alt Hacker News> It's really not that deep, I'm worried if you really cannot understand. I don't code outside of work, I'm not interested in doing it. I'm good at software engineering, not passionate about it. I have a bunch of other hobbies. There's no reason I'd have any code to show now or at any point in the future.
It's like asking a dentist interview candidate to show you examples of fillings and crowns they did at home as a hobby. I don't understand why there is this automatic assumption that people who program at work also do it outside of work.
I ask for code, and if they have none prepared I ask that they spend at most two hours building something they enjoy.
I expect a decent developer to be able to bootstrap and write most of a fun toy project in a domain they know well or at worst some kata from the Internet within half an hour. Then we spend some time screen sharing and talking about it, similar to pair programming but less problem focused.
If you can't do it you'll likely struggle a lot when working with us because we commonly use throwaway prototypes.