I asked a question about this a while ago on HN, and even threw in the point that I've charged the MacBook with my side projects on the employer's AC outlet (but never used it at work, nor used their network).
The popular answer: buy another battery (carry two) and explore another job.
My interpretation was that if I did work-for-hire e.g. contract work that I never owned (because it was done for a client), then I could develop a portfolio (while not true side projects) outside of work. An extension to that is to work on projects with diffuse ownership (many people on the team). A further extension is to work on purely pro-bono projects (I do find pro bono projects more creatively fulfilling than the constrained business app-type contracts)
Either the headhunters for mobile app developers either don't understand the side project thing or the companies that are using headhunters don't understand it. A company said 'Yes, you can work on your side project as long as it does not use any of the code that we write here'. Really? They don't seem to understand that any decent programmer is constantly rewriting/refactoring/debugging/refining their personal, homegrown library of code and that there is a fair amount of infrastructure/frameworks that is never written from scratch. So, I think this is why so many BigCos are now turning to training their in-house developers on native mobile stuff.
The popular answer: buy another battery (carry two) and explore another job.
My interpretation was that if I did work-for-hire e.g. contract work that I never owned (because it was done for a client), then I could develop a portfolio (while not true side projects) outside of work. An extension to that is to work on projects with diffuse ownership (many people on the team). A further extension is to work on purely pro-bono projects (I do find pro bono projects more creatively fulfilling than the constrained business app-type contracts)
Either the headhunters for mobile app developers either don't understand the side project thing or the companies that are using headhunters don't understand it. A company said 'Yes, you can work on your side project as long as it does not use any of the code that we write here'. Really? They don't seem to understand that any decent programmer is constantly rewriting/refactoring/debugging/refining their personal, homegrown library of code and that there is a fair amount of infrastructure/frameworks that is never written from scratch. So, I think this is why so many BigCos are now turning to training their in-house developers on native mobile stuff.