> First, most recruiters don’t care about your personal projects or how many meetups you went during the...
Why are you trying to impress recruiters? I mean, the entire point of the post is wrong, but impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders.
If you aren't trying to do your own thing (which, let's face it, is the most exciting prospect), at least try to impress CEOs or product managers, or -- my goodness -- at least hiring managers. I heard a fun anecdote of Evan Spiegel attending an LA hackathon maybe 6 or 7 years ago. Some nerdy engineer showed him that he figured out how to get around Snapchat's spam filter. Spiegel offered him a job on the spot. Could a recruiter ever do that? Hell to the no.
impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders.
My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged.
I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment.
Out here dropping stories about Evan Spiegel; gimme a break. Most people don't know any CEOs, PMs, or hiring managers.
The funny part is, I agree with your premise. You are indeed presenting the best way of opening doors. It's worked for me, and has opened many doors.
But only when I was in a better position. Till then, it was one of the worst things I could have done. Focusing on playing the hiring game would have put me in a much stronger position.
The comment you made is slightly out of touch. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think you'll maybe look back on it in 10 years or so with a wince.
In the situation I described above, where you absolutely need that job, all the people you mention have a good chance of forgetting about you due to day-to-day politics. Guess who won't? That recruiter. Because they get a cut of your salary.
> I mean, the entire point of the post is wrong, but impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem pole, lowest-common-denominator bottom-feeders.
No matter how we feel, the process still goes through recruiters.
In a company I used to work for, we built a way where we removed the company and uni name to remove biases from recruiters. Most recruiters flat out refused to use it and trust us because they considered that a very important signal. The decision is not upto just developers.
> I heard a fun anecdote of Evan Spiegel attending an LA hackathon maybe 6 or 7 years ago. Some nerdy engineer showed him that he figured out how to get around Snapchat's spam filter. Spiegel offered him a job on the spot.
I am sure we will all have our anecdotal examples like this and I am not against side projects. I agree with the post author that side projects are great, but don't expect them to count towards your next job. If they do, then great.
Not only this, but the premise that working on your job will impress recruiters is just wrong.
There's a pretty simple flow chart for getting hired at a bay area company:
1. Go to MIT, Stanford, Cal, an Ivy, or CalTech and make sure you have linked in.
2. If 1 isn't possible then make a friend who works where you want to work and get a referral.
3. Cram leetcode
That's basically it.
Don't give up doing side projects and things you actually enjoy because that's how you learn.
I think you're also overly harsh on recruiters (they're not 'bottom-feeders'), they're friendly and can help you out - but they're just looking in a very narrow subset. Basically the graduates from those schools and people already employed at FAANGs.
I ran that hackathon. Can confirm it happened in 2015. LA Hacks at UCLA, Evan was the keynote speaker and stayed around to talk to hackers and builders after his speech. Snapchat, as a company, was at its hottest peak in 2015. Very cool event.
I mean, the REAL truth is that I don't do side projects to impress recruiters... I do them because of my intellectual curiosity. That said, they HAVE helped me make a pretty successful career shift.
I feel like this is one of those moments that shouts “Hacker News is not typical”. A lot of people are employed through recruiters, including for Facebook, Google and the rest! Aiming to impress the CEO is all very well, but it’s not common.
This is a great observation that is relevant for everyone who will serendipitously bump into the CEO of the company that makes the product on top of which their side project is built. Everyone else needs to be screened by a recruiter, though.
Assuming he's in France, by "recruiter" he means company recruiters / HR. Your CV and first phone interview always go to a recruiter at the company, that's the first person you have to talk to (and impress) to have a shot at any job.
American might understand recruiter as an external agency, there's no such thing in tech in France. There's no CEO/CTO either, they are sitting idle out of sight collecting money never interacting with the company or any employee.
At any company of any decent size, your resume isn't going to get to the hiring manager if it doesn't get through the recruiter. The CEO of any large tech company is never going to meet you, much less see your resume.
The author is a native French speaker. Based on context, I'm pretty sure he's using the word recruiter to mean a company that's recruiting and not the HR individual that funnels resumes to hiring managers.
As a hiring manager, I never cared about side projects, or Stack Overflow or Kaggle scores. The most a side project github link would tell me if it was big or not. That’s it.
I’m not going to go through and read a bunch of random code by myself, when I can just ask a couple of questions, and get the same information quicker. They are just too many resumes to read.
Seriously, all side projects tell me is that you spend your free time coding, instead of hiking, or some other hobby.
I have had great recruiters help me throughout my career. I didn't go into those relationships thinking of my career prospects but just letting someone buy me a drink or a meal and to chat and get to know them. Obviously they're trying to make money off your skills, but, a lot of them are really cool people just trying to get by and will look out for you if you let your guard down. Interviews are interviews, but meeting a recruiter is a first date
There's a massive gap between terrible spammy recruiters and impressing a hot startup's CEO directly.
Also the higher your position the less side projects matter because it's your main job responsibilities and performance that's in focus, not what you do on your own time.
The issue is how else are you gonna get the attention of those people without going through a recruiter? Some, like you said, maybe able to do it. Some might have referrals.
But for a lot of people, recruiters reaching out or applying through a portal is the start of many new positions.
>Why are you trying to impress recruiters? I mean, the entire point of the post is wrong, but impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders.
Yeah, they are. They're also how most people find jobs before we reach the career stage of being able to call a friend who knows a guy who works at a place.
My sister is a recruiter. I’ll be sure to tell her that you think she’s a bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator bottom-feeder. That’ll brighten up her day. And when she doesn’t take it to heart, I’ll be sure to add a ‘Let’s be frank...’.
Every time this topic comes up on HN I feel like the only person who does side projects because I enjoy them as a hobby. Learning for the job is distantly secondary, and getting my next job is tertiary. They're perks to something I'm doing anyway, not justifications for doing it.
Yeah, I program at work, but the tasks I get at a software job don't scratch the itch that got me into tech in the first place. Just like how most workers in "creative" fields don't get paid to do the interesting things that first attracted them. They're stuck using their arts degrees to write marketing copy instead of their dream novel, or they became a civil engineer to design inspiring architecture but their day job is trying to update someone else's vision to include the safety features the designer didn't leave room for.
I get that lots of people get their fill of technology at their job and don't want to see a screen when they get home. Live the life that makes you happy. I'm just boggled at how many people appear to find it unimaginable and unrelatable that a technologist likes technology enough to mess with it for fun, even after work.
> I'm just boggled at how many people appear to find it unimaginable and unrelatable that a technologist likes technology enough to mess with it for fun, even after work.
It's not that I can't understand it. I don't have that urge personally but I can see where it comes from and if that makes you happy go for it! The reason I personally get so defensive and anti side project is because as someone who's very defensive of their non-work time (due to spending it on other productive hobbies that bring more joy into my life than anything else) I've experienced a lot of colleagues/managers who have tried pressure or belittle me into doing side projects. It's been implied that I'm not a 'real' engineer or that I can't be successful in my career if I don't. And frankly I resent that attitude because it's bullshit and it tries to take away time from the things that make my life truly joyful.
As you say do what makes you happy, side projects or not. Unfortunately a lot of folk on the side projects side don't/won't accept them as optional if you want to be seen as a competent engineer.
Exactly this. I do my side projects for personal development and enjoyment. It's my opportunity to grow in whatever direction I like, and I'm not going to let my job dictate what kind of side projects I'm taking on.
If that results in skills useful at work, or for finding work, that's a nice but entirely secondary benefit. The more important benefit is burnout prevention - because I too "don't get paid to do the interesting things that first attracted" me to software, or science and technology in general.
> I'm just boggled at how many people appear to find it unimaginable and unrelatable that a technologist likes technology enough to mess with it for fun, even after work.
Me too. I sometimes wonder if I'm not missing out, but try as I might, I don't enjoy the "normal" stuff as much as I enjoy intellectual stimulation. I also sometimes wonder if this isn't because my eyes just don't get tired from screens. I can look at computer screens 16 hours straight, and my eyes don't get dry or itchy. I had co-workers who had to use saline drops at work, and I can understand if they didn't want to look at any screen when they got home.
You're far from alone, it just seems like as hobby/passion programmers tend to spend more time programming and less time posting about work life balance on Twitter or HN. So naturally they have a quieter, smaller voice in these kind of discussions.
My only problem is I spend so much energy on work, I don't have it when I go home, no matter how excited or interested I am in the side projects.
I realize that's also a personal problem - poor time/resource allocation - not allocating a proper amount of time/energy to work vs. personal projects.
However, I can say, doing a full time, involved job and giving it all my attention tends to use up all the cycles. Is that true for other people too?
You're not alone. To me, side projects aren't a means to an end -- they are the end. They are the entire point. They're what I'd spend all my time on if I wasn't forced to work a day job, because the act of creating is what I enjoy the most.
This. I had projects before I started working, and still have projects now. They are a hobby. Just that. When I don't want to code outside of work, I dont. When I want, I do. I don't feel guilt for not completing something. Most of them fail or are never finished, yet still I enjoy them, and I've learned a lot from them.
> I'm just boggled at how many people appear to find it unimaginable and unrelatable that a technologist likes technology enough to mess with it for fun, even after work.
I do get their point though, they feel bad because they are not one of those. But that's just the way things are. There aren't many people who got into tech because they REALLY like it. Not because it's a "good" job or because it's the lesser evil.
And by that I don't mean the people who only code at work or learned about tech later in life are bad developers, not at all. Nevertheless, they are the vast majority and they are quite different than the passionate young kid who codes for shits and giggles. It doesn't help than they are socially pressured to be like that. They end up hating it. Like when you have a brother/sister that is better than you at something and your parents always say "WHY CANT YOU BE LIKE YOUR BROTHER/SISTER".
I used be like that when I was younger. Hell, I taught myself to program doing this exact thing. But nowadays, I really don't want to spend weekends looking at a monitor all day. Before you know it, you've spent 8 or 10 or whatever hours tinkering away.
There's a point where it's not healthy. It'll catch up with you and there's a danger you'll find yourself not having the enthusiasm to do your hobby projects and also your real job.
The problem for me comes down to screen time. I spend so much screen time at work programming that I don't think it's healthy to do the same thing as a hobby.
The only reason I have my job that I do now is because of side projects.
How else are you suppose to learn different parts of the stack when you're (usually) only hired to work in one part? How are you suppose to learn DevOps/CloudOps unless you're on an Ops team?
Many (most?) companies don't delegate full stack responsibilities to individual teams.
I think we need to differentiate between a "learning project" and a "side project." Those are two very different things, at least to me.
A learning project is a project you're doing with the express intent of learning a new technology. The focus is on the learning, not the delivered functionality.
A side project is a project you're doing for the community. It's a labor of love. The focus is on functionality and meeting the needs of your users, not learning technology. You may even be able to grow it into an actual business.
From a career perspective you want to focus on learning projects. As you've mentioned learning projects are very important for your continued learning. Side projects on the other hand have the risk of distracting you from your work and my advice would be to avoid them unless you're scratching your own itch or maybe even want to explore starting a side business.
Bottom line - be clear with yourself on what you're doing and why you're doing it.
Yep. I didn't learn C# or Objective-C or Swift or Python at whatever job I had at the time, I learned them on my own, and then made a side-project with them, and was able to show that to future jobs and get hired that way.
One job I got because my side project was a finalist in a contest and was shown off at a convention my employer attended, and they called me as a result and brought me in for an interview.
Another job interview, I kind of stumbled on their programming test, but I was able to show something I made on the side, and that convinced them I knew enough to give me a week and bring me back in, and I refreshed my knowledge during that week, and I aced the test the second time and got the job.
My current job is at least in part thanks to those side projects I worked on in the past. And my side projects I'm working on now are giving me skills that I am not gaining at my current job, and will hopefully help align me with my next shift in my career (and if not, at least I'll make a few bucks and some people will enjoy the product).
It depends. On company culture, your manager, and your role, among other things.
If you're doing a huge career change, side projects may be your only way. But most companies (in my experience at least) recognize the value in having their application developers understand some Ops work, and vise versa.
Many (most?) companies won't entirely "firewall" you from other groups. Even if you're throwing an application over the wall to ops, there's usually opportunities to learn from them, help out on specific tasks, etc.
That said, learning at work is probably _better_, but I do think side projects with a specific goal (e.g. to learn a technology) are a valuable supplement.
Agree with this. At least 2 jobs (I've lost count) I got based on side work I did. Full time employment history helped, but it was the side projects that showed a certain skillset that they wanted.
Yeah, I share your experience and I disagree strongly with this piece.
If I had joined a good company and focused on that, I would still be comfortably building web services for them like I learned to in school, and I would probably continue doing that indefinitely.
That's fine, it's a nice salary, but it was also boring and soul-crushing. When I started to see the damage wrought by mass-scale social media, my side projects made it easy for me to transition into a much more interesting but specialized field that I saw more of a future in, and that has worked out great.
The author's main complaints seem to involve recruiters and the poor value proposition of shallow projects. But if you have deep projects and poke your nose around the industries that you're interested in, you won't have to deal with recruiters, and you'll often be able to avoid the technical side of interviews entirely. Talent is very scarce.
Although, I write this from a USA perspective and I notice this is a .fr domain; the labor markets and hiring practices might be very different.
Yeah I never went to college/uni and got my first job in IT due to doing web/graphic design projects on the side of my non-IT job.
Then after getting sick of front-end/design I started coding back-end side projects and taught myself enough to ultimately get hired doing CMS development. Then same again to get into Sysadmin, after running game/file servers as side projects. Etc etc...
Five distinct career changes/upgrades over ~20 years inside IT, all thanks to building stuff I wanted to build for fun and that impressing the right people to get me hired. The only IT job I've ever gotten through working my way up in a company was the last one, into Project Management, and that was only due to the breadth of skills I taught myself throughout the years... on all those side projects.
If I didn't do side projects, and didn't always strive for more, I'd still be running/packing cables for concerts and working 20 hour shifts for barely enough money to survive.
Similar experience here. I can attribute all my jobs to side projects - it always so happened that the technology I got employed for was something I tried to write a game in few months to years ago.
It's a little ironic that this is on "hacker" news since I think that the original "hacker" ethos wasn't that you built things just to impress recruiters.
If your goal is career advancement, then it is fair to acknowledge that some projects won't be useful for that. But there's plenty of other reasons that people work on side projects besides just career advancement. "Just for fun" might be the most famous reason, that is I believe how the Linux kernel started.
While maybe big companies won't value side projects directly too heavily, there's still a good chance that if you learn new things and try to build interesting stuff, that it might open new doors in all sorts of unexpected ways. But there's no guarantee.
I also think that full time coding jobs can be a lot of work, and people shouldn't feel too pressured if they don't want to have side projects, because they have other things like a busy family life or non-technical hobbies. But for many people, programming can still be fun and interesting, especially outside of the usual corporate routine, and that's all the motivation they need to pick up a side project. That to me is really what a "hacker" is, not a leetcode grinder climbing the ranks at FAANG.
Systems programmers have different experiences than web developers who have different experiences from ML researchers. Things that benefit junior Ruby devs may make no sense for a middle aged, embedded dev working for the defense industry.
There are people who benefit greatly from side projects, and others who should never bring them up in an interview. I don't think anyone should be significantly swayed by the arguments I've seen here so far. Know your situation and react accordingly. Don't lose sight of the complex world of software and how many times the experiences of others only apply loosely, if at all, to your situation.
Right? Maybe the speck of hostility is as little as we interpret the word 'side projects' differently and forget about other context and variable, or simple fact that not everyone have a knack on side project...I found that if you're not side project guy, then you're not, and that's fine.
I mean, I believe many people don't have side project and still have perfectly happy life.
Coming from the sysadmin side of things I have noticed this glaringly many times over my years on hn. So much miscommunication just because it's easy to assume other people are like you or like your company.
Hello HN! Author here. I wasn't expecting so much comments!
I would have chosen a less provocative title if I had known :)
Just to clarify: I founded a company a few years ago from a side project I had started three years before, and this year I released two projects, so I can say that I love side projects. I simply regret this tendency to start so many shallow side projects (which are little more than tutorials) just to build a portfolio instead of focusing on creating something really substantial, or something that at least you really like. It's a waste and an illusion to think that it could help to be hired. I know too many developers stuck into this pipe dream.
The laser stuff made me wealthy, and that wasn't even my intention. People at the time told me it was a huge distraction from my academic career and a waste of time.
My current side project is a real time voice converter (like Mission Impossible).
Follow your passion. You'll deliver better results and open lots of doors.
Your side projects will also usually be pretty novel. It's fertile ground for startup material.
Vocodes is super cool and fun to play with, well done. I wonder if it's possible to turn it into a text-to-speech donations service for Twitch streamers? The current TTS voices are rather monotone. Some donators test how their text donations would sound like on this website: https://textreader.pro
P/S: Small typo on the first sentence on the about page.
The laser stuff is cool. If you don't mind me asking, how did it make you wealthy? Do you sell it as a service for events? Or maybe sold/licensed the tech to someone? Or maybe it just got you a really great job?
The advice from the blog post is awful as general advice. Posting anon here for obvious reasons, but there are different types of jobs. Some jobs reward you with equity, some reward you with promotions, and some are dead end jobs. Even many senior positions are dead end jobs.
I work at an A-round startup. Tons of people in FP&A, sales, accounting, and HR get promoted every six months. Engineers rarely get promoted. No refreshers. No raises.
Guess what? Engineers are now clocking out at 4pm, they are working on side projects, and it is the most rational thing to do.
On the flip side, I've worked at places where engineers are rewarded regularly for outstanding work. It makes sense to focus on your job.
> First, most recruiters don’t care about your personal projects or how many meetups you went during the year. What matters the most is your current company - and by that I mean the name of your current company.
He is so much right here. Recruiters don't have the time to go through and understand your side projects, for that matter even engineers don't. Most interviews are 45-60 mins, you need to scope your interview such that the process remains same for all candidates. If someone is just beginning out then side projects matter a lot but for hiring experienced people, most won't care about side projects unless they got significant traction.
Also, it is incredibly hard to judge side projects. Sure, I can go through your Github repo if it is open source, open 2-3 files to see code structure, see the automation suite you have setup but unless the project was complex there is not much to talk about. For experienced folks, there are other metrics you need to gauge them on which are absent in hobby projects.
I never understood why people cared so much about company "name" until a handful of years ago. It's not about "status" in terms of what kind of fancy clothes you wear, but it absolutely signals an ability to clear a certain kind of bar, produce a certain kind of work, and experience things on a scale that you wouldn't at a smaller shop.
It doesn't mean one path is right or wrong for a job (I know many people who switch back and forth between bigcorp and startups), but if you only see BigCorp experience as status seeking/soul sucking experience, you're missing a huge part of the picture.
If you can speak to the processes involved and have demonstrable knowledge about how to implement things learned from side-projects, what's the difference between having done it at work versus personal time? None in my opinion.
I admire this approach and have many colleagues who operated this way. But for someone who didn’t get into a top school and had to start with “low prestige” jobs and work my way up focusing on side projects was essential to my career. By showing I could take risks and learn emerging technologies I was able to make myself attractive to startup and on the bleeding edge and just spent the last two years working in my dream field of AI/ML.
If you’re young and believe in yourself more than society’s ridged idea of credentialism has don’t be afraid to buck the trend. I failed out of a mid tier college. And while my 20s has my been a stressful hodgepodge of jobs I was under qualifying for. A public track record of my ability to create something with emerging technologies has always meant someone is willing and excited to work with me.
This is decent career advice, but it doesn't address the root of why.
If you want FIRE, the best way is to optimize your career. How do you do that? It starts early before your first job, as you try out different school subjects, books, friends, hobbies. As you look out to the future, what do you see on the horizon?
Thinking about the time I entered school, programmers were near the bottom of the totem pole. Mathematicians were trapped in academic ivory towers. Data was barely used as the alpha bros of finance dominated the talks of high compensation. The most sought after jobs did not even exist then. Youtuber, data science, deep learning, cloud computing, analytics, ecommerce, cryptocurrency, even professional video gamer were not real careers.
Increasing revenues solve all problems. Jump on the waves of industries that are booming and will continue to boom.
The world and culture is constantly changing as we march towards the future. Put yourself in a position to succeed by learning the fundamentals needed to pass interviews and recognize when something seems obvious to you but not to everyone else yet.
Interesting article. The author has made an interesting conclusion and provided interesting premises to support it.
In my opinion, it depends on what your career goal is and what you want out of life.
If you are in a position where you use a technology you don't like or work on projects you don't enjoy, a side project on the weekends can be a way of addressing the gap. Not everyone has the chance of joining a great company.
It also depends on what country or continent you reside in. It appears that in American culture, side projects are actively encouraged; A couple of silicon valley companies have come out of side projects.
A different argument can also be made that doing multiple side projects would not make you a better programmer. Our culture tends to focus on quantitative factors for improving skills rather than qualitative factors. What if rather than doing side projects, one changes ones attitude in their current job?
An excellent article on qualitative factors on excellence can be found in https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/what-is-excellence
It may be useful to remember that the author lives in France and has spent his whole professional life in France.
As a French having worked in Germany, Canada and New Zealand, I can say that the recruitment process is very different in other countries, where side projects and open source contributions are really valued.
In my opinion, his article should mention the geographical setting of his experience, and his advice should only apply to people living in France (and writing the article in French may have been more appropriate too)
> Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job.
My experience has been different than the author. I suffer from pretty bad anxiety, which doesn't exactly come in handy during interviews and coding challenges. Side projects have been a good way to talk deeply and technically during interviews about concrete problems that I've worked on because I can't show a potential employer code I wrote for someone else's company.
That said, I think there's limited value in showing an employer the product of some tutorial, but side projects that came from my brain alone never hurt in an interview context, and almost always helped.
I began my side-project [1] one year ago. I quit my very well-paid job 6 months ago to make my side-project my full-time job.
It is going quite well (I am nowhere near making the same money). Just 2 of us at the moment. I've learnt so much over this period. Like what you would get over 10 years in a big tech company while jumping over all the hierarchy.
Moreover, my very first side project turned me from a guy who knows only Python into a guy who can set up entire architecture on the cloud. Later, I became somewhat a "rockstar"/jack-of-all-trades engineer.
But I agree, unless you do your side-project just to do something then it is your hobby.
My advice would be: someone has to pay for your side project's product/service. Because only then you can show that it generates real business value. This is the only thing which should matter to your future employer. You generate business value.
I stumbled across your project recently while helping a friend with scraping project. I think the pricing is reasonable but I found that the non-commercial limitations of the free plan make it difficult for smaller developers to try it out in their projects. Just my 2c.
I can understand not letting your side project get in the way of your job. If you have a slow day at the office, it's not the time to be working on your side project - although many people do.
However, if it weren't for side projects, I would never have learned Linux, virtualization, handfuls of programming languages, or so many other things I ended up bringing into my 8-5 job.
If you use work materials to work on your side project, your employer can make a claim to it. This is why you should always have a separate personal computer for personal stuff, and a work machine you use for only for work stuff.
Focus on building your reputation and technical network. Your network will be the source of the best employment opportunities. Recruiters have presented me with some of my worst career opportunities. Former co-workers, technical collaborators and those who have been exposed to my previous work gave me the best opportunites.
Sure, if you do a good job with your employer, you will build reputation. But so do side projects, speaking at developer conferences and going to meetups. Build your network!
Interesting post. I don't necessarily agree 100%, but I think it's a useful perspective in addition to the counter-idea that side projects and meetups will get you jobs.
It's not every company or set of interviewers, but there are lots of interviewers and recruiters who don't care at all about your side projects. I've done plenty of interviews, and don't really ask about them much, or really have time to check them out in any detail before the interview.
Lots of tech meetups are also jammed with aggressive recruiter-bros and newbies who need a paycheck and aren't all that interested in tech. Keep your expectations in check for finding good employers or employees at them.
For side projects, I wouldn't say not to do them. But don't do "hello world" level side projects in a trendy language in the expectation that anybody will care or it will get you a job. Do a side project to accomplish something that you are actually interested in. If you don't feel like it or don't have any interesting ideas, then by all means do something else instead. Half-hearted projects to fill a perceived recruiting checkbox definitely won't get you anything. Doing something interesting, or even doing something kind of boring in an interesting way, might help. Or doing something and taking it into Production enough to feel some of the pain points of maintenance, uptime, marketing, etc.
If one is not currently at a company with a "brand name", how else are they supposed to get noticed amongst a pile of other "brand name" applicants?
Is the same true for educational backgrounds? If you don't have an Ivy League degree, what methods can you use to put yourself in the running vs those that do? Side projects seems like a good option in both cases to appear competitive.
Agree -- recruiters don't care about side projects. But, if you hustle and track down the hiring manager they might be impressed, and at a minimum it could be a good conversation starter.
My side projects have opened a lot of doors for me, particularly they have enabled career switches. I'm a B2C product manager, was interested in moving to B2B and was ignored until I launched a small SaaS side project (B2B vs B2C PM is considered quite different.)
But the theme of this article is true, recruiters don't care and you should focus on enjoyable side projects.
The most transformative change in my career was turning my side project into a profitable company, which I now work on full-time. This was a huge step change in terms of my personal happiness and wealth. So, I generally disagree with the advice of forgetting side projects.
> ” He may not be smarter, but he has been hired by a company with a most demanding hiring process”
> ” As we all know, the interview process is broken.”
I don’t know how the author conciliate these two opinions.
Other than that, I agree that being hired by a FAANG company is better for your career than any number of side-projects. The problem is that I don’t think I will ever be hired by a FAANG company (as many many many others). It is not about not wanting to focus on leetcode and Cracking the Coding Interview (and I don’t), but my resume would be rejected for sure much before that stage (as a self-taught developer with 41 years old and a degree in Eocnomics from an university in Brazil).
I think the biggest advantage of side projects is for when an interviewer asks you an open-ended "tell me about a project you enjoyed working on".
As an applicant, I can speak in great detail about any of my side projects, discuss any design decisions, trade-offs and compromises I made. Personally this usually involves some interesting trade-offs made on personal projects to optimize for AWS bill, vs decisions I'd have made at any company where a $100 /mo bill wouldn't even register as a line item on a budget. It also is a great way to differentiate yourself if you're trying to make a move from eg an Enterprise Java B2B company to a consumer-facing SaaS startup using $NEW_TECH.
As a hiring manager, I can see the candidate isn't being challenged enough by their current job, or they had a curiosity they wanted to satisfy outside their regular hours. Either way it shows initiative and a hunger to learn, both of which are good signals. Usually when people are talking about these projects, they are passion projects and you get a good feeling if somebody actually likes programming, as well as hints towards what specifically they find interesting. Did they spend 10 minutes talking about progressive enhancement techniques and bundle sizes? Did they talk about user feedback? Or maybe they focused on CI/CD, auto-scaling, or API design choices? This to me is far more useful than "Worked on team X and performed assigned tasks Y, Z".
Yeah side projects shouldn't be a thing that you do to find a job unless that's all the experience you have. For example, if you're a junior new developer. Side projects are valuable though in that they keep you happy. You are in complete control and you arent tied down by deadlines or random whims of a senior manager five lev ls above you.
As a person trying to break into the software world to get a software developer job, I feel like side projects are the only thing I can show.
I've been putting more and more effort into my side projects recently (all on GitHub). It's kept me sharp, passionate, always gives me something to optionally think about (e.g. when exercising), provides conversation pieces (with the right crowd of course), has taught me a whole bunch of new techniques and has kept me relevant in this fast moving industry.
My side projects include:
- An Air Quality Monitoring Dashboard
- A leaderboard app built with redis
- A WebGL globe to show live wikipedia edits
- A web service to scrape any number of GitHub stars from any number of people
- A node.js app which extracts 1 second of footage from your media library, and combines it into a '1 second everyday'-style video
- An audio reactive image slideshow from instagram selfies
- A visualisation dashboard to show stats about your blood from some diabetes bluetooth thingymajig
- 3D renders of popular logos, like the GitHub logo
- An Alfred workflow app to trim X seconds from the currently playing video from VLC
- A script which downloads the top 250 websites to your drive, so you can then run other scripts upon them, as often as you want, without getting blocked
- An augmented reality music website (where you can use the webcam to control audio)
I'm really grateful I'm able to do such things and have no intention of stopping.
> I don’t want to make this blog post a rant against side projects. In fact, I’m advocating the exact opposite. Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job.
IMHO, that's over-doing it, but fairly on target. Like dating, one wants to be an interesting person. Your projects, to me, demonstrate that you are an interesting person, but as per the topics of collaboration & communication that the author starts with, while yes I want to work with interesting people, it's not what I've found to be the primary nor even all-that-distinguishing characteristic of hirees. Somewhat sadly; keep hacking! ;)
The creator of homebrew flunked a Google interview because he couldn't invert a binary tree. Everyone at Google that he interviewed said they used homebrew and loved it, but ultimately it didn't matter. He couldn't invert a binary tree.
So side projects or even real projects that are used by millions are literally meaningless.
Study LeetCode instead to get a job and focus on your job at work.
I don't think Google is a good place to work at really... And when interviewing a web developer, I don't think caring if they can invert a binary tree is a good thing.
If you think things like LeetCode makes you a better programmer then you only show how inexperienced you are. You can know a lot about theory and algorithms and still write shitty, unmaintainable code.
I turned a side project into a company, and recruiters contacted me non-stop during the entire journey. But maybe it is because I already had experience at Microsoft and Amazon.
I think there is a huge difference between what the author mentions as "shallow" side projects (where you are just trying to mess around with some new tech), and side projects where the aim is to develop a legit product. I imagine the latter, when seen all the way through, is much more attractive to recruiters. Although, I don't have any solid anecdotal experience with recruiting to validate that claim.
I just think it's important to not classify all projects outside of your job as "shallow" side projects, and then completely discard them career wise like the article seems to be doing.
Reads like someone who's deeply frustrated with their career history...
"Forget side projects and focus on job" sounds as terrible as the opposite: "ignore your job and just send time on personal interests"
It is my experience that most recruiters are superficial to the point that unless they received instructions to literally hire someone with most meetup attandances, they will ignore any candidate that list those in resume.
But, there ARE recruiters who can see through a weak resume and help you make it more targeted, surface keywords that help you get interviews.
I see .fr in domain: is going through recruiters the main way to get hired in IT in france? Where I am the best way to get hired (beyond entry level) is through referrals and for those, I find that side projects and collaborations are much better at generating a future lead that just proving you were good at your job
Important note: the author is French, working in France.
I am French myself and from what I've heard about how it happens in North America, the way recruiting works is a bit different.
The general idea is that French recruiters are more cautious, which is understandable since there are stronger employee protection laws and it is harder to let go of a problematic employee. For that reason, employees are also expected to stay longer.
It also looks like recruiting criteria are less technical. Your degree, years of experience, companies you worked for, certifications, etc... play a more important role than showing off your skills. Wages also tend to be defined more by your experience and position than how much money the company can expect to make out of your work.
So if you are not working in France, keep that in mind when reading such advise.
A lot of people who do side projects do them for themselves rather than simply for improving career prospects. Many folks need a balance between being an independent creator, and being part of a bigger organization and side projects are a great way to get to that.
You weren’t wrong. You gave up too early, accepting the salaryman fantasy of steady growth if you just “work hard.”
If this works past 50, you are 80th percentile. Past 55? 98th percentile. How will you feel when you begin to be handed boring, or fix-it projects? When your salary doesn’t keep up with 29-year-old versions of yourself? Layoffs? Perfectly acceptable or ignorable at 20-38. Lethal >48.
You need to own the economic value of your output as early as possible. Read that sentence again. Side projects are about 10% effective here, if you get my drift.
Reference? Are you implying that developers over 55 are unemployed against their choice?
I suspect sampling bias: Any half competent 55 year old has lived through some golden opportunities to make bank, or decide on a career change by choice. Also the intake cohorts results in not many over 55 as a % of total. My experience in New Zealand is that older devs are doing fine as a cohort, although I also can see poor performers who stuck with old tech who may have bitter anecdotes.
> You need to own the economic value of your output as early as possible
I disagree. I have plenty of 50+ acquaintances doing very nicely on their boring salary without the stress or risk of trying to get a slice of equity. Plenty of people do not have the traits required, or their personal circumstances are not flexible enough to allow for risk, or they just want a 9 to 5 and a comfortable retirement (which they will get, and their rockstar friend might not).
Edit: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The outcomes for the first cohort of developers is very unlikely to be anything like the latest cohort who you are advising - “as early as possible” doesn’t apply to 55+ year old developers?! We haven’t had 30 years of hindsight bias to know what the successful path for a current 20 year old will be.
I had a different experience, specifically it was my embedded software and hardware spare-time experience that gained me my most influential role to date (bridging iOS and embedded systems at a fast-growing start-up). It even helped me pass my technical screen as the CTO asked me to build a ring buffer. Little did he know I built one for an RS232 driver the week before.
I'm heading soon to do the same thing at another fast-growing startup.
I've actually talked about my side projects each time I've hopped jobs, and actually, when I took on advisory work. Niches are good!
This should be taken with a generic serving of salt.
The fact is, (even different parts of) organizations vary widely in their hiring practices. Some care and some don't. I've hired people almost solely on their side-project (nearly a proto-startup), and I've hired folks without them.
If you interviewed Mssrs. Bellard or Hunt (and you didn't know of them beforehand) and they talked about their side projects QEMU or haveibeenpwned.com (respectively), you should probably rate them highly, maybe even hire them on the spot.
You should aim to work for groups that value such projects.
Honestly when I interview someone and they have no side-projects, or any interest in that sort-of-thing, it's a huge warning sign they're not likely to succeed and/or stick around long.
I mean I don't expect people eat/sleep/breath code but I also don't want to hire folks that just got into CompSci/Coding cause it was a 'good/safe' career choice. In my experience the guys that are self learners, doing side projects, playing with the latest 'for fun' are the dudes that really get stuff done.
That's a false dichotomy. There are plenty of smart, capable, hardworking programmers who enjoy their jobs and aren't just taking the easy-street, but have enough else going on in their lives that they don't want to spend their free time writing code. I say this as someone who does write lots of code outside of work: it is not fair to gate people based on the number of side-projects they have. It's not even a reasonable indicator of job performance.
What kind of companies and roles are you hiring for? How do your offers compare to the top bands on levels.fyi for equivalent roles/experience? How many engineers with big names on their resumes do you get in your pipeline, and how many convert to full-time offers?
In my career so far, every time I've encountered an employer (or more specifically, a representative of an employer, e.g. a recruiter or hiring manager) who cared about side-projects and off-the-clock programming to the point where it was a dealbreaker / red flag for applicants, and not just a nice-to-have, the following things were true:
- they paid significantly below market rate (when accounting for bonuses and RSUs)
- they did not respect engineering work/life balance
One day you read that recruiters only look for people that do opensource every single minute of their free time, the next day that you better hide your side projects. Shrug.
FYI, the title is a bit misleading, the content here is moreso just about not expecting side projects to be good career development strategy, but it ends on a note saying that you should do side projects just because you feel like it:
"I don’t want to make this blog post a rant against side projects. In fact, I’m advocating the exact opposite. Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job. Don’t do all the tutorials you find about Vue.js, but use this weird technology that you saw yesterday on Hacker News. Don’t think about what are the best blog post topics that could expand your personal branding, but write poetry or a review of the last movie you saw. Create the apps, services, websites, or video games you want to use. This may not make your portfolio or your public image convincing for the next recruiter you’ll meet, but this is how you will be able to express all that you have in you and end up affirming yourself. At least, you should end having something meaningful to show, something to be proud about."
I believe they mean, you have to work either way and most people do as good a job as they can. You can either do this for a no name company or at FAANG. At FAANG, you’ll probably do the same work, maybe a little harder in crunch time, but you’ll find yourself in a far better situation five years down the line for virtually the same effort.
Side projects remind me a lot of extracurriculars in college admissions.
To the extent that they show that you have really accomplished something difficult they can be very impressive and differentiate you from other candidates. E.g. in terms of high school extracurriculars, if, say, you've reached the title of chess grandmaster that's impressive, if you went to chess club practice a couple times a week and were just decent at it that's not going to help.
As a software engineer, if you've built a site with millions of page views or written an open source library that many engineers have heard of, that definitely opens doors. (Though even then, maybe not in the way you're expecting. Any given recruiter still might not care or might not be able to remove the red tape for you just because of that. But you'll likely have certain unique opportunities become available). If you've thrown together a few sites in your free time and then moved on to other things, it's not that impressive.
My side project over the last few years was more or less the deciding factor in me getting hired at my current employer and my previous one.
Being able to demonstrate turning an idea into reality and talk about technical (and design) problems I encountered and how I solved them seemed to be much more interesting to interviewers than most of what I had done at my previous day jobs.
Most of the interviews I’ve ever gotten in my career have been a result of the side projects I’ve created. Never the job. This is just bad advice and I feel bad for anyone who feels this way.
Side projects open the creative pipeline. Your job, all too often, closes it.
Also, who cares about recruiters? This is your life—you should find a bigger pool of people to impress and delight.
I don't know where this advice comes from. If this can be advice to your young self, good luck with your young self.
Do you know how many successful startups come from side projects? To some extent, a large number of startups are from "side projects":
If a college student starts a company when they are at school, by definition, that's pretty much their side project from the beginning, because their main job is to study and get degree at school. Those are side projects. Zuckerberg stole the FB idea from his side project.
Look at how many successful people quit their jobs and then started their successful companies. You think they all really quit their jobs first and then begin to work on the startup they founded? Come on, very few of them have this clean start. Even if they are on paper looking clean, there are overlaps. Those are side projects, side ideas.
Here's my experience. Until you have the luxury to pursue any side project you want, I found that side project that scratch your itch on your main job work best. You have fun with problem solving at your own pace, and also make your work life continuously a little better(because you know where your itch at, and since no one cares, so you do it yourself)
At the end of the day, you ship something useful and practical and learn something new along the way. Ain't that count?
Unless your side project = side business, now that'll be another beast.
Even something you do out of love that doesn't involve money making, you still have to think about it, find time to do it and when you can't(mostly because your main job took all your time) you will feel guilty and depressed. And the cycle continue.... seriously, I think it's worse than having no side project.
"If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery—isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is." charles bukowski expressed it better.
I've always had a side project (I enjoy it) but I understand the author's sentiment.
When it comes to financial matters, working on a side project doesn't make any sense.
Unless you're connected to big VC money or have a good business network, your side project has 0% chance of success no matter what you do. No matter how much better than the competition it is.
On the other hand, corporations or hotshot startups are connected to big VC money so they have a very good chance of success and most of the founders of these companies don't fully realize how lucky they are and so it's easy to get a sweet deal from them... You can get a lot more money for a fraction of the work. You don't need to add any value, just support the status quo (which requires almost no effort).
This sounds like great advice if you want to be a follower and never accomplish anything innovative personally but just contribute as an employee until you retire.
Which is fine if that's what you're looking for, but not so great if you consider yourself an entrepreneur.
I think I agree with this post, I personally almost never discuss side projects with a recruiter, but I've gotten jobs based on having code I could actually (to say, legally) show in interviews that I made in my free time. I can abstractly talk about what I've done professionally, but, having solid code I did in isolation, especially early in my career was invaluable. And to that end, "culture fit" probably worked more in my favor than my code, it's royally messed up, but being young-ish and a cis american white man totally gave me an unfair advantage. And those side projects probably spoke more to me as a culture fit than a technical one in retrospect.
1. You don't much or any professional experience with software development.
2. You are experienced, but are trying to break into another field - and haven't done any relevant work in your current position (for example - front-end developer pivoting to systems development, or whatever)
I've encountered a lot of recruiters lately, that were more than interested in checking out personal projects. Hell, I've also seen some data science and ML positions where they explicitly asked for cool/interesting side-projects, where you'd use the tech to solve some problem.
Is the goal to have a boat load of money? If so, then optimizing your day job preferably at FAANGMULA, is the way to go.
But side projects have tons of other benefits outside of making money:
* It satisfies your curious mind.
* It is a learning tool to discover new technologies. Consider this as investment for your future career. Imagine learning Kubernetes or ReactJS when it just came out.
* It is a learning tool to understand old technologies (because you simply don't have the time to do so on day job).
* It's a teaching tool if you have kids that's interested in computer.
* It solves some practical annoyance at home (for example: Homebridge).
Personally, my goal is to amass a boatload of money so that I can spend the rest of my days doing nothing but side projects without any care as to whether or not they make me any money.
More of a dream, really. I doubt it will happen anytime soon. I think I can swing it by 401k/IRA withdrawal age, though.
Every change in my career began as a side project or idle curiosity, from design to development, to product to UX, to whatever's next.
Basically, what I'm doing now, when I should be doing what I'm paid to be doing is what I'll be paid to do in a few years' time.
Experimentation and side projects are vital to stretch creativity and learn new things. Not all of my side projects have been successful, but they've all played a vital role in my career development, more by happy accident than design. It's all about following interests to see where they lead.
It is interesting reading the comments. It's funny too because I would say most of the time people advocate others to create side projects because you never know if it will become the next big thing. Obviously there are some amazing success stories here related to side projects, but I wonder if that's just luck. Is the actual success rate of a side project going viral just as unlikely, for example, as a young basketball player getting a contract and going pro? (which is a scenario most people actively discourage pursuing)
There was much I disagreed with in this post, but I had a hard time even addressing a single point, as I felt that it was a bit all over the place. I decided to first try to condense it a bit. In the end I realized that I understood the author a bit better. I still don't agree, but I get where he's coming from. Here's my paraphrased summary.
So the author originally found much satisfaction in his exploratory, entrepreneurial, and hacking activities, as it offered a counter-balance to the corporate culture that he perceived as shallow and alien. It didn't matter that his ventures ended up as failures, he found something worthy out of the process.
Sometime later he had a change of heart and decided to pursue a "career". He was then confronted by a clash of culture when he realized that all his tinkering didn't matter to HR.
Now, he's a manager and he understand HR's perspective on reality. He gives you a glimpse. His time spent working on projects was a waste at best and a liability at worst. Companies don't need innovators or free thinkers, they're afraid of them. What they need are good soldiers unburden with ideas of freedom. Exploring new shiny stuff does not make you appealing to HR, your capacity to endure the grind does.
The author offers some philosophical digression where he posits that side projects, much like the theoretical stuff that you learn in school, serve to expand your mind, but don't let them delude you into thinking that you can make that enriched vision serve you in the real world (of employment I suppose).
True valuable experience comes from getting a first job and to do that you should brush up on your DS & algo theory and do coding exercises. Don't expects all your shallow side projects to come to your rescue at your next technical interview.
The author concludes that if you want to make things easier for yourself, you should get a job. It will free you to be yourself, to go fishing, to have a life. If you still want to work on some side projects, you'll do so because they truly matter to you, not because you think they will be strategically helpful in your career. It will suck becoming dependent on a company, but it's the price to pay to be safe from the relentless competition in the job market.
Since it's an 'Advice to my young self'. I would say either forget side projects (to be boring as hell), or invest more in side projects (take some risks).
I have been haunted by sloppy side projects for many years because day job makes me both mentally physically exhausted. Until recently I realized if I quit my job and my life wouldn't fall apart that much, and I can spend more time on the projects I'm interested in without worrying about the return rate.
I wholeheartedly disagree with this entire statement.
If you want to grow as a programmer (in my case), then side projects are going to get you the skills to advance your career and get you a better job over "buddying up" with recruiters. Sure, you can be a 9-5 kinda person and then "switch off" when you get home, but you will be the one stuck wondering where it all went wrong and write a blog article complaining about it.
#1: No one will ever look at your side project. However, it can still be of use to your job hunt if you can talk about it. In fact, it's possible to get away with a empty project provided you can talk about what would have been in there in great detail (as if you'd actually done it).
#2: If you can't talk about your project in great detail, then it has as much worth as if you'd never actually completed the project.
Well if your side project became a $1b company, you would have a very different story. A better advice: focus with no apologies on what really interest you.
> I’ve always been involved in my work, being proactive in bringing new technologies
This one I learned with the years, that it is so much work to introduce new technology to a team, sometimes not the most productive endeavor. Involves some perfect timing, support from key stakeholders and a team open to the idea...
Unless the current stack is absolutely insufferable, it could be better to try and find what's interesting about it and become proficient with it.
First: Don't do side-projects.
Then later: Do as many side-projects you possibly can, but don't think your projects will impress recruiters.
Most of the most successful companies started out as someone's side-project. So, I don't see the point of that article that is basically saying be passionate about your job, not your own ideas. And he's saying that to his younger self. Wow.
Eh. I'd tell my younger self the exact opposite. My side project is what eventually led me to a 2x increase in income. In fact, it was only after I started to spend time on a open source project that I started getting recruiters to initiate contact with me.
Heck, my entire career was born out of immersing myself in an area of interest in my free time, outside of my original field of study.
TLDR; Recruiters don't care about side projects. Side projects are often shallow and its better to use new tech in real job instead of side projects.
I feel most of us would disagree with that. All new jobs in my career were result of learning something new on side projects. Recruiters show that as passion for learning. Many jobs don't allow for much exploration and you don't have leverage to call shots. It's usually uphill battle to even introduce any significant changes in large stable products. Also, side projects shouldn't be just for goal of finding new jobs and making recruiters happy anyway. It should be for passion for creating things, realizing ideas.
> Many jobs don't allow for much exploration and you don't have leverage to call shots. It's usually uphil battle to even introduce any significant change. Also side projects shouldn't be just for goal of finding new jobs anyway. It should be for passion for creating things, realizing ideas.
You're right, but your point also indicates why business value side projects less than career projects. The skills and experience to complete the project don't overlap much between the two types of projects. The success criteria is usually quite different as well.
I don’t think the article ever suggests that you shouldn’t work on side projects if it’s something you enjoy as a creative outlet. It’s saying that you shouldn’t work on side projects as a way to advance your career.
> its better to use new tech in real job instead of side projects.
Lol this is why so many tech stacks at work go to shit. Someone wanting to add another bullet point to the resume and instead of doing it at home, they force a new tool/language at work (when possible).
and also using new tech in a work project is often a terrible idea unless you or someone else on the team has intimate experience with it. it's either going to be betamax or legacy spaghetti 9/10 times.
Your side projects will never go to waste - you'll get to keep that learning and experience at the very least.
The only thing that needs attention paid to is have a flow of income while you're still working on your side project. It becomes mainstream as your only job when it starts bringing back decent money or VC support.
My personal experience has been quite the opposite. My side projects (and my blog) have been instrumental in me getting two key jobs that really boosted my career quite a bit.
I'm not saying "you should definitely do side projects". I'm just disagreeing they aren't always useless. Like pretty much anything in life, your mileage will vary.
I made this same decision a few years ago and can attest that this is true.
The side projects I was working on were pretty small potatoes, so that needs to be pointed out. But overall a higher focus on my job has led to two promotions and a ton more money.
Maybe I could have struck it rich with a startup, but the golden handcuffs feel so nice right now that I may never find out.
What a weird perspective. While I agree that side projects ultimately matter less than your previous working experience, I am highly sceptical that they don’t teach you anything.
Anecdotally my side projects are of a consistently higher standard than the projects I work on at the company.
I also get way more chance to experiment with new things than I get at my job.
FTA: "I don’t want to make this blog post a rant against side projects. In fact, I’m advocating the exact opposite. Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job."
Clickbait title that even author doesn't agree with.
I split time between a successful side project and early Twitter, both at around 30 hours a week, with spikes up to 50hrs.
While they both netted positive outcomes for me, if I had gone all-in on either one, I think I would have had an order-of-magnitude better outcome. Splitting my attention cost me serious advancement & money at both.
I think side projects have become a casualty of Goodhart's law, they stopped being a very good metric for hiring as people started gaming the recruitment system and building side projects that were really showpieces. But a genuine curiosity for technology outside work is still a very valuable attribute I think.
Technical expertise and experience doesn't really tell the whole story. CV bling is mostly irrelevant to know if someone will perform well on a job. You can have the best engineer in the world coming from a top tech company and be a total asshole that will only cause problems and make the team underperform.
I switched from web to mobile through learning Swift and Kotlin in my spare time and building and releasing side projects. I'm not sure how else I would have done it, if I'd been at a larger company maybe I could have transferred but I'd likely still have to show some examples of work.
Its super important to focus on your career based on your interests, rather than recruiters priorities.
The author has some point in there, however, focussing on side projects does help you expand and broaden your experiences. Its supremely helpful when switching between slightly different industries.
If you have made it to the stage of talking to a recruiter, haven't you already passed that hurdle? My experience is the recruiter talks to you to tell you more about the company, the job, and to explain the hiring process, not to evaluate you.
There's also another strategy: focus on the company you work for until you begin managing people, projects and may be never write a line of code again. And that would probably be good if that made you happy.
I feel working on side projects actually helps boost my career. Having a diversified portfolio betters myself in other areas I didn't get an opportunity to do at work and employees love the creativity factor.
I understand what the article is getting at, but to me side projects are not a means to an end, they are the entire point. They are the thing I would work on full time if I didn't need a day job to survive.
heh, this seems common with devs who get to around the 10 year mark, they try and distil wisdom from their experience, but all too often it is quite rigid advice...I did it too, I would have plenty of advice for my "younger" self when I hit the 10 year mark. I'm at 40 years coding now, and I'd be hard pressed to make any definitive advice or claims about anything. Maybe my advice now would be don't buy into any strong claims about anything, instead, try and understand what underlying forces are shaping advice / claims
Best response so far imo. There are so many opinions and advice about how to get ahead in this field that it is literally debilitating. Should I work on side projects? Should I grind leetcode? Shoukd I study algs? Should I build mobile apps...the list goes on and on. Seems like the only thig to do is chase down what's most interesting and hope the time spent will benefit the career as well? Would your 40 years agree with that?
My main job used to be a side project while my main job was working at some company. And I still have side projects because they keep my interest in programming alive even if they turn into total failures.
I think the question to ask here is, why your side project is not actually within the company! You can try to move it there or find another one that would "fit" better.
This is a really stunning representation of how someone started out with the right idea, shifted to the wrong idea due to outside pressures, and then wrote a blog post about it.
that's interesting to me, cause the complete opposite worked out for me well. I treated 9-5 work as a necessity to put food on the table and pay for rent(I always tried to find a comfy job where I can put in a few hours/day max and survive), and my side projects as the possible real money makers. And it worked out very well for me - have been able to achieve my main goals in less than 10 years since graduating.
I see most of comments in disagreement with the topic, either partially or totally. And yet, the post has so many upvotes. What does this mean exactly?
This means that whoever is upvoting the item, isn't doing so because they disagree/agree with it. but instead for item visibility, because of which it will attract more discussion.
this is what i always use the upvote button for.
advice to your older self - your job is now relatively secure, try to do side projects.
or another advice - you need to diversify your skills, choose the skills you believe will be in demand in the future to learn, also try to choose ones that it will be ok you are older.
Anecdotally my experience is completely orthogonal to the author’s.
My side-projects gave me the career I have today. They have gotten me jobs without interviews. Because of my side-projects, every job I have had in the past two decades has been without a formal interview or usual take home/coding/white boarding/hazing ritual. I have used a resume precisely twice in the past 15+ years, and one of those two times was because of the company we built and turned profitable was being acquihired.
Some of my side-projects have turned into products that generated real world value. Side projects let me explore new technologies that I don’t get to deal with at work.
I would say, because of my side-projects, that I have frequently drowned in opportunity in terms of offered work. I have gotten offered a “when can you start” job, without interview, in an unsolicited approach, on more than one occasion simply because someone was using one of my side-projects in their day-to-day work.
I recently did a few “test the waters” interviews with a couple of companies (FANGMAN being two of them), just to get some practice in, to see if I “still got it.” Only the FANGMAN companies required a resume before they would even talk to me. Apparently, I’ve still got it, but I realized those kinds of positions weren’t for me.
Having spoken to several people about “focusing on your job” many realise that they have a great job, but what they don’t have is a great and diversified career. They get pigeonholed in to a single role, whether that is marketing, or project management or even software development. When that career dries up, Flash programmer anyone? COBOL programmer? Then they have to reskill and hope someone gives them another chance. “I am an $X” where $X is how they identify themselves. I’ve always struggled to answer that question of “what is it you do?” Perhaps that is a failing on my part.
The majority of software development is code that is not customer facing, that is never seen outside of the business unit for which it was developed. For each and every job you will have through your career you will be told to take a number, stand in line, wait your turn, do as your told, learn to compromise and if we like you enough and you check all the boxes, we’ll let you know at our convenience. In the words of Casey Neistat, “this… is terrible advice.”
My last job was without anything more than a 20 minute chat and “here’s what I’ve been building these past few months as a side-project.” My job before that was “we really liked what you did on Project $X for Company $Y, do you have any experience in Technology $Z?” (Yes, here’s a side-project you can look at that uses Technology $Z). Every single job, for 20+ years, “here’s something I did on a side-project that’s really neat and interesting, do you want me to do that neat and interesting thing for your company?”
I have studiously avoided any and every company that has tried to pigeon hole me, or get me to jump through the hoops of their hiring process, so far it has worked out pretty well for me. I don’t think I have ever worked a single day in my entire life.
Not everybody can do this, not everybody wants to do this, but it has worked out pretty well for me.
If I had to give advice to my younger self, if my younger self would actually listen to the advice, I would say “Do more of the picking one project in any given year, and hyper focus on that for 12 months, rather than only doing things for a few months. If you need to figure out which project that is, do three or four for a couple of weeks, then abandon the ones that don’t have enough interesting problems.” I do focus on single projects for extended periods of time, and it is those projects that have built my career.
It’s interesting how the author equates independence with leftist ideology. That seems more libertarian to me, leftist support of government expansion is more authoritarian. Ideally a career is a launch pad to a business, or else what are we all doing here?
> I’ve always been involved in my work, being proactive in bringing new technologies, mentoring the other developers, helping the team to grow, but I was doing this just because I liked my job. I was not considering this as something important in my career, simply because I didn’t want too. To develop my career, I was spending a lot of time outside work reading technical books, doing toy projects, going to meetups, browsing Hacker News.
This is a very good & important assessment, realization, & I appreciate the author's reassessment.
> Secondly, I don’t think that multiplying the side projects is useful unless they are substantial.
A phrase that recuringly comes to mind when hearing of a lot of side projects is, "Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men."
I very much want to see a world where computing is a good & sensible place, for scratching your own itch. But at the moment, just getting started on a modest web project is pretty hard. Even if you don't need user accounts, it's still a lot of grunt-work, gulp-work, webpack-work, and or babel-work. Oh you want users with their data? Now multiply the number of hours by 20x. Folk like hood.ie & UserGrid have attempted to lower the effort-to-start, Firebase & others are certainly selling themselves on trying to accelerate the mid-level lift here, the 200's & 300's level courses of "getting your app going". But it's hard. We're not great.
So at the moment, scratch your own itch is hard to do well in a time effective manner. My take-aways are two fold: 1. on a macro scale, we should work harder to build a better systematic base to work from, and 2. a lot of side projects are over-invested in. As a chronic maker-of-side-projects, knowing how to put something down & walk away is a crucial skill. Unlike the author, I do think there's a quite considerable value in having some shallow experience, including with things you are not likely to use (understanding the meta-patterns of computing, seeing similarities across systems is where mature understanding starts).
> I don’t want to make this blog post a rant against side projects. In fact, I’m advocating the exact opposite. Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job. Don’t do all the tutorials you find about Vue.js, but use this weird technology that you saw yesterday on Hacker News.
An imo unfortunate & accurate statement of a dwindling spirit of the technical community! We have heavily industrialized[1] these days, & our hunger to explore outer bounds & interesting potential is much diminished. As a result, those of us who are pioneering by nature are less in demand, more settlers and town planners are needed[2]. For now, we are "technically mature", we believe we have "good solutions" to the problems that are common & identified. For this to shift, we need more cause for adventure, more sense that computing has bigger open possibilities than what we've settled down around. I for one continue to believe the future is still exciting.
That's about the right advice for folks who are still climbing the ladder. As an IC, if you're talented and lucky, you'll eventually stall at the "senior coder" at FANG level. That comes with a respectable salary of 500k/year and a hard glass ceiling. At that point doing even more IC work won't bring you any further. Most settle there, buy a house, start a family and continue doing their "senior coder" work till retirement. Nothing wrong with that.
There are two primary paths from that level: middle management and senior management. If you like the first, learn to speak well, work on your image and build the reputation of a responsible and reliable person who takes the rules seriously. You'll get promoted and eventually you'll stall at the "director" level.
The senior management path is about financial and personal risk. This is where you'll need to build a successful side gig, turn it into a multi million dollar business and negotiate a senior manager position, with very nice compensation, with competitors who will try to take you down in the process. A lot more fun, more risk and a lot more reward.
I think side projects are for fun and potentially for impressing technical reviewers in stage 3. Soft skills are for impressing recruiters.
During the recruiter phase, they're not going to understand the projects anyway. The only value they have at this point is they boost your confidence and let you move on to next questions. Just list them briefly if asked what you've been doing recently. Most recruiters can't recognize a good programmer, so they approximate it by judging your confidence.
The weapon of choice against recruiters is being prepared for the questions they ask. You pull out a lot of paper, write the questions down, and write answers. Ron Fry's 101 questions book describes them in detail. What the recruiter wants to hear, what she doesn't want to hear. All recruiters have the same set of questions, and although it changes every couple of years it's a solved problem. Yes, I know telling a recruiter what she wants to hear is manipulative :-(.
I work on side projects on hope that I can one day make enough money from one of it and have financial freedom to do anything I want anytime. Hopefully soon and not when I am 60.
If I die tomorrow and all I did was focus on my career that would be so sad.
Was it always like that? Did people only write free software to eventually get hired by someone for their great side project?
I never wrote any code to impress someone. I always wrote code to learn things, for my own benefit. And yes, usually there was a lot of synergy, but with high latency. Much of the knowledge I use at work comes from so-called "side projects" I used to do months or even years earlier.
I also find the headline rather sad. As if everything you do in your spare time has to be geared towards maximum efficiency in the day job. That is a pretty sad path to go down.
I've found that an effective way to bypass recruiters and advocate for employment with your personal projects is to a) aim at small companies and b) cold-email with a cover letter. YMMV.
Some comments were deferred for faster rendering.
dvt|5 years ago
Why are you trying to impress recruiters? I mean, the entire point of the post is wrong, but impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders.
If you aren't trying to do your own thing (which, let's face it, is the most exciting prospect), at least try to impress CEOs or product managers, or -- my goodness -- at least hiring managers. I heard a fun anecdote of Evan Spiegel attending an LA hackathon maybe 6 or 7 years ago. Some nerdy engineer showed him that he figured out how to get around Snapchat's spam filter. Spiegel offered him a job on the spot. Could a recruiter ever do that? Hell to the no.
sillysaurusx|5 years ago
My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged.
I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment.
Out here dropping stories about Evan Spiegel; gimme a break. Most people don't know any CEOs, PMs, or hiring managers.
The funny part is, I agree with your premise. You are indeed presenting the best way of opening doors. It's worked for me, and has opened many doors.
But only when I was in a better position. Till then, it was one of the worst things I could have done. Focusing on playing the hiring game would have put me in a much stronger position.
The comment you made is slightly out of touch. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think you'll maybe look back on it in 10 years or so with a wince.
In the situation I described above, where you absolutely need that job, all the people you mention have a good chance of forgetting about you due to day-to-day politics. Guess who won't? That recruiter. Because they get a cut of your salary.
actuator|5 years ago
No matter how we feel, the process still goes through recruiters.
In a company I used to work for, we built a way where we removed the company and uni name to remove biases from recruiters. Most recruiters flat out refused to use it and trust us because they considered that a very important signal. The decision is not upto just developers.
> I heard a fun anecdote of Evan Spiegel attending an LA hackathon maybe 6 or 7 years ago. Some nerdy engineer showed him that he figured out how to get around Snapchat's spam filter. Spiegel offered him a job on the spot.
I am sure we will all have our anecdotal examples like this and I am not against side projects. I agree with the post author that side projects are great, but don't expect them to count towards your next job. If they do, then great.
gonehome|5 years ago
There's a pretty simple flow chart for getting hired at a bay area company:
1. Go to MIT, Stanford, Cal, an Ivy, or CalTech and make sure you have linked in.
2. If 1 isn't possible then make a friend who works where you want to work and get a referral.
3. Cram leetcode
That's basically it.
Don't give up doing side projects and things you actually enjoy because that's how you learn.
I think you're also overly harsh on recruiters (they're not 'bottom-feeders'), they're friendly and can help you out - but they're just looking in a very narrow subset. Basically the graduates from those schools and people already employed at FAANGs.
vbezhenar|5 years ago
WikipediasBad|5 years ago
sdenton4|5 years ago
untog|5 years ago
DataSciGuy_401|5 years ago
jsmith12673|5 years ago
Recruiters are just people just doing their jobs. It's a shame that you've labelled a diverse group of people so heavy-handedly.
chrisseaton|5 years ago
I don't know whether this is a flippant answer... but to get a job so they can eat.
user5994461|5 years ago
Assuming he's in France, by "recruiter" he means company recruiters / HR. Your CV and first phone interview always go to a recruiter at the company, that's the first person you have to talk to (and impress) to have a shot at any job.
American might understand recruiter as an external agency, there's no such thing in tech in France. There's no CEO/CTO either, they are sitting idle out of sight collecting money never interacting with the company or any employee.
kingnothing|5 years ago
KKKKkkkk1|5 years ago
rco8786|5 years ago
This reads like an overly pumped up alpha macho business guru telling his disciples how to "crush it".
jonathankoren|5 years ago
I’m not going to go through and read a bunch of random code by myself, when I can just ask a couple of questions, and get the same information quicker. They are just too many resumes to read.
Seriously, all side projects tell me is that you spend your free time coding, instead of hiking, or some other hobby.
werber|5 years ago
manigandham|5 years ago
Also the higher your position the less side projects matter because it's your main job responsibilities and performance that's in focus, not what you do on your own time.
kyawzazaw|5 years ago
But for a lot of people, recruiters reaching out or applying through a portal is the start of many new positions.
ponker|5 years ago
caffeine|5 years ago
humbleMouse|5 years ago
eli_gottlieb|5 years ago
Yeah, they are. They're also how most people find jobs before we reach the career stage of being able to call a friend who knows a guy who works at a place.
helaoban|5 years ago
spiffytech|5 years ago
Yeah, I program at work, but the tasks I get at a software job don't scratch the itch that got me into tech in the first place. Just like how most workers in "creative" fields don't get paid to do the interesting things that first attracted them. They're stuck using their arts degrees to write marketing copy instead of their dream novel, or they became a civil engineer to design inspiring architecture but their day job is trying to update someone else's vision to include the safety features the designer didn't leave room for.
I get that lots of people get their fill of technology at their job and don't want to see a screen when they get home. Live the life that makes you happy. I'm just boggled at how many people appear to find it unimaginable and unrelatable that a technologist likes technology enough to mess with it for fun, even after work.
ck425|5 years ago
It's not that I can't understand it. I don't have that urge personally but I can see where it comes from and if that makes you happy go for it! The reason I personally get so defensive and anti side project is because as someone who's very defensive of their non-work time (due to spending it on other productive hobbies that bring more joy into my life than anything else) I've experienced a lot of colleagues/managers who have tried pressure or belittle me into doing side projects. It's been implied that I'm not a 'real' engineer or that I can't be successful in my career if I don't. And frankly I resent that attitude because it's bullshit and it tries to take away time from the things that make my life truly joyful.
As you say do what makes you happy, side projects or not. Unfortunately a lot of folk on the side projects side don't/won't accept them as optional if you want to be seen as a competent engineer.
TeMPOraL|5 years ago
If that results in skills useful at work, or for finding work, that's a nice but entirely secondary benefit. The more important benefit is burnout prevention - because I too "don't get paid to do the interesting things that first attracted" me to software, or science and technology in general.
> I'm just boggled at how many people appear to find it unimaginable and unrelatable that a technologist likes technology enough to mess with it for fun, even after work.
Me too. I sometimes wonder if I'm not missing out, but try as I might, I don't enjoy the "normal" stuff as much as I enjoy intellectual stimulation. I also sometimes wonder if this isn't because my eyes just don't get tired from screens. I can look at computer screens 16 hours straight, and my eyes don't get dry or itchy. I had co-workers who had to use saline drops at work, and I can understand if they didn't want to look at any screen when they got home.
Reedx|5 years ago
sixdimensional|5 years ago
I realize that's also a personal problem - poor time/resource allocation - not allocating a proper amount of time/energy to work vs. personal projects.
However, I can say, doing a full time, involved job and giving it all my attention tends to use up all the cycles. Is that true for other people too?
dorkwood|5 years ago
gosukiwi|5 years ago
> I'm just boggled at how many people appear to find it unimaginable and unrelatable that a technologist likes technology enough to mess with it for fun, even after work.
I do get their point though, they feel bad because they are not one of those. But that's just the way things are. There aren't many people who got into tech because they REALLY like it. Not because it's a "good" job or because it's the lesser evil.
And by that I don't mean the people who only code at work or learned about tech later in life are bad developers, not at all. Nevertheless, they are the vast majority and they are quite different than the passionate young kid who codes for shits and giggles. It doesn't help than they are socially pressured to be like that. They end up hating it. Like when you have a brother/sister that is better than you at something and your parents always say "WHY CANT YOU BE LIKE YOUR BROTHER/SISTER".
seph-reed|5 years ago
I think that was kind of the beginning of the end for the golden era.
secondcoming|5 years ago
There's a point where it's not healthy. It'll catch up with you and there's a danger you'll find yourself not having the enthusiasm to do your hobby projects and also your real job.
eric_cc|5 years ago
halfmatthalfcat|5 years ago
How else are you suppose to learn different parts of the stack when you're (usually) only hired to work in one part? How are you suppose to learn DevOps/CloudOps unless you're on an Ops team?
Many (most?) companies don't delegate full stack responsibilities to individual teams.
taylodl|5 years ago
A learning project is a project you're doing with the express intent of learning a new technology. The focus is on the learning, not the delivered functionality.
A side project is a project you're doing for the community. It's a labor of love. The focus is on functionality and meeting the needs of your users, not learning technology. You may even be able to grow it into an actual business.
From a career perspective you want to focus on learning projects. As you've mentioned learning projects are very important for your continued learning. Side projects on the other hand have the risk of distracting you from your work and my advice would be to avoid them unless you're scratching your own itch or maybe even want to explore starting a side business.
Bottom line - be clear with yourself on what you're doing and why you're doing it.
cableshaft|5 years ago
One job I got because my side project was a finalist in a contest and was shown off at a convention my employer attended, and they called me as a result and brought me in for an interview.
Another job interview, I kind of stumbled on their programming test, but I was able to show something I made on the side, and that convinced them I knew enough to give me a week and bring me back in, and I refreshed my knowledge during that week, and I aced the test the second time and got the job.
My current job is at least in part thanks to those side projects I worked on in the past. And my side projects I'm working on now are giving me skills that I am not gaining at my current job, and will hopefully help align me with my next shift in my career (and if not, at least I'll make a few bucks and some people will enjoy the product).
bradstewart|5 years ago
If you're doing a huge career change, side projects may be your only way. But most companies (in my experience at least) recognize the value in having their application developers understand some Ops work, and vise versa.
Many (most?) companies won't entirely "firewall" you from other groups. Even if you're throwing an application over the wall to ops, there's usually opportunities to learn from them, help out on specific tasks, etc.
That said, learning at work is probably _better_, but I do think side projects with a specific goal (e.g. to learn a technology) are a valuable supplement.
lsiunsuex|5 years ago
s1dewaysjects|5 years ago
If I had joined a good company and focused on that, I would still be comfortably building web services for them like I learned to in school, and I would probably continue doing that indefinitely.
That's fine, it's a nice salary, but it was also boring and soul-crushing. When I started to see the damage wrought by mass-scale social media, my side projects made it easy for me to transition into a much more interesting but specialized field that I saw more of a future in, and that has worked out great.
The author's main complaints seem to involve recruiters and the poor value proposition of shallow projects. But if you have deep projects and poke your nose around the industries that you're interested in, you won't have to deal with recruiters, and you'll often be able to avoid the technical side of interviews entirely. Talent is very scarce.
Although, I write this from a USA perspective and I notice this is a .fr domain; the labor markets and hiring practices might be very different.
ObsoleteNerd|5 years ago
Then after getting sick of front-end/design I started coding back-end side projects and taught myself enough to ultimately get hired doing CMS development. Then same again to get into Sysadmin, after running game/file servers as side projects. Etc etc...
Five distinct career changes/upgrades over ~20 years inside IT, all thanks to building stuff I wanted to build for fun and that impressing the right people to get me hired. The only IT job I've ever gotten through working my way up in a company was the last one, into Project Management, and that was only due to the breadth of skills I taught myself throughout the years... on all those side projects.
If I didn't do side projects, and didn't always strive for more, I'd still be running/packing cables for concerts and working 20 hour shifts for barely enough money to survive.
TeMPOraL|5 years ago
waprin|5 years ago
If your goal is career advancement, then it is fair to acknowledge that some projects won't be useful for that. But there's plenty of other reasons that people work on side projects besides just career advancement. "Just for fun" might be the most famous reason, that is I believe how the Linux kernel started.
While maybe big companies won't value side projects directly too heavily, there's still a good chance that if you learn new things and try to build interesting stuff, that it might open new doors in all sorts of unexpected ways. But there's no guarantee.
I also think that full time coding jobs can be a lot of work, and people shouldn't feel too pressured if they don't want to have side projects, because they have other things like a busy family life or non-technical hobbies. But for many people, programming can still be fun and interesting, especially outside of the usual corporate routine, and that's all the motivation they need to pick up a side project. That to me is really what a "hacker" is, not a leetcode grinder climbing the ranks at FAANG.
01100011|5 years ago
Systems programmers have different experiences than web developers who have different experiences from ML researchers. Things that benefit junior Ruby devs may make no sense for a middle aged, embedded dev working for the defense industry.
There are people who benefit greatly from side projects, and others who should never bring them up in an interview. I don't think anyone should be significantly swayed by the arguments I've seen here so far. Know your situation and react accordingly. Don't lose sight of the complex world of software and how many times the experiences of others only apply loosely, if at all, to your situation.
raindropm|5 years ago
I mean, I believe many people don't have side project and still have perfectly happy life.
arminiusreturns|5 years ago
snak|5 years ago
megalomanu|5 years ago
Just to clarify: I founded a company a few years ago from a side project I had started three years before, and this year I released two projects, so I can say that I love side projects. I simply regret this tendency to start so many shallow side projects (which are little more than tutorials) just to build a portfolio instead of focusing on creating something really substantial, or something that at least you really like. It's a waste and an illusion to think that it could help to be hired. I know too many developers stuck into this pipe dream.
polishdude20|5 years ago
echelon|5 years ago
I'm constantly commended on my side projects, and I excel at them because I enjoy them:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x034jVB1avs
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XTi-jf-ans
- https://vo.codes
- https://trumped.com
The laser stuff made me wealthy, and that wasn't even my intention. People at the time told me it was a huge distraction from my academic career and a waste of time.
My current side project is a real time voice converter (like Mission Impossible).
Follow your passion. You'll deliver better results and open lots of doors.
Your side projects will also usually be pretty novel. It's fertile ground for startup material.
Nevaeh|5 years ago
P/S: Small typo on the first sentence on the about page.
heleninboodler|5 years ago
swaggyBoatswain|5 years ago
awesome project though! How did you build the voice encoder for each character?
binarymax|5 years ago
paffduddy|5 years ago
I work at an A-round startup. Tons of people in FP&A, sales, accounting, and HR get promoted every six months. Engineers rarely get promoted. No refreshers. No raises.
Guess what? Engineers are now clocking out at 4pm, they are working on side projects, and it is the most rational thing to do.
On the flip side, I've worked at places where engineers are rewarded regularly for outstanding work. It makes sense to focus on your job.
On size advice does not fit all.
JoeAltmaier|5 years ago
vbezhenar|5 years ago
maverickJ|5 years ago
actuator|5 years ago
He is so much right here. Recruiters don't have the time to go through and understand your side projects, for that matter even engineers don't. Most interviews are 45-60 mins, you need to scope your interview such that the process remains same for all candidates. If someone is just beginning out then side projects matter a lot but for hiring experienced people, most won't care about side projects unless they got significant traction.
Also, it is incredibly hard to judge side projects. Sure, I can go through your Github repo if it is open source, open 2-3 files to see code structure, see the automation suite you have setup but unless the project was complex there is not much to talk about. For experienced folks, there are other metrics you need to gauge them on which are absent in hobby projects.
rconti|5 years ago
It doesn't mean one path is right or wrong for a job (I know many people who switch back and forth between bigcorp and startups), but if you only see BigCorp experience as status seeking/soul sucking experience, you're missing a huge part of the picture.
halfmatthalfcat|5 years ago
nbardy|5 years ago
If you’re young and believe in yourself more than society’s ridged idea of credentialism has don’t be afraid to buck the trend. I failed out of a mid tier college. And while my 20s has my been a stressful hodgepodge of jobs I was under qualifying for. A public track record of my ability to create something with emerging technologies has always meant someone is willing and excited to work with me.
jyu|5 years ago
If you want FIRE, the best way is to optimize your career. How do you do that? It starts early before your first job, as you try out different school subjects, books, friends, hobbies. As you look out to the future, what do you see on the horizon?
Thinking about the time I entered school, programmers were near the bottom of the totem pole. Mathematicians were trapped in academic ivory towers. Data was barely used as the alpha bros of finance dominated the talks of high compensation. The most sought after jobs did not even exist then. Youtuber, data science, deep learning, cloud computing, analytics, ecommerce, cryptocurrency, even professional video gamer were not real careers.
Increasing revenues solve all problems. Jump on the waves of industries that are booming and will continue to boom.
The world and culture is constantly changing as we march towards the future. Put yourself in a position to succeed by learning the fundamentals needed to pass interviews and recognize when something seems obvious to you but not to everyone else yet.
jackdh|5 years ago
There is some interesting stories of how people achieved it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/top/?sort=top&t=year
maverickJ|5 years ago
In this dynamic world, one need to constantly assess their career.
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
maverickJ|5 years ago
In my opinion, it depends on what your career goal is and what you want out of life.
If you are in a position where you use a technology you don't like or work on projects you don't enjoy, a side project on the weekends can be a way of addressing the gap. Not everyone has the chance of joining a great company.
It also depends on what country or continent you reside in. It appears that in American culture, side projects are actively encouraged; A couple of silicon valley companies have come out of side projects.
A different argument can also be made that doing multiple side projects would not make you a better programmer. Our culture tends to focus on quantitative factors for improving skills rather than qualitative factors. What if rather than doing side projects, one changes ones attitude in their current job? An excellent article on qualitative factors on excellence can be found in https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/what-is-excellence
vkammerer|5 years ago
As a French having worked in Germany, Canada and New Zealand, I can say that the recruitment process is very different in other countries, where side projects and open source contributions are really valued.
In my opinion, his article should mention the geographical setting of his experience, and his advice should only apply to people living in France (and writing the article in French may have been more appropriate too)
save_ferris|5 years ago
My experience has been different than the author. I suffer from pretty bad anxiety, which doesn't exactly come in handy during interviews and coding challenges. Side projects have been a good way to talk deeply and technically during interviews about concrete problems that I've worked on because I can't show a potential employer code I wrote for someone else's company.
That said, I think there's limited value in showing an employer the product of some tutorial, but side projects that came from my brain alone never hurt in an interview context, and almost always helped.
artembugara|5 years ago
It is going quite well (I am nowhere near making the same money). Just 2 of us at the moment. I've learnt so much over this period. Like what you would get over 10 years in a big tech company while jumping over all the hierarchy.
Moreover, my very first side project turned me from a guy who knows only Python into a guy who can set up entire architecture on the cloud. Later, I became somewhat a "rockstar"/jack-of-all-trades engineer.
But I agree, unless you do your side-project just to do something then it is your hobby.
My advice would be: someone has to pay for your side project's product/service. Because only then you can show that it generates real business value. This is the only thing which should matter to your future employer. You generate business value.
[1] https://newscatcherapi.com/
jamil7|5 years ago
person_of_color|5 years ago
That's what I'm missing ATM.
bluedino|5 years ago
However, if it weren't for side projects, I would never have learned Linux, virtualization, handfuls of programming languages, or so many other things I ended up bringing into my 8-5 job.
jonathankoren|5 years ago
diskzero|5 years ago
Sure, if you do a good job with your employer, you will build reputation. But so do side projects, speaking at developer conferences and going to meetups. Build your network!
yelloweyes|5 years ago
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ufmace|5 years ago
It's not every company or set of interviewers, but there are lots of interviewers and recruiters who don't care at all about your side projects. I've done plenty of interviews, and don't really ask about them much, or really have time to check them out in any detail before the interview.
Lots of tech meetups are also jammed with aggressive recruiter-bros and newbies who need a paycheck and aren't all that interested in tech. Keep your expectations in check for finding good employers or employees at them.
For side projects, I wouldn't say not to do them. But don't do "hello world" level side projects in a trendy language in the expectation that anybody will care or it will get you a job. Do a side project to accomplish something that you are actually interested in. If you don't feel like it or don't have any interesting ideas, then by all means do something else instead. Half-hearted projects to fill a perceived recruiting checkbox definitely won't get you anything. Doing something interesting, or even doing something kind of boring in an interesting way, might help. Or doing something and taking it into Production enough to feel some of the pain points of maintenance, uptime, marketing, etc.
bt3|5 years ago
Is the same true for educational backgrounds? If you don't have an Ivy League degree, what methods can you use to put yourself in the running vs those that do? Side projects seems like a good option in both cases to appear competitive.
zhobbs|5 years ago
My side projects have opened a lot of doors for me, particularly they have enabled career switches. I'm a B2C product manager, was interested in moving to B2B and was ignored until I launched a small SaaS side project (B2B vs B2C PM is considered quite different.)
But the theme of this article is true, recruiters don't care and you should focus on enjoyable side projects.
binarynate|5 years ago
techsin101|5 years ago
soneca|5 years ago
> ” As we all know, the interview process is broken.”
I don’t know how the author conciliate these two opinions.
Other than that, I agree that being hired by a FAANG company is better for your career than any number of side-projects. The problem is that I don’t think I will ever be hired by a FAANG company (as many many many others). It is not about not wanting to focus on leetcode and Cracking the Coding Interview (and I don’t), but my resume would be rejected for sure much before that stage (as a self-taught developer with 41 years old and a degree in Eocnomics from an university in Brazil).
Sodman|5 years ago
As an applicant, I can speak in great detail about any of my side projects, discuss any design decisions, trade-offs and compromises I made. Personally this usually involves some interesting trade-offs made on personal projects to optimize for AWS bill, vs decisions I'd have made at any company where a $100 /mo bill wouldn't even register as a line item on a budget. It also is a great way to differentiate yourself if you're trying to make a move from eg an Enterprise Java B2B company to a consumer-facing SaaS startup using $NEW_TECH.
As a hiring manager, I can see the candidate isn't being challenged enough by their current job, or they had a curiosity they wanted to satisfy outside their regular hours. Either way it shows initiative and a hunger to learn, both of which are good signals. Usually when people are talking about these projects, they are passion projects and you get a good feeling if somebody actually likes programming, as well as hints towards what specifically they find interesting. Did they spend 10 minutes talking about progressive enhancement techniques and bundle sizes? Did they talk about user feedback? Or maybe they focused on CI/CD, auto-scaling, or API design choices? This to me is far more useful than "Worked on team X and performed assigned tasks Y, Z".
polishdude20|5 years ago
As a person trying to break into the software world to get a software developer job, I feel like side projects are the only thing I can show.
umaar|5 years ago
My side projects include:
- An Air Quality Monitoring Dashboard
- A leaderboard app built with redis
- A WebGL globe to show live wikipedia edits
- A web service to scrape any number of GitHub stars from any number of people
- A node.js app which extracts 1 second of footage from your media library, and combines it into a '1 second everyday'-style video
- An audio reactive image slideshow from instagram selfies
- A visualisation dashboard to show stats about your blood from some diabetes bluetooth thingymajig
- 3D renders of popular logos, like the GitHub logo
- An Alfred workflow app to trim X seconds from the currently playing video from VLC
- A script which downloads the top 250 websites to your drive, so you can then run other scripts upon them, as often as you want, without getting blocked
- An augmented reality music website (where you can use the webcam to control audio)
I'm really grateful I'm able to do such things and have no intention of stopping.
rektide|5 years ago
> I don’t want to make this blog post a rant against side projects. In fact, I’m advocating the exact opposite. Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job.
IMHO, that's over-doing it, but fairly on target. Like dating, one wants to be an interesting person. Your projects, to me, demonstrate that you are an interesting person, but as per the topics of collaboration & communication that the author starts with, while yes I want to work with interesting people, it's not what I've found to be the primary nor even all-that-distinguishing characteristic of hirees. Somewhat sadly; keep hacking! ;)
jennyyang|5 years ago
So side projects or even real projects that are used by millions are literally meaningless.
Study LeetCode instead to get a job and focus on your job at work.
gosukiwi|5 years ago
If you think things like LeetCode makes you a better programmer then you only show how inexperienced you are. You can know a lot about theory and algorithms and still write shitty, unmaintainable code.
dc443|5 years ago
Yes, I think it's really limited in utility. But it can offer some insight into how quick and flexible you are generally speaking.
My first impression is you can do a quick DFS recursive function that does a swap (can prolly use xor operator) on the left & right pointers
unknown|5 years ago
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lostmsu|5 years ago
zolland|5 years ago
I just think it's important to not classify all projects outside of your job as "shallow" side projects, and then completely discard them career wise like the article seems to be doing.
627467|5 years ago
"Forget side projects and focus on job" sounds as terrible as the opposite: "ignore your job and just send time on personal interests"
It is my experience that most recruiters are superficial to the point that unless they received instructions to literally hire someone with most meetup attandances, they will ignore any candidate that list those in resume.
But, there ARE recruiters who can see through a weak resume and help you make it more targeted, surface keywords that help you get interviews.
I see .fr in domain: is going through recruiters the main way to get hired in IT in france? Where I am the best way to get hired (beyond entry level) is through referrals and for those, I find that side projects and collaborations are much better at generating a future lead that just proving you were good at your job
GuB-42|5 years ago
I am French myself and from what I've heard about how it happens in North America, the way recruiting works is a bit different.
The general idea is that French recruiters are more cautious, which is understandable since there are stronger employee protection laws and it is harder to let go of a problematic employee. For that reason, employees are also expected to stay longer.
It also looks like recruiting criteria are less technical. Your degree, years of experience, companies you worked for, certifications, etc... play a more important role than showing off your skills. Wages also tend to be defined more by your experience and position than how much money the company can expect to make out of your work.
So if you are not working in France, keep that in mind when reading such advise.
encoderer|5 years ago
A side project is a great way to get better at things you already have interest in.
A side business is a great way to discover new interests and challenges.
umutisik|5 years ago
aj7|5 years ago
You need to own the economic value of your output as early as possible. Read that sentence again. Side projects are about 10% effective here, if you get my drift.
maverickJ|5 years ago
robocat|5 years ago
Reference? Are you implying that developers over 55 are unemployed against their choice?
I suspect sampling bias: Any half competent 55 year old has lived through some golden opportunities to make bank, or decide on a career change by choice. Also the intake cohorts results in not many over 55 as a % of total. My experience in New Zealand is that older devs are doing fine as a cohort, although I also can see poor performers who stuck with old tech who may have bitter anecdotes.
> You need to own the economic value of your output as early as possible
I disagree. I have plenty of 50+ acquaintances doing very nicely on their boring salary without the stress or risk of trying to get a slice of equity. Plenty of people do not have the traits required, or their personal circumstances are not flexible enough to allow for risk, or they just want a 9 to 5 and a comfortable retirement (which they will get, and their rockstar friend might not).
Edit: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The outcomes for the first cohort of developers is very unlikely to be anything like the latest cohort who you are advising - “as early as possible” doesn’t apply to 55+ year old developers?! We haven’t had 30 years of hindsight bias to know what the successful path for a current 20 year old will be.
arcticbull|5 years ago
I'm heading soon to do the same thing at another fast-growing startup.
I've actually talked about my side projects each time I've hopped jobs, and actually, when I took on advisory work. Niches are good!
jnwatson|5 years ago
The fact is, (even different parts of) organizations vary widely in their hiring practices. Some care and some don't. I've hired people almost solely on their side-project (nearly a proto-startup), and I've hired folks without them.
If you interviewed Mssrs. Bellard or Hunt (and you didn't know of them beforehand) and they talked about their side projects QEMU or haveibeenpwned.com (respectively), you should probably rate them highly, maybe even hire them on the spot.
You should aim to work for groups that value such projects.
evo_9|5 years ago
I mean I don't expect people eat/sleep/breath code but I also don't want to hire folks that just got into CompSci/Coding cause it was a 'good/safe' career choice. In my experience the guys that are self learners, doing side projects, playing with the latest 'for fun' are the dudes that really get stuff done.
brundolf|5 years ago
armatav|5 years ago
brookside|5 years ago
xenihn|5 years ago
In my career so far, every time I've encountered an employer (or more specifically, a representative of an employer, e.g. a recruiter or hiring manager) who cared about side-projects and off-the-clock programming to the point where it was a dealbreaker / red flag for applicants, and not just a nice-to-have, the following things were true:
- they paid significantly below market rate (when accounting for bonuses and RSUs)
- they did not respect engineering work/life balance
- they had high turnover
monsieurbanana|5 years ago
andreyk|5 years ago
"I don’t want to make this blog post a rant against side projects. In fact, I’m advocating the exact opposite. Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job. Don’t do all the tutorials you find about Vue.js, but use this weird technology that you saw yesterday on Hacker News. Don’t think about what are the best blog post topics that could expand your personal branding, but write poetry or a review of the last movie you saw. Create the apps, services, websites, or video games you want to use. This may not make your portfolio or your public image convincing for the next recruiter you’ll meet, but this is how you will be able to express all that you have in you and end up affirming yourself. At least, you should end having something meaningful to show, something to be proud about."
adflux|5 years ago
Without you having to do anything?
djstein|5 years ago
cactus2093|5 years ago
To the extent that they show that you have really accomplished something difficult they can be very impressive and differentiate you from other candidates. E.g. in terms of high school extracurriculars, if, say, you've reached the title of chess grandmaster that's impressive, if you went to chess club practice a couple times a week and were just decent at it that's not going to help.
As a software engineer, if you've built a site with millions of page views or written an open source library that many engineers have heard of, that definitely opens doors. (Though even then, maybe not in the way you're expecting. Any given recruiter still might not care or might not be able to remove the red tape for you just because of that. But you'll likely have certain unique opportunities become available). If you've thrown together a few sites in your free time and then moved on to other things, it's not that impressive.
10-1-100|5 years ago
Being able to demonstrate turning an idea into reality and talk about technical (and design) problems I encountered and how I solved them seemed to be much more interesting to interviewers than most of what I had done at my previous day jobs.
shortformblog|5 years ago
Side projects open the creative pipeline. Your job, all too often, closes it.
Also, who cares about recruiters? This is your life—you should find a bigger pool of people to impress and delight.
throwaway23483|5 years ago
Do you know how many successful startups come from side projects? To some extent, a large number of startups are from "side projects":
If a college student starts a company when they are at school, by definition, that's pretty much their side project from the beginning, because their main job is to study and get degree at school. Those are side projects. Zuckerberg stole the FB idea from his side project.
Look at how many successful people quit their jobs and then started their successful companies. You think they all really quit their jobs first and then begin to work on the startup they founded? Come on, very few of them have this clean start. Even if they are on paper looking clean, there are overlaps. Those are side projects, side ideas.
raindropm|5 years ago
At the end of the day, you ship something useful and practical and learn something new along the way. Ain't that count?
Unless your side project = side business, now that'll be another beast.
Even something you do out of love that doesn't involve money making, you still have to think about it, find time to do it and when you can't(mostly because your main job took all your time) you will feel guilty and depressed. And the cycle continue.... seriously, I think it's worse than having no side project.
testmen|5 years ago
cryptica|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
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RIMR|5 years ago
Which is fine if that's what you're looking for, but not so great if you consider yourself an entrepreneur.
werber|5 years ago
asadlionpk|5 years ago
- They allow me to grow my skills and also test ideas in public.
- Every code pattern or library I use in my main job has been put to test on my side-projects.
If I had more hours per day, I would pour them all into my side-projects.
TrackerFF|5 years ago
1. You don't much or any professional experience with software development.
2. You are experienced, but are trying to break into another field - and haven't done any relevant work in your current position (for example - front-end developer pivoting to systems development, or whatever)
I've encountered a lot of recruiters lately, that were more than interested in checking out personal projects. Hell, I've also seen some data science and ML positions where they explicitly asked for cool/interesting side-projects, where you'd use the tech to solve some problem.
didip|5 years ago
But side projects have tons of other benefits outside of making money:
* It satisfies your curious mind.
* It is a learning tool to discover new technologies. Consider this as investment for your future career. Imagine learning Kubernetes or ReactJS when it just came out.
* It is a learning tool to understand old technologies (because you simply don't have the time to do so on day job).
* It's a teaching tool if you have kids that's interested in computer.
* It solves some practical annoyance at home (for example: Homebridge).
vonmoltke|5 years ago
More of a dream, really. I doubt it will happen anytime soon. I think I can swing it by 401k/IRA withdrawal age, though.
mattkevan|5 years ago
Basically, what I'm doing now, when I should be doing what I'm paid to be doing is what I'll be paid to do in a few years' time.
Experimentation and side projects are vital to stretch creativity and learn new things. Not all of my side projects have been successful, but they've all played a vital role in my career development, more by happy accident than design. It's all about following interests to see where they lead.
PankajGhosh|5 years ago
Instead, I have started shifting my focus to "side-gigs" rather, with the goal that they create future value for me in some sense.
rhacker|5 years ago
mekoka|5 years ago
So the author originally found much satisfaction in his exploratory, entrepreneurial, and hacking activities, as it offered a counter-balance to the corporate culture that he perceived as shallow and alien. It didn't matter that his ventures ended up as failures, he found something worthy out of the process.
Sometime later he had a change of heart and decided to pursue a "career". He was then confronted by a clash of culture when he realized that all his tinkering didn't matter to HR.
Now, he's a manager and he understand HR's perspective on reality. He gives you a glimpse. His time spent working on projects was a waste at best and a liability at worst. Companies don't need innovators or free thinkers, they're afraid of them. What they need are good soldiers unburden with ideas of freedom. Exploring new shiny stuff does not make you appealing to HR, your capacity to endure the grind does.
The author offers some philosophical digression where he posits that side projects, much like the theoretical stuff that you learn in school, serve to expand your mind, but don't let them delude you into thinking that you can make that enriched vision serve you in the real world (of employment I suppose).
True valuable experience comes from getting a first job and to do that you should brush up on your DS & algo theory and do coding exercises. Don't expects all your shallow side projects to come to your rescue at your next technical interview.
The author concludes that if you want to make things easier for yourself, you should get a job. It will free you to be yourself, to go fishing, to have a life. If you still want to work on some side projects, you'll do so because they truly matter to you, not because you think they will be strategically helpful in your career. It will suck becoming dependent on a company, but it's the price to pay to be safe from the relentless competition in the job market.
namelosw|5 years ago
Since it's an 'Advice to my young self'. I would say either forget side projects (to be boring as hell), or invest more in side projects (take some risks).
I have been haunted by sloppy side projects for many years because day job makes me both mentally physically exhausted. Until recently I realized if I quit my job and my life wouldn't fall apart that much, and I can spend more time on the projects I'm interested in without worrying about the return rate.
mavster|5 years ago
If you want to grow as a programmer (in my case), then side projects are going to get you the skills to advance your career and get you a better job over "buddying up" with recruiters. Sure, you can be a 9-5 kinda person and then "switch off" when you get home, but you will be the one stuck wondering where it all went wrong and write a blog article complaining about it.
insert principal skinner out-of-touch meme here
jimbob45|5 years ago
#1: No one will ever look at your side project. However, it can still be of use to your job hunt if you can talk about it. In fact, it's possible to get away with a empty project provided you can talk about what would have been in there in great detail (as if you'd actually done it).
#2: If you can't talk about your project in great detail, then it has as much worth as if you'd never actually completed the project.
hartator|5 years ago
emmanueloga_|5 years ago
This one I learned with the years, that it is so much work to introduce new technology to a team, sometimes not the most productive endeavor. Involves some perfect timing, support from key stakeholders and a team open to the idea...
Unless the current stack is absolutely insufferable, it could be better to try and find what's interesting about it and become proficient with it.
dschuetz|5 years ago
Most of the most successful companies started out as someone's side-project. So, I don't see the point of that article that is basically saying be passionate about your job, not your own ideas. And he's saying that to his younger self. Wow.
lhorie|5 years ago
Heck, my entire career was born out of immersing myself in an area of interest in my free time, outside of my original field of study.
sytelus|5 years ago
I feel most of us would disagree with that. All new jobs in my career were result of learning something new on side projects. Recruiters show that as passion for learning. Many jobs don't allow for much exploration and you don't have leverage to call shots. It's usually uphill battle to even introduce any significant changes in large stable products. Also, side projects shouldn't be just for goal of finding new jobs and making recruiters happy anyway. It should be for passion for creating things, realizing ideas.
0xEFF|5 years ago
You're right, but your point also indicates why business value side projects less than career projects. The skills and experience to complete the project don't overlap much between the two types of projects. The success criteria is usually quite different as well.
jordan_curve|5 years ago
peruvian|5 years ago
Lol this is why so many tech stacks at work go to shit. Someone wanting to add another bullet point to the resume and instead of doing it at home, they force a new tool/language at work (when possible).
tylerchilds|5 years ago
sacks2k|5 years ago
It really depends on your goals. My goal has always been to have my own business, so I put lots of time and energy into side projects.
If I only wanted to have a career, I probably would use that time and energy on something more career-oriented.
princevegeta89|5 years ago
The only thing that needs attention paid to is have a flow of income while you're still working on your side project. It becomes mainstream as your only job when it starts bringing back decent money or VC support.
There's a reason they're "side" projects.
joshxyz|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
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city41|5 years ago
I'm not saying "you should definitely do side projects". I'm just disagreeing they aren't always useless. Like pretty much anything in life, your mileage will vary.
archeantus|5 years ago
The side projects I was working on were pretty small potatoes, so that needs to be pointed out. But overall a higher focus on my job has led to two promotions and a ton more money.
Maybe I could have struck it rich with a startup, but the golden handcuffs feel so nice right now that I may never find out.
Aeolun|5 years ago
Anecdotally my side projects are of a consistently higher standard than the projects I work on at the company.
I also get way more chance to experiment with new things than I get at my job.
lowbloodsugar|5 years ago
Clickbait title that even author doesn't agree with.
fizx|5 years ago
While they both netted positive outcomes for me, if I had gone all-in on either one, I think I would have had an order-of-magnitude better outcome. Splitting my attention cost me serious advancement & money at both.
nojs|5 years ago
pier25|5 years ago
jamil7|5 years ago
watfly|5 years ago
gitgud|5 years ago
"When a painter goes home, he might not want to paint more walls... But he may paint murals or canvases... regardless of the monetary reward"
Building software is a form of artistic expression for many people, doing it without the limits of business requirements can be very satisfying.
abhinuvpitale|5 years ago
The author has some point in there, however, focussing on side projects does help you expand and broaden your experiences. Its supremely helpful when switching between slightly different industries.
confidantlake|5 years ago
puranjay|5 years ago
This is like a writer telling you to "forget blogs/articles/novels/stories and focus on your newspaper writing job".
pantulis|5 years ago
There is always something for everyone.
Milank|5 years ago
As with many other things in life, there is now one-size-fits-all. For someone else, a complete opposite will work.
Stay informed, learn about different approaches, and simply choose what you think is best.
matthewhartmans|5 years ago
dorkwood|5 years ago
keithnz|5 years ago
sims18|5 years ago
elorant|5 years ago
NanoWar|5 years ago
kodah|5 years ago
SpecialistEMT|5 years ago
throwaway7281|5 years ago
But article is good, nonetheless, everything needs a balance.
goku99|5 years ago
gen_greyface|5 years ago
d_burfoot|5 years ago
cpill|5 years ago
typon|5 years ago
bryanrasmussen|5 years ago
or another advice - you need to diversify your skills, choose the skills you believe will be in demand in the future to learn, also try to choose ones that it will be ok you are older.
ChicagoDave|5 years ago
xchip|5 years ago
polote|5 years ago
that doesn't make sense, why do you apply to jobs if you want to work for yourself?
dustingetz|5 years ago
justinlloyd|5 years ago
My side-projects gave me the career I have today. They have gotten me jobs without interviews. Because of my side-projects, every job I have had in the past two decades has been without a formal interview or usual take home/coding/white boarding/hazing ritual. I have used a resume precisely twice in the past 15+ years, and one of those two times was because of the company we built and turned profitable was being acquihired.
Some of my side-projects have turned into products that generated real world value. Side projects let me explore new technologies that I don’t get to deal with at work.
I would say, because of my side-projects, that I have frequently drowned in opportunity in terms of offered work. I have gotten offered a “when can you start” job, without interview, in an unsolicited approach, on more than one occasion simply because someone was using one of my side-projects in their day-to-day work.
I recently did a few “test the waters” interviews with a couple of companies (FANGMAN being two of them), just to get some practice in, to see if I “still got it.” Only the FANGMAN companies required a resume before they would even talk to me. Apparently, I’ve still got it, but I realized those kinds of positions weren’t for me.
Having spoken to several people about “focusing on your job” many realise that they have a great job, but what they don’t have is a great and diversified career. They get pigeonholed in to a single role, whether that is marketing, or project management or even software development. When that career dries up, Flash programmer anyone? COBOL programmer? Then they have to reskill and hope someone gives them another chance. “I am an $X” where $X is how they identify themselves. I’ve always struggled to answer that question of “what is it you do?” Perhaps that is a failing on my part.
The majority of software development is code that is not customer facing, that is never seen outside of the business unit for which it was developed. For each and every job you will have through your career you will be told to take a number, stand in line, wait your turn, do as your told, learn to compromise and if we like you enough and you check all the boxes, we’ll let you know at our convenience. In the words of Casey Neistat, “this… is terrible advice.”
My last job was without anything more than a 20 minute chat and “here’s what I’ve been building these past few months as a side-project.” My job before that was “we really liked what you did on Project $X for Company $Y, do you have any experience in Technology $Z?” (Yes, here’s a side-project you can look at that uses Technology $Z). Every single job, for 20+ years, “here’s something I did on a side-project that’s really neat and interesting, do you want me to do that neat and interesting thing for your company?”
I have studiously avoided any and every company that has tried to pigeon hole me, or get me to jump through the hoops of their hiring process, so far it has worked out pretty well for me. I don’t think I have ever worked a single day in my entire life.
Not everybody can do this, not everybody wants to do this, but it has worked out pretty well for me.
If I had to give advice to my younger self, if my younger self would actually listen to the advice, I would say “Do more of the picking one project in any given year, and hyper focus on that for 12 months, rather than only doing things for a few months. If you need to figure out which project that is, do three or four for a couple of weeks, then abandon the ones that don’t have enough interesting problems.” I do focus on single projects for extended periods of time, and it is those projects that have built my career.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7dSXcfVqE
megadeth|5 years ago
ulises314|5 years ago
surajs|5 years ago
sbussard|5 years ago
zach_garwood|5 years ago
rektide|5 years ago
This is a very good & important assessment, realization, & I appreciate the author's reassessment.
> Secondly, I don’t think that multiplying the side projects is useful unless they are substantial.
A phrase that recuringly comes to mind when hearing of a lot of side projects is, "Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men."
I very much want to see a world where computing is a good & sensible place, for scratching your own itch. But at the moment, just getting started on a modest web project is pretty hard. Even if you don't need user accounts, it's still a lot of grunt-work, gulp-work, webpack-work, and or babel-work. Oh you want users with their data? Now multiply the number of hours by 20x. Folk like hood.ie & UserGrid have attempted to lower the effort-to-start, Firebase & others are certainly selling themselves on trying to accelerate the mid-level lift here, the 200's & 300's level courses of "getting your app going". But it's hard. We're not great.
So at the moment, scratch your own itch is hard to do well in a time effective manner. My take-aways are two fold: 1. on a macro scale, we should work harder to build a better systematic base to work from, and 2. a lot of side projects are over-invested in. As a chronic maker-of-side-projects, knowing how to put something down & walk away is a crucial skill. Unlike the author, I do think there's a quite considerable value in having some shallow experience, including with things you are not likely to use (understanding the meta-patterns of computing, seeing similarities across systems is where mature understanding starts).
> I don’t want to make this blog post a rant against side projects. In fact, I’m advocating the exact opposite. Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job. Don’t do all the tutorials you find about Vue.js, but use this weird technology that you saw yesterday on Hacker News.
An imo unfortunate & accurate statement of a dwindling spirit of the technical community! We have heavily industrialized[1] these days, & our hunger to explore outer bounds & interesting potential is much diminished. As a result, those of us who are pioneering by nature are less in demand, more settlers and town planners are needed[2]. For now, we are "technically mature", we believe we have "good solutions" to the problems that are common & identified. For this to shift, we need more cause for adventure, more sense that computing has bigger open possibilities than what we've settled down around. I for one continue to believe the future is still exciting.
[1] https://daverupert.com/2020/01/the-web-is-industrialized-and...
[2] https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-to...
marketingPro|5 years ago
I got a job because of my side projects and would be unemployed if I didn't work on side projects.
Now, who's opinion is correct?
hop655|5 years ago
There are two primary paths from that level: middle management and senior management. If you like the first, learn to speak well, work on your image and build the reputation of a responsible and reliable person who takes the rules seriously. You'll get promoted and eventually you'll stall at the "director" level.
The senior management path is about financial and personal risk. This is where you'll need to build a successful side gig, turn it into a multi million dollar business and negotiate a senior manager position, with very nice compensation, with competitors who will try to take you down in the process. A lot more fun, more risk and a lot more reward.
b0rsuk|5 years ago
During the recruiter phase, they're not going to understand the projects anyway. The only value they have at this point is they boost your confidence and let you move on to next questions. Just list them briefly if asked what you've been doing recently. Most recruiters can't recognize a good programmer, so they approximate it by judging your confidence.
The weapon of choice against recruiters is being prepared for the questions they ask. You pull out a lot of paper, write the questions down, and write answers. Ron Fry's 101 questions book describes them in detail. What the recruiter wants to hear, what she doesn't want to hear. All recruiters have the same set of questions, and although it changes every couple of years it's a solved problem. Yes, I know telling a recruiter what she wants to hear is manipulative :-(.
unknown|5 years ago
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blocked_again|5 years ago
If I die tomorrow and all I did was focus on my career that would be so sad.
mlang23|5 years ago
I never wrote any code to impress someone. I always wrote code to learn things, for my own benefit. And yes, usually there was a lot of synergy, but with high latency. Much of the knowledge I use at work comes from so-called "side projects" I used to do months or even years earlier.
I also find the headline rather sad. As if everything you do in your spare time has to be geared towards maximum efficiency in the day job. That is a pretty sad path to go down.
unknown|5 years ago
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ku-man|5 years ago
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monadic2|5 years ago
known|5 years ago
cambalache|5 years ago