What I like about hobby projects is the fast feedback loop around decision making. Decisions at companies are sooo slow, and you also need to prove yourself and fit in.
This means on a hobby project you can drop one hit and work on another because you damn well feel like it.
At work you need to run it past someone. Because Kanban and Scrum and weekly and quarter goals it will be frowned upon. A lot of cpu cycles used up for people and process stuff.
I think the freedom is what makes
working for free great.
Not about the money.
I did free work for a charity once to help someone out and I hated the work. Knee deep in bad PHP and a task that needed to get done. I liked being helpful but it wasn’t fun.
As you said, not about the money. Your hobby project can do something that doesn't make practical sense from a production standpoint, or a growth standpoint.
My wife reminds me frequently that my projects don't have to have any more value than that I wanted to do them. It's okay if my dumb robot exists, and takes up space in the house, so long as I'm enjoying making it.
If you build rapport at your company, you don't have to run much past anyone.
I just do stuff at work. Always have at every company I've been at. I've done stuff from infra changes to doing art design, even in a massive company with 15,000 employees.
Then after it's done, I show the relevant parties. They are happy. They don't have any changes to suggest.
Comments
What I like about hobby projects is the fast feedback loop around decision making. Decisions at companies are sooo slow, and you also need to prove yourself and fit in.
This means on a hobby project you can drop one hit and work on another because you damn well feel like it.
At work you need to run it past someone. Because Kanban and Scrum and weekly and quarter goals it will be frowned upon. A lot of cpu cycles used up for people and process stuff.
I think the freedom is what makes working for free great.
Not about the money.
I did free work for a charity once to help someone out and I hated the work. Knee deep in bad PHP and a task that needed to get done. I liked being helpful but it wasn’t fun.
As you said, not about the money. Your hobby project can do something that doesn't make practical sense from a production standpoint, or a growth standpoint.
My wife reminds me frequently that my projects don't have to have any more value than that I wanted to do them. It's okay if my dumb robot exists, and takes up space in the house, so long as I'm enjoying making it.
If you build rapport at your company, you don't have to run much past anyone.
I just do stuff at work. Always have at every company I've been at. I've done stuff from infra changes to doing art design, even in a massive company with 15,000 employees.
Then after it's done, I show the relevant parties. They are happy. They don't have any changes to suggest.