This is a great post. Back when I was a corporate developer doing .NET, I never had many side projects. Maybe just a library or simple utility to do things like move photos around.
Now as a developer primarily working in Ruby, I always feel the need to have a side project to hack on in addition to my day job. The side projects allow for unsafe experimentation with new technologies. After a reasonable amount of vetting, I find that I'm able to make better decisions in my day job as a result. I think most Ruby developers today work in a similar fashion.
The startups that I've worked for never had much concern about what I did in my personal time, but now that I'm working for an acquired company that's part of a big corporate entity, it's a little different. I get more of the looks, comments, etc and can't be as public about my side projects. Also I can't take the side projects as seriously (i.e. get paid subscribers) because that could jeopardize my employment. I'm okay with this for now, but I understand that many would find this appalling. I think you just have to find the right balance between what's good for you versus what's good for them.
"unsafe experimentation with new technologies" love this, couldn't agree more with this statement.
It's likely a different way of thinking, possibly an old vs. new. For me, if I work with people that are hacking on cool stuff, publicly, its a great recruiting tool, its reassurance that you've made a great hire, and its confidence that they code going into production is battle tested in more than just localhost.
Now as a developer primarily working in Ruby, I always feel the need to have a side project to hack on in addition to my day job. The side projects allow for unsafe experimentation with new technologies. After a reasonable amount of vetting, I find that I'm able to make better decisions in my day job as a result. I think most Ruby developers today work in a similar fashion.
The startups that I've worked for never had much concern about what I did in my personal time, but now that I'm working for an acquired company that's part of a big corporate entity, it's a little different. I get more of the looks, comments, etc and can't be as public about my side projects. Also I can't take the side projects as seriously (i.e. get paid subscribers) because that could jeopardize my employment. I'm okay with this for now, but I understand that many would find this appalling. I think you just have to find the right balance between what's good for you versus what's good for them.