I've been working full time as a professional coder for the past 5 straight years, and on short-term contracts for the decade prior to that. During this time, of course I had a few bosses who tried to browbeat me into working for free, usually by stressing how cool a project was or how much trouble we would be in if I didn't go that extra mile to make a deadline. In fact, that happened at my last job and you know what? I politely and professionally said 'no'. Six months later I'm still employed and they're not, because I did what professionals do - the job I was hired for - and didn't worry about what anyone else, including my boss, thought.
I learned something very important as a teenager playing FFVII.
"Real professionals don't work all the time. They don't have to."
That being said, I would probably hire a coder who writes code during his free time unless someone else had a portfolio just as good of things they had done at work. However in my experience, it's pretty hard to develop copyright-free, up-to-date code while you're also being paid to write for someone else, so perforce I work on my own projects at home.
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I've been working full time as a professional coder for the past 5 straight years, and on short-term contracts for the decade prior to that. During this time, of course I had a few bosses who tried to browbeat me into working for free, usually by stressing how cool a project was or how much trouble we would be in if I didn't go that extra mile to make a deadline. In fact, that happened at my last job and you know what? I politely and professionally said 'no'. Six months later I'm still employed and they're not, because I did what professionals do - the job I was hired for - and didn't worry about what anyone else, including my boss, thought. I learned something very important as a teenager playing FFVII. "Real professionals don't work all the time. They don't have to." That being said, I would probably hire a coder who writes code during his free time unless someone else had a portfolio just as good of things they had done at work. However in my experience, it's pretty hard to develop copyright-free, up-to-date code while you're also being paid to write for someone else, so perforce I work on my own projects at home.