Careful With Your Time There, Code Slinger
So what do you do after paid hours?
Let me guess. You code up web sites in Fortran on Rails because that’s the best language in the world; you spend hours and hours at night figuring out the next cool thing for EJB 4 even though you’ve never done EJB before, or maybe you read blog after blog like Slashdot and Joel on Software and forums about Agile because you da man.
Me too. Just wrote my first Frails plugin that takes dot matrix printer output and converts it to ascii.
No matter what you do, even if its something as meaningless as spending time with your family (remember I am a sarcastic beast), we all share one thing: it’s OUR free time. Not the company’s, and no one else’s.
I raise this point because I’ve noticed several times over the years in the industry that a lot of people looking for a code slinger aren’t good willed. You have to remember: the world is about sales, and you are a product. Bottom line.
In the past years I’ve donated tons of time to companies, people, non-profs, and made estimates, code contributions, and set up old hardware to “save a buck.” But the worst, the WORST thing that happens is when someone willingly misguides you to get free labor and expertise out of you. And this happens quite a bit. Us coders aren’t doctors but this is a lot like the free advice giving doctors cringe at.
One time there was a person at my job who wanted “help with a site” and made it sound like they were helping a friend. Pretty soon they wanted to meet during work of all things to talk about it in meeting rooms, and since they came in early I heard from others this person was working on the site. I gave about 8 hours then heard they might be billing and not telling me. And had the audacity to say “I was in it for the money” laying a guilt trip — on a professional hack, um, I mean software engineer.
Imagine.
A few times at jobs I’ve been approached to help people “learn” a technology outside of work or flat out work on their business idea without being told it was that, or being offered partnership.
And how many Big Places want the type of employee that works “for free” — extra overtime because “you love your work”? This especially has been a piece of contention with me because it literally breaks contracts (hour work for hour pay).
So I have a warning to the younger developers out there: step lightly when committing your time. Focus on doing a good job at work, enjoy being the junior and stay away from the time-wolves who want your labor for free.
If you would like a project outside of work, make sure it pays or that’s it has visible assets so you can use it on your resume. And if you need to learn a new technology don’t leech onto people’s free time, learn it yourself. Take a look at all the great developers around you and look at Gates and Jobs. they did it outside the box on their own. Just keep it in mind, that’s all.