Can having outside interests benefit my career?

With Lovar Technology I felt that they had a really good culture. With Ocado Technology, I had this robotics hobby. The robotics in particular, I pretty much feel like we as humanity come closer to the point that we really want to automate the production of food and the many process we have, and get more to self-sufficient habitation. If we want space travel or anything, we need to be able to develop this technology. I had tons of ideas about many things there. So, Ocado Technology was out of the blue to me that something like this exists and I was pretty excited about it. And then, when I got to the position of choice, Ocado was just on top, one place, just because of me being interested in that field that much.