I agree with what Joe says here. A side hustle, if even just for playing with new technology, can be vital for the growth of a developer. Although the important caveat is: as long as the side hustle stays just there - on the side. You don't want to be working on a side hustle when you should be working on stuff for your employer, and not just because they could (technically) own your code if you use their hardware. Also, it helps to teach time management to folks who have never had to deal with it: you mean I have to learn this, AND go on date night, AND go to rehearsal, AND spend time with the kids, AND sleep, AND ... AND ... AND?!)
I can speak from experience about how a side hustle can help. In October last year (2016, for future readers), I decided to start a blog about .NET Core. It was primarily for storing my notes as a learnt to do stuff with it. Pretty soon after I was on this podcast; I'd had collaborative posts with other burgeoning bloggers; and I'd been asked to post on related development blogs.
The tech lead at my employer has brought my blog up a few times in whole company meetings, as an example resource for learning .NET Core stuff. On the back of that, I've had colleagues ask me .NET Core questions for actual projects that they're developing for customers; which has been ace. But the most impressive thing that's happened (aside from being on the Cynical Developer, obviously :P ) was when the tech lead thanked me personally for helping him to develop some internal stuff. He'd been using my blog as a first point of call resource (and falling back on Google a few times), for answers to his questions.
I'd started looking into .NET Core simply because it was different to the tools I use on a daily basis, and it was purely coincidental that the tech lead started working on some stuff in it. I'd started doing it as a learning experience: I wanted to know more. In the dev industry, the second that you stop learning, you're already a week behind, so continuing to learn new stuff is important. Applying it to new projects is fun though, and using that new knowledge at hackathons can be extremely fun (and a great way to test your understanding). Plus it exposes you to a new way of thinking and new sets of tools, and along with that comes new groups of people to hangout with (be it online or in real life).
I agree with what Joe says here. A side hustle, if even just for playing with new technology, can be vital for the growth of a developer. Although the important caveat is: as long as the side hustle stays just there - on the side. You don't want to be working on a side hustle when you should be working on stuff for your employer, and not just because they could (technically) own your code if you use their hardware. Also, it helps to teach time management to folks who have never had to deal with it: you mean I have to learn this, AND go on date night, AND go to rehearsal, AND spend time with the kids, AND sleep, AND ... AND ... AND?!)
I can speak from experience about how a side hustle can help. In October last year (2016, for future readers), I decided to start a blog about .NET Core. It was primarily for storing my notes as a learnt to do stuff with it. Pretty soon after I was on this podcast; I'd had collaborative posts with other burgeoning bloggers; and I'd been asked to post on related development blogs.
The tech lead at my employer has brought my blog up a few times in whole company meetings, as an example resource for learning .NET Core stuff. On the back of that, I've had colleagues ask me .NET Core questions for actual projects that they're developing for customers; which has been ace. But the most impressive thing that's happened (aside from being on the Cynical Developer, obviously :P ) was when the tech lead thanked me personally for helping him to develop some internal stuff. He'd been using my blog as a first point of call resource (and falling back on Google a few times), for answers to his questions.
I'd started looking into .NET Core simply because it was different to the tools I use on a daily basis, and it was purely coincidental that the tech lead started working on some stuff in it. I'd started doing it as a learning experience: I wanted to know more. In the dev industry, the second that you stop learning, you're already a week behind, so continuing to learn new stuff is important. Applying it to new projects is fun though, and using that new knowledge at hackathons can be extremely fun (and a great way to test your understanding). Plus it exposes you to a new way of thinking and new sets of tools, and along with that comes new groups of people to hangout with (be it online or in real life).