I like to ask similar questions. If I was interviewing and that was your answer, I’d be just as impressed. Not everyone needs to be running around building things for fun.
I’ve also had people show me pics of their wood working, mountains climbed, hunting trophies, and even 3d models. I think only one time did someone say they did nothing but take care of their spouse. We talked about that, as I have some experience there. My job is to see how you solve problems and ensure they’re compatible with our problems, along with skill set, etc.
Ideas are not hard to find, even if you don't feel like you have them yourself there are loads of people pursuing side projects who would love help from someone skilled like yourself. I have pages of side project ideas I'd like to explore but will probably never get chance and would be happy to share with someone who might want to do them. Maybe it's more that you don't get very excited by side project type ideas?
The other thing that it might be is rational pessimism. A lot of ideas would take a phenomenal amount of work, and as a senior you probably see those pitfalls and that work right at the beginning, while someone more junior might attack a problem - and eventually succeed precisely because of their irrational optimism.
There was a fun quote on the Alexander long Piano story:
> I think because I was so young I absolutely knew it was totally possible to do, I was fully determined and without consulting any professionals I had no barrier stopping me.
I think the implication there is that if he had consulted professionals, the enormity of what he was taking on might well have crushed the idea.
If they succeeded, was it irrational optimism, or rather irrational pessimism from the senior person?
I consider myself senior, but I haven't really lost my optimism. I don't think becoming a senior should mean losing optimism. For me it's the opposite. I have much better understanding how to achieve something than before so I have the confidence that I can definitely do it. Maybe it's my personality though, that instead of thinking what the obstacles are, I think how I'm going to visualize and build it.
But I can see how it's different from plenty of other folks, and I think it comes down to personality. Usually I don't or can't think of challenges/weaknesses up front and I like to just dive in. I have been criticized and given feedback of having this flaw, but I have unrelenting belief, that I can solve everything on the fly and for me it has worked in the past.
It's like my mind is unable to bother or concentrate on what the obstacles will be.
And it's frustrating because many people expect you to come up with a plan and potential obstacles beforehand while my mind just wants to jump in.
Most advice tells you to think/ask questions/plan before you code, but I code while thinking and iterate on that code. I can't think or concentrate if I'm not coding or actively solving the problem. If I try to plan something, it's half-assed and to me it seems useless and it kind of pretends to be a viable plan and when I finally do it, I do it completely different from the plan anyhow.
Not saying it's the right way, but maybe it's some sort of thing similar to ADHD where I just can't focus without building. And I am very impatient as well so if there's something that needs to be built or solved I will need to jump on it asap and get it solved asap. If I'm not building and am planning I have this increasing anxiety, that I should just be doing it.
I'm also of the type "Give me a project and I'll build it. Ask me what I'd like to build and I'll have no idea". I'd love to see this list (or part of it), I have no idea what it could even look like. Mind sharing?
Well evidently not for you. But please don't assume everybody's mind or personality works the same way yours does. You were told to not judge everybody by the same subjective yardstick and your immediate response is to.. project and judge everybody by the same yardstick.
The ability to generate side project ideas or the interest in investing huge amounts of time into a project on your own time are largely orthogonal to the ability to actually build things when it's your job.
There was no assumption that other minds work like mine in this respect.
The point I evidently failed to get across was that there are lots of ideas around and you don't need to generate them yourself. People who like generating ideas generate far more than they can hope to work on and often would love to see others carry them forward.
I'm a side projects type guy, but maybe one downside of having active side projects is that it might interfere with work? As in stealing mental capacity and wanting to go home to work on your current side project
This has happened to me sometimes.
It depends on how much time you spend on side projects I guess. It also helps for me to have a fixed work schedule.
Having inactive side projects (as in never started, or a tiny bit ages ago) interferes at least 'emotionally' for me. Sometimes I can't stop thinking about an idea I want to work on, excited to 'go home' (i.e. stop working) and work on it, but then by the end of the day I'm too tired, if not physically then of sitting or computers, and cook, eat, and sleep instead.
For a while indoor 'cycling home' as I did when I went into an office more worked well to delineate the day, shower, and get on with something of my own feeling refreshed. I still do it, but I suppose I'm used to the feeling or whatever, I don't really find the same benefit any more.
I used to think that I am not an ideas person and it turns out that I do have enough ideas for side projects. I just reject most of my ideas as 'that would not work as a product'.
Then, I just started tinkering with an existing product and add some what if features to it and reduce it to a prototype ignoring it will work at all... That seems to get me started on new things... ymmv...
It depends a lot on what field you are in. For consumer-facing, web or mobile products, engineers who are able to speak the product language, collaborate on planning and feature development are highly valuable. That requires some investment into product and design skills, and it's a lot easier to start onto that path with side projects.
It's taken me a long time to come to terms with this fact, but I (also a staff swe) am not a great idea factory. But if you have a problem you need solved, I can absolutely make that happen, and come up with creative solutions.
In 15 years I've had 1 side project. I'm a staff engineer.