For Software Engineers Pursuing Side Hustle: “Coasting is Not Going to Do You Good”

My view of high-performing software engineers.

Coasting: a software professional is doing less and lower quality work than he is capable of.

Today, in my LinkedIn feed, I saw this “High performers have a different mindset” post by Tim Denning, a renowned influencer.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/timcdenning_careers-entrepreneurship-leadership-activity-7181593464533364736-Zpf9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

And this post was well received, with over 41K likes. By a rough guess, 20X more than his typical posts.

I’m a top-performing software engineer who single-handedly created multiple internationally acclaimed complex apps (e.g. TestWise, ClinicWise, SiteWise, BuildWise, WhenWise) in my spare time. Those nowadays are classified as “Side Hustle” work.

I agree with most of the 14 items in Tim Denning’s list, except the №1: “They cheat on their job with a side hustle”. This may happen in other industries but not in software. I have met a few software contractors doing this way, and their side hustle (apps) all failed.

By the way, “cheat” is a strong word. I prefer using the word “coasting”.

Reasons

1. Software development is NOT a Zero-sum game.

A zero-sum game is one in which no…