Project selection is pretty key to making this work. Your day job should teach you something new and give you opportunities for deliberate practice. If it doesn't, you're wasting 8 hours of your day. Worse, you're tiring yourself out for those 8 hours so that you can't effectively practice in your side projects.
A coworker of mine described it as the "monkeybars" approach to career development: you hold onto the last skill you developed and use that as leverage to get you a position that will stretch you and teach you new skills. You're never starting from scratch - you can always provide value to your employer - but at the same time you're continually stretching your capabilities.
A coworker of mine described it as the "monkeybars" approach to career development: you hold onto the last skill you developed and use that as leverage to get you a position that will stretch you and teach you new skills. You're never starting from scratch - you can always provide value to your employer - but at the same time you're continually stretching your capabilities.