As a developer, I'm surprised at how often managers are startled to learn that I and my colleagues don't do any coding activities outside of work. (My time spent on SE sites is the closest to that!)

Here here! I'm heartily tired of this "passion" Kool Aid the industry is selling. If you asked me this in an interview, I would assume you are looking for someone who has no outside life and will be willing to work insane hours just for "fun". In other words, free labor.

I found little to no results for "\"Bus-drivers Holiday\"" but I was able to get some results when I searched for "bus drivers holiday," most of which referred to it as "busman's holiday."

This is exactly the response I was going to give, but you beat me to it--I have a full life with family and other hobbies. After programming all day, I want to do other things.

"Would you ask a refuse collector if he cleans the local park on his days off for fun?" - well, do they clean the local park during working hours for fun?

When I was young I did lots of personal programming projects. But over time I found other ways to spend my time out of work. These days I'm addicted to StackOverflow.

Absolutely. If you are my employer, then what I do outside of working hours is none of your business, unless it affects my performance at work. If you ask me this during an interview, I will conclude that you are the kind of employer who is going to try to take ownership of my hours outside work. I will probably head for the door as soon as you ask.

@Barmar Hoarders do collect trash and appear passionate, but throwing it away in a dump is the last thing they'd do, so your poor analogy assertion still stands. But a refuse collector must be a good easy job to some people, it's outdoors, lots of exercise, the pay must be decent, you might be wrong about that part.

@Xen2050 My argument still stands. Trash collecting is not a job where the employer cares whether the applicant is enthusiastic about the work -- anyone who is physically able would be hired.

This answer is exceedingly insulting towards younger employees. Maybe you don't feel like you need to improve yourself or that engineering is as fun for you as collecting trash at your late stage in your career, but this is something that can really differentiate young people. I've done 5-10 hours a week working on side projects/consulting since I joined the industry and each skill I've picked up has equated to roughly a 25% salary bump annually. Comparing what I do to volunteer trash collection really, really rubs me the wrong way.

@mkingsbu I don't see anything here insulting people who do that. It's just pointing out that not everyone does that, and if someone doesn't do that, it's not a reason to think they're a worse candidate. (also, volunteer trash collection is an actual thing some people do, not an insult! Point is: you can respect the dedication of a refuse collector who does that in their spare time too, but you wouldn't think less of one who choses a hobby more different to their day job)

-1 For only considering your own situation. There's a big difference between a 30-year programming veteran and young people who are just starting out. A lot of newer programmers start out with outside projects and then get a job doing programming, not the other way around. Doing side projects is a great way of learning how to be a better programmer.

Not a fair analogy at all - people who do not engage in side projects are clearly triggered by this question. It has absolutely nothing to do with "free labour" as the top comment in this thread implies. Also comparing creative work to manual labour is frankly insulting. A more fair analogy would be "Would you ask your dentist if they floss?" and the answer would be a definitive "yes".

@Pharap: It is actually illegal for the hiring company to take that difference into account (discrimination on the basis of age), so this is an entirely valid answer.

@Kevin It is illegal for companies to discriminate based on age. However it is a fact of life that older people tend to be the experienced ones and younger people tend to be the inexperienced ones. If a company is advertising for a 'senior programmer' they will most likely be looking at hiring older people who have the experience, whereas if they're looking for a 'junior developer', an experienced veteran programmer would be overqualified.

I have exactly the same opinion as you, but that doesn't mean that it's not a question that can be asked. There's a difference between asking a question and making a decision based on the answer. Similarly, if a company is open to hiring skilled workers who don't have a degree doesn't mean that it's inappropriate for them to ask if you have a degree.

I have to -1 this answer in agreement with other commenters such as @mkingsbu. Literally the only reason I was able to start my career was because I was doing hobby programming at my university job to improve our staff's workflow by automatically creating calendar events on Google Calendar. If I had never bothered to be interested in doing extra work, technically outside my job duties, I would have had a wildly different start to my career. This answer seems out of touch with what is required to set you apart today in the industry. 30 years of experience is different than a college grad.

Not sure why people are apparently downvoting because younger interviewees tend to do more side projects. Nobody's stopping you from bringing that up on your own - this answer is just advocating that the company doesn't make this one of their standard questions.

@EdmundReed Insulting how? Both are respectable jobs and if one had to go away, I'd keep the trash collectors...

Totally agree, no money no honey. I'm not a veteran either.

If a person would be a sportsman, the question would sound: do you more workout after workout?

Serious question: never in your career have you had to solve a non-work problem via programming? I ask this because in my ~5 years as a software developer I've done that on several occasions, e.g. a CLI utility to convert Itunes playlists into Android-friendly formats with full unicode support (often missing in various others attempts at a solution). You've never had a programming problem of your own?