The short answer: Absolutely not. But if you do then you'll have a clear advantage.
The long answers complicated and full of disagreements and arguments, but the way I see it is that if you do choose to take on side projects it gives you full ownership of something, which forces you to look at a project from all angles. Be it planning, development, delivering within a timescale, etc.
Then theres the obvious benefit of more exposure to coding and trying out things you might not get to do in your daily job, which gives you a higher chance of discovering new and better ways of working, with new tools, methods, etc which you can then bring into your day job.
The effect that ownership of your own project has can't be understated. Over time it helps with all sorts of things, from general knowledge of a whole project to things like debugging and figuring out how not to waste a day fixing a 2 line bug.
So while you don't need to, and should never feel pressured into doing it, it can help if it's something you enjoy doing. If you see it as a chore then it'll likely just cause burnout.
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The short answer: Absolutely not. But if you do then you'll have a clear advantage.
The long answers complicated and full of disagreements and arguments, but the way I see it is that if you do choose to take on side projects it gives you full ownership of something, which forces you to look at a project from all angles. Be it planning, development, delivering within a timescale, etc.
Then theres the obvious benefit of more exposure to coding and trying out things you might not get to do in your daily job, which gives you a higher chance of discovering new and better ways of working, with new tools, methods, etc which you can then bring into your day job.
The effect that ownership of your own project has can't be understated. Over time it helps with all sorts of things, from general knowledge of a whole project to things like debugging and figuring out how not to waste a day fixing a 2 line bug.
So while you don't need to, and should never feel pressured into doing it, it can help if it's something you enjoy doing. If you see it as a chore then it'll likely just cause burnout.