pyratebeard Wrote:Speaking of; a few of you have mentioned long commutes. I also have an hour commute each way. How do you find time to work on all these fun little projects along side family life?

Usually, I listen to podcasts or read something tech-related while commuting. I also moved this month, which reduces the one-way travel to 30 minutes if no public transportation vehicle is delayed...

To answer your question about benefits of a job:
I value quality hardware. I'm currently interviewing for a new job and discovered several things that are more important to me than money:
- quality hardware. No matter if it's a nice notebook, monitor or a mechanical keyboard
- Freedom to self-organize me. I am usually on site at the same time every day. But if i have some private appointment, i don't want to ask for permission to come in late. Trust me, i get the job done.
- A High Quality development environment. I'm a long time intellij user - and every day at work i start hating eclipse more and more. This slow, sluggish, feature-lacking piece of junk slows me down.
- Room for (self)improvement. Keep my mind busy. Give me books, courses or just time to let me try something new. The studying dev of today is the relevant dev of tomorrow.
- Linux usage is a bonus.

Regarding family time: My girlfriends job has a huge lunch break and therefore she's coming home at least one to two hours after me. So i have plenty of time to either do something tech-related or prepare food... Ofc she prefers a nice meal ;-)