There is a whole passionate about coding thing in the industry that really does give that impression.

After the kids went to bed last night...I was coding...

Because in the field of IT you never stop learning new stuff. And you agreed to sell your knowlede to your employeer. So if you stop improving your knowlede of the newest technologies your value to the employer decreases.
So you may want to invest an hour a week learn new stuff in your free time. Sucks but just look at it as requirement for the profession of the Developer. You know life long learning.

@heyheni I agree to use my knowledge for my employers benefit on company hours. They employ me for my knowledge of the area at the time of employment, I agree if the focus of the task changes they expect me to have knowledge of that too, but they expect that knowledge to be limited or non-existent unless they employed me on my excellent knowledge of it. The IT domain moves so quickly you can learn something now I prep for an upcoming task in a few months and find you knowledge completely out of date when you finally hit the task. A sensible employer hires people with a good understanding of coding fundamentals and the ability to grasp new knowledge quickly, and a decent project manager/employer factors in ramp up (learning) time. I've worked on projects where the knowledge of the proceeding learning project was outdated at the start and the gap between the projects was all of a weekend.

@WhyMe That's your experience.

Mine is this: Me sitting next to 50+ year olds crying bitter tears at a unemployment job hunting course. Why? Because they've felt it wasn't necessary for 20 years to do anything to improve their qualifications. Nobody will hire someone like that who had lived 30 years in the comfort zone.

And I'm certain that surgeons read medical magazines and research papers in their free time.

@heyheni good points you make, it’s true this is the nature of this field, if you even slow down the learning you’ll be behind on something.

There’s so much to learn out there and it’s so exciting to gain tools (coding skills) in order to get better or build stuff faster/different/new/etc.

Now that’s not necessarily considered “coding” but it’s the process right?

IDK maybe I’m just itching to start using my skills at an actual job so I may be biased

@EDragon yes. It's not about working overtime or answering work emails after work. Fuck that!
But that process as you call it of self-improvement is your insurance against getting old and lazy.
And it's your key to impressing your higher ups with knowledge, geting raises and promotions.
Read tech blogs, hackernews and try some new tools or concept for your own good.

@heyheni agreed

@heyheni I agree reading software blogs, articles and general release data is a good idea. And I would hope that surgeons read medical journals, but I would also hope any new guidelines, practices etc would have training time allocated by their employer as it's for the employers benefit as well.
I more refer to the first question being 'so lets see the vast personal projects you've been working on at a GitHub link'. A surgeon doesn't provide the bodies of random people he's operated on in his spare time.

As for the 50+ unemployment, I've worked with many a 50+ who haven't trained in new things for 20+ years, but have made sure they've built a network of other people using the same archaine tech so that they can jump to some company still running 'legacy' and requiring their now niche skills (not saying its the best approach, just how some people approach job security).