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lidiko
2y

Why is it that every single employer in this field expects you to live and breathe tech and have it as your only source of enjoyment? Can't it just be a job that I show up and do every day and then spend my free time with whatever the hell I want? This morning's job interview:
Hiring manager: so what do you like doing in your free time?
Me: talks about actual hobbies, trying to be personable, making a few jokes, etc
HM: soooo.. nothing tech related then?

I can't imagine any other job expecting this amount of devotion. "So you want to be an accountant but you don't do it after hours for fun!?" Why is this normal?

**Sorry for ranting, job search is getting increasingly frustrating.

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Comments
  • 1
    2y
    That's a weird reaction. All of the ones I had the displeasure to meet at least did not care if you didn't do anything tech related as long as you faked enthusiasm for tech innovations from theire business/finance newspapers.

    Just make up something if you think that it helps. It's not like your coworkers would care enough to notice.
    Good luck
  • 7
    2y
    In my recent job hunt my eventual new employer specifically wanted someone who had *other* hobbies, which is definitely normal in the UK. Employers tend to feel like you're a better cultural fit if you're interested in something non techy and they won't worry about you overworking either
  • 1
    2y
    @dootlurk ditto
  • 2
    2y
    "We are looking for passionate people to join our crew!"
    The moment I read "passion" I nope the fuck out. It usually means "we want someone to become our bitch".
    One of my bosses once told me to skip the people that didn't mention programming as part of their hobbies.
  • 1
    2y
    To me having tech hobbies shows that you're interested in the work for its own sake, that you're more likely to know and understand things on a deeper level than just "enough to get things working."

    It always disappoints me when we get candidates with advertised 10+ years experience in .NET and the answer to all these questions is "no":

    Have you ever written your own action filter/model binder?
    Have you worked with Tasks other than using async/await?
    Are you familiar with deferred execution?

    Some companies may just need people who can paste stack overflow answers, but we need more than that.
  • 0
    2y
    @UnicornPoo of course, it's always hard to tell ahead of time.
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