Project selection is pretty key to making this work. Your day job should teach you something new and give you opportunities for deliberate practice. If it doesn't, you're wasting 8 hours of your day. Worse, you're tiring yourself out for those 8 hours so that you can't effectively practice in your side projects.
A coworker of mine described it as the "monkeybars" approach to career development: you hold onto the last skill you developed and use that as leverage to get you a position that will stretch you and teach you new skills. You're never starting from scratch - you can always provide value to your employer - but at the same time you're continually stretching your capabilities.
Comments
Project selection is pretty key to making this work. Your day job should teach you something new and give you opportunities for deliberate practice. If it doesn't, you're wasting 8 hours of your day. Worse, you're tiring yourself out for those 8 hours so that you can't effectively practice in your side projects.
A coworker of mine described it as the "monkeybars" approach to career development: you hold onto the last skill you developed and use that as leverage to get you a position that will stretch you and teach you new skills. You're never starting from scratch - you can always provide value to your employer - but at the same time you're continually stretching your capabilities.