Is it possible to get a job in a high-demand company without having hobby projects?

Posted by Rachel on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Rachel
Published on 2011-08-19T20:12:38Z Indexed on 2013/10/24 10:11 UTC
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career-development

I was curious if the recruitment team at high-demand companies such as Google takes a lack of hobby projects into consideration when evaluating candidates.

I'm a straight 40 hour/week programmer, who is lucky to spend an hour or two a month outside of work on anything programming related. I love hanging out on SO/SE during my breaks at work, and love answering questions, but after work I leave the programming world and go back to my life.

I already understand that you don't need hobby projects to be a good programmer, but does this lack of hobby projects affect my chances getting a job at a company that always has a long list of candidates trying to get in?

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