7 ms·

How to not waste time on a side project when trying to get a job

193 points by djchung23 9y ago

pulkownik 9y ago
I am confused now. I have been working on my side project almost 2 years (started working on it a couple of months after my first job in it). Firstly my plan was to deploy this project and open to users finally, however after some time, I realized that there is a lot of similar web pages and it is not a good idea. So I decided to work on this project as some kind of battlefield for testing new frameworks. Finally I ended up with a quite big project (about 390 commits, front-end, and back-end part). Overall the quality of this project is not so good in my opinion, I see a lot of places where things can be done better. Do you think does it worth to put information about this project and link to the github? Even when the code quality is not so good, code coverage is low?
- stefantheard 9y ago
  I would also love to know the answer to this. I have an app that is nowhere near what I would consider ideal quality-wise but it's a project that is done, deployed, and open source. Do I even mention it? I wouldn't as it stands.
  - devdad 9y ago
    I don't know about how bigger firms feel about it, but I'd probably not regard it as a positive. Only show me code you think I'd accept at my work place. For juniors it could be a positive signal though, if you're the kind of person that always looking to learn new things. Depends on the situation if you should show it or not: who are you trying to come across as? If you have the resume, don't show it. Otherwise, do show it and let me know what parts you like and why some other parts are WIP (comments are great here). Another thing to take in consideration is your own criticism. You might be really critical of the project since you're an exceptional programmer, and great programmers tend to move forward quickly and look back at their own old code with distaste. :)
  - gitgud 9y ago
    Well, IMHO it depends on the company, position and interviewer. But something I've learnt is: - Programmers love good code - Entrepreneurs love good products So it's not always the quality of the codebase that matters when showing your side projects. Sometimes the product itself is more valuable.
- wolco 9y ago
  Show it, it at least shows you care something to work on it in your spare time.
- janekm 9y ago
  I would say, show it and be prepared to talk in the interview about what you have learned and would do differently the next time 'round. Any sensible employer wants employees who will learn from experience... Another recommendation I have is to pick side-projects that are small enough in scope to get finished. There's more satisfaction in that and also more useful for interview situations, arguably.
noncoml 9y ago
Forget about side projects if you are looking for a job. Focus on leetcode. It is like buying stamina when the next boss can be easily defeated using strength.
- ch4s3 9y ago
  Can you elaborate on why that might be the case?
  - fardo 9y ago
    Regardless of how impressive your side project is, unless it is a very special exception (e.g. you’re head maintainer of a linux distribution or open source tool the company hiring you is extensively using and needs your expertise on), it’s only getting you into the door to talk to people, and it’s not a route around the interview process. So, ultimately that process is going to be whiteboard coding, because it (let’s be honest) basically always is. That whiteboard coding tends to draw its questions, most often, from question pools like those on Leetcode. This means if you’re resume’s strong enough for someone to talk to you, you probably should be optimizing to pass the whiteboard section.
    - er0l 9y ago
      Spot on.
    - ch4s3 9y ago
      That makes a lot of sense.
    - codingdave 9y ago
      Yes/No -- In my last job hunt, I talked to more than one employer who said they had declined people who rocked the whiteboarding, but had nothing else to show. People are building teams who can work together, communicate well, and dedicate their efforts to completing projects together. Good whiteboarding is a prerequisite to being part of a team... but not the entirety of a hiring decision.
jefe78 9y ago
I don't understand the logic of this article. My side projects tend to be efforts in self employment, not 'click bait' for an employer. While not everyone has the same approach, this article seems to imply the only value of side projects is for future employers. I'd hate for people to get the wrong impression about the value of these projects.
- realPubkey 9y ago
  Thought the the same. For me it's not doing sideprojects to get a job but having a job to finance my sideprojects.
  - racer-v 9y ago
    In these cases, isn't it the dayjob that's the "side" project?
    - realPubkey 9y ago
      Actually it fells like this. In my job I also get the time to work a bit on the side-projects.
  - ryandrake 9y ago
    My guess is you're both gainfully employed :) Side projects are more and more being touted as a way to "stand out" from the enormous crowd of people trying to get tech jobs. A company choosing among 100 candidates, all things being equal, may bias towards the few with active interesting side projects. If you accept that, then starting some kind of side project would be worth it.
    - zitterbewegung 9y ago
      Side projects got me jobs and when I do side projects sometime they are for fun and sometimes they aren’t . I think a better objective is to do fun / cool side projects and try to align them when you want to.
alexkavon 9y ago
I totally stop my side projects when job hunting. There really doesn't seem to be any practical time. Often I find that I need that time to study new concepts and play catch up improving my skills so I can be even more presentable to a company. I mean the tech industry, especially software engineering is rife with testing merge sorts, parsing csv files, and non-real world coding challenges when interviewing. Who has the time? Let alone the shear amount of frameworks and systems you need to understand depending on the companies specific pipeline. Forget your side project and reduce the strain.
- dundercoder 9y ago
  I had never even heard of HackerRank before applying at a few places. I was supposed to write a binary search tree algorithm without using anything except the language docs. I rarely write anything new without a quick search, it wastes valuable time reinventing the wheel.
  - corporateslave3 9y ago
    I had this as well, an off by one error on a binary search resulted in a rejection...
    - toomanybeersies 9y ago
      I had a really good tech interview a while back, where I had to reverse a string in place, and then reverse only the words in a string in place (so "this is a test" => "siht si a tset") Anyway, I had a couple of off by errors. The interviewer asked me if I was sure I didn't have any, so I had a look through, stepped through the code, and lo and behold, I did. While I was doing this process, we ended up having a discussion about how unit testing would help avoid problems like off by 1 errors, and would make iterating through the code and refactoring a lot easier. That's what a good tech interview should look like, not expecting someone to write perfect code, first time. On a side note, I didn't end up getting the job, since they had apparently hired someone the day before I came in for the interview. Apparently I managed to apply for the job the day they closed applications, but they asked if I wanted to interview anyway, out of courtesy.
kraftman 9y ago
It would be interesting to know what proportion of employers even look at your Github, let alone dig into detail enough to investigate your side projects to this level. I work on quite a few side projects in my own time because I enjoy it, but I've never been asked about my projects on Github or my blog.
- deedubaya 9y ago
  I'd guess it depends on the employer. When I hire, code samples (like Github contributions) are my first screen of a candidate before I decide to interview them. It is proof of ability to write code and a testament to what I consider to be quality. I do this in lieu of whiteboard challenges or Fizzbuzz tests.
- mundo 9y ago
  I always do. For mid-to-senior it's more out of curiosity, but for entry-level it can impact my decision, especially for bootcamp grads. I know the prevailing sentiment on HN is sometimes that hiring managers like making candidates jump through hoops to make themselves feel important, but I don't think that's the issue here. It's simply that someone who came to programming late in life is at a severe disadvantage compared to people who have been interested in it since fifth grade, and some kind of programming in your spare time is the best (only?) way to catch up. Contra the article, I don't care if the project shipped, or if it's thoroughly unit tested, or how many iterations or whatever. I just want evidence that you're in the larval stage.
  - itronitron 9y ago
    Whenever I interview candidates I am always looking for things to talk to about with them so if I can find information on previous projects or publications of theirs then that is a good entry point to learn about their expertise.
- lkrubner 9y ago
  This surprises me all the time. Most people hire me without ever doing any research on me. I get to a job interview and they ask me if I know what "object oriented programming" means. Had they searched for my name, they would have found my name on the Wikipedia page for object oriented programming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming And I've never gone to a job interview where people knew I had a blog, even though I list the blog on my resume: http://www.smashcompany.com/ http://www.smashcompany.com/ I have to assume that other people put a blog on their resume, but its a mostly un-used site, so the maybe the employers get in the habit of ignoring personal sites? I've written on hundreds of technical topics over the years, but no one is ever aware of this when I arrive in a job interview. Likewise, no one has ever checked my projects on Github.
eigenhombre 9y ago
I was a bit nonplussed reading this as well. If I'm interviewing a future colleague I am especially curious about their side projects on GitHub ... but I don't care how well what they have done dovetails with my current technical needs, or many "iterations" they have shipped, but rather: are they passionate/do they make things they care about? Can they write clearly? Is the code of high quality? Have they interacted with others well (respectful/helpful tone in PRs, Issues, etc.)? I find most candidates don't bother with half, or any, of these, but the ones that do tend to be good ones (and, alas, are also employed already).
mganekko 9y ago
To be honest, this submission gives me the impression that it's clickbait material. The article is field with platitudes and small things you can glean from Cracking the Coding interview book. Judging from the user's submissions, this seems to be self advertising.
- Apocryphon 9y ago
  It resembles the lightweight listicles of a career site's newsletter.
eggie5 9y ago
here's my side project I just finished: http://www.eggie5.com/126-semantic-image-search-video http://www.eggie5.com/126-semantic-image-search-video Semantic Image Search: takes high dimensional images vectors from a Deep Convolutional Neural Network and searches for similar images using Locality Sensitivity Hashing. Search is O(1) + O(n/B) where the last term is a small fraction, B, of the complete search space n. The goal was an E2E machine learning project: modeling, training, validation, deployment and serving. Using VGG-mased CNN w/ tensorflow, redis for database, Flask for web frontend , tensorflow serving and docker+kubernetes for orchestration. It all works on my local machine but when I went to deploy it to my prod website the tensorflow serving part broke down and I haven't had time to fix it yet :( It was just supposed to be a one weekend project after I got the inspiration from the AlexNet paper, but it took over a month. Most of the time was fighting k8s. So another data science project doesn't make it to production...
symlinkk 9y ago
Why do I have to build side projects and memorize algorithm trivia to prove to employers that I know enough to do a job? What's the value of my degree if it doesn't tell employers that I know what I'm talking about? Why are software engineers the only ones with this problem (can you imagine if doctors had to memorize random trivia to get a job)?
- quickthrower2 9y ago
  Doctors have to memorize a lot of information to just do their job. They have to have the answers to a lot of things or look incompetent as Googling would make people lose their trust. I think we have it cushy. My experience is that side projects mean nothing to employers (as an experienced dev) and memorizing algorithm trivia is rarely needed. Usually doing a coding test with internet access is the norm.
- itronitron 9y ago
  Apparently there are a lot of people applying to developer positions that make it to the technical interview and don't know how to code. I have never encountered this personally, probably because the people I have interviewed have always had prior work experience as developers.
- flukus 9y ago
  > Why are software engineers the only ones with this problem (can you imagine if doctors had to memorize random trivia to get a job)? Because we don't have professional organisations like doctors and lawyers do. > What's the value of my degree if it doesn't tell employers that I know what I'm talking about? Well there's an open ended question. For one, assuming you went to a reputable university, the degree says that you understand the foundations of computer science, which isn't particularly relevant to what most of us spend our days doing. Understanding computer science fundamentals isn't a huge help when your building a CRUD web form and sticking data in the database. Then there's the profit driven centers that universities have become, it's in their best interest not to fail anyone, that would decrease their revenue. I've had interns that are freshly graduated with masters degrees that would fail a CS101 test if you put it in front of them. > Why do I have to build side projects and memorize algorithm trivia to prove to employers that I know enough to do a job? Because employers are trying to compensate for the issues I mentioned in the cheapest, quickest way possible. Sure they don't do a great job of it, but neither does anyone else in the pipeline.
spraak 9y ago
Another great way to impress employers (and in some ways much simpler): write blog posts about what you've read, learned or done. Even if it's on a current employer's blog.
ronilan 9y ago
I have nothing to add to the article, but just wanted to point out regarding that YouTube instant thing: 1. Feross never got the job he was "offered" and reportedly "accepted"[1]. He went on to do other things. 2. He is on Patreon, and you can support his Open Source efforts here: https://www.patreon.com/feross https://www.patreon.com/feross 3. Or... you can try and hire him. He was excellent to begin with and seemes to have only gotten better through the years. 4. 2010. That was an era. "Must have been love, but it's over now."[2] [1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/24/youtube-instant-instant/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/24/youtube-instant-instant/ [2] https://youtu.be/s-XolL_1dN0 https://youtu.be/s-XolL_1dN0
s3nnyy 9y ago
My own experience as tech recruiter, who looks at dozens of resumes a day, is that I only take some minutes to review your publicly available code. If I see commented code, rough violation of coding standards etc., that is bad and I will ask about it. So if you share side projects, remember that it gives the interviewer "attack surface" to disqualify you. However, good interviewers won't look 20% for your weaknesses and 80% for your strengths. If you are a regular open source contributor, I might use this information to argue that you are be better than other engineers who don't regularly code in their free time.
- pacaro 9y ago
  Be careful, the coding in free time is an interesting signal to be sure, but considering one engineer to be better than another purely on the basis that they code in their free time is anti-diverse
  - s3nnyy 9y ago
    But if I only care about coding capability I might want to hire the one who programs 16 hours a day and not just 8 hours a day. We live in a free market and I can optimize for such parameters, if I want. Obviously, if I really take this as a main parameter, I will be hiring probably 22 yr old kids with no relationships. I only see an indirect relationship to diversity. Still, good hint to keep that in mind.
- gagabity 9y ago
  Commented code is a negative now? Damned if you do, damned if you don't in this industry.
  - zcoyle 9y ago
    I think they meant commented-out code.
    - s3nnyy 9y ago
      Yes. And good commit messages are better than (stale) code comments.
paulie_a 9y ago
Personally when I was unemployed my side projects helped me learn new skills, and fit my desire to do something with my spare time. Applying for jobs was a pain, building something was enjoyable and gave me hope
dvt 9y ago
Man this article is so flawed, it's not even funny. I was going to comment earlier today but I was certain it would get buried. I'm a bit disappointed that it's still on the main page. Here's my take.. > Make sure your side project isn’t a waste of your time A side project is never a waste of your time. It's a way to build something new, to exercise your creativity and passion, and to (when it's all said and done) ship something! I'd wager that 90%+ of "coders" have never built something from zero to hero. That is inherently a valuable thing, regardless of what your future boss thinks. > Your side project, by itself, probably won’t get you a job Okay, so? I'm pretty sure no sane person is going to go through the hard work of building a side project to impress during an interview. Not only that, but for a side-project to be successful, it also needs marketing, PR, networking, and so on. You probably won't have to do any of those things at your next programming job, but you most definitely need to do it when launching a side project. > 1. Is your side project relevant to the job you’re applying to? Again, who cares? Side projects should never be contingent on what jobs you're applying to. > 2. Does your side project have depth? Doesn't matter. A side project can be as shallow as Snapchat 1.0 (disappearing images? Sign me up). Run with it. Build something awesome and win at life. > 3. Has your side project at least had 2 iterations? I actually agree with this. Most of my MVPs are kind of shitty until I show them to a select group of friends and family that more often than not rip them to shreds. Fail fast, fail often. > You have to bring attention to your side project Yes, yes you do. But guess what: looking for a regular 9-5 programming job is completely antithetical to "bringing attention" to your side project. The latter of which involves emailing zillions of people, setting up mailing lists, getting featured on blogs, product design, going to talks, giving talks, and so on.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- drvdevd 9y ago
  The article also misses the point about intrinsic VS extrinsic motivation in software. Personally I think being motivated by money, careers, nice cars — whatever — is just fine. But I think the only way to know if you really want to stick with Programming, and especially any particular branch of programming, is by finding out what intrinsically motivates you. That can be your rock to hold onto as burnout approaches...
J2K 9y ago
Feel like some of the other comments are sort of missing the point of the article although the author probably could have been clearer in what his point was. My take is that this is targeted toward people without any sort of traditional/university CS background trying to get into tech from scratch and in addition to taking a basic javascript course or whatever are following the standard advice you hear of "you need to have some side projects to get employers attention." Think its just trying to give some pointers to people going down that path with the very specific larger goal of it leading to a full time job. So ya, I would bet the author would probably agree that side projects are almost valuable in and of themselves, but some are going to be more likely then others to lead towards a full time position, etc.
hemendrasingh 9y ago
If you have more time remain after you get a job. Side project is not waste your time.side project also gives you extra work & money for you.

193 points by djchung23 9y ago

I am confused now. I have been working on my side project almost 2 years (started working on it a couple of months after my first job in it). Firstly my plan was to deploy this project and open to users finally, however after some time, I realized that there is a lot of similar web pages and it is not a good idea. So I decided to work on this project as some kind of battlefield for testing new frameworks. Finally I ended up with a quite big project (about 390 commits, front-end, and back-end part). Overall the quality of this project is not so good in my opinion, I see a lot of places where things can be done better. Do you think does it worth to put information about this project and link to the github? Even when the code quality is not so good, code coverage is low?

stefantheard 9y ago
I would also love to know the answer to this. I have an app that is nowhere near what I would consider ideal quality-wise but it's a project that is done, deployed, and open source. Do I even mention it? I wouldn't as it stands.
- devdad 9y ago
  I don't know about how bigger firms feel about it, but I'd probably not regard it as a positive. Only show me code you think I'd accept at my work place. For juniors it could be a positive signal though, if you're the kind of person that always looking to learn new things. Depends on the situation if you should show it or not: who are you trying to come across as? If you have the resume, don't show it. Otherwise, do show it and let me know what parts you like and why some other parts are WIP (comments are great here). Another thing to take in consideration is your own criticism. You might be really critical of the project since you're an exceptional programmer, and great programmers tend to move forward quickly and look back at their own old code with distaste. :)
- gitgud 9y ago
  Well, IMHO it depends on the company, position and interviewer. But something I've learnt is: - Programmers love good code - Entrepreneurs love good products So it's not always the quality of the codebase that matters when showing your side projects. Sometimes the product itself is more valuable.
wolco 9y ago
Show it, it at least shows you care something to work on it in your spare time.
janekm 9y ago
I would say, show it and be prepared to talk in the interview about what you have learned and would do differently the next time 'round. Any sensible employer wants employees who will learn from experience... Another recommendation I have is to pick side-projects that are small enough in scope to get finished. There's more satisfaction in that and also more useful for interview situations, arguably.

noncoml 9y ago

Forget about side projects if you are looking for a job. Focus on leetcode. It is like buying stamina when the next boss can be easily defeated using strength.

ch4s3 9y ago
Can you elaborate on why that might be the case?
- fardo 9y ago
  Regardless of how impressive your side project is, unless it is a very special exception (e.g. you’re head maintainer of a linux distribution or open source tool the company hiring you is extensively using and needs your expertise on), it’s only getting you into the door to talk to people, and it’s not a route around the interview process. So, ultimately that process is going to be whiteboard coding, because it (let’s be honest) basically always is. That whiteboard coding tends to draw its questions, most often, from question pools like those on Leetcode. This means if you’re resume’s strong enough for someone to talk to you, you probably should be optimizing to pass the whiteboard section.
  - er0l 9y ago
    Spot on.
  - ch4s3 9y ago
    That makes a lot of sense.
  - codingdave 9y ago
    Yes/No -- In my last job hunt, I talked to more than one employer who said they had declined people who rocked the whiteboarding, but had nothing else to show. People are building teams who can work together, communicate well, and dedicate their efforts to completing projects together. Good whiteboarding is a prerequisite to being part of a team... but not the entirety of a hiring decision.

jefe78 9y ago

I don't understand the logic of this article. My side projects tend to be efforts in self employment, not 'click bait' for an employer. While not everyone has the same approach, this article seems to imply the only value of side projects is for future employers. I'd hate for people to get the wrong impression about the value of these projects.

realPubkey 9y ago
Thought the the same. For me it's not doing sideprojects to get a job but having a job to finance my sideprojects.
- racer-v 9y ago
  In these cases, isn't it the dayjob that's the "side" project?
  - realPubkey 9y ago
    Actually it fells like this. In my job I also get the time to work a bit on the side-projects.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  My guess is you're both gainfully employed :) Side projects are more and more being touted as a way to "stand out" from the enormous crowd of people trying to get tech jobs. A company choosing among 100 candidates, all things being equal, may bias towards the few with active interesting side projects. If you accept that, then starting some kind of side project would be worth it.
  - zitterbewegung 9y ago
    Side projects got me jobs and when I do side projects sometime they are for fun and sometimes they aren’t . I think a better objective is to do fun / cool side projects and try to align them when you want to.

alexkavon 9y ago

I totally stop my side projects when job hunting. There really doesn't seem to be any practical time. Often I find that I need that time to study new concepts and play catch up improving my skills so I can be even more presentable to a company. I mean the tech industry, especially software engineering is rife with testing merge sorts, parsing csv files, and non-real world coding challenges when interviewing. Who has the time? Let alone the shear amount of frameworks and systems you need to understand depending on the companies specific pipeline. Forget your side project and reduce the strain.

dundercoder 9y ago
I had never even heard of HackerRank before applying at a few places. I was supposed to write a binary search tree algorithm without using anything except the language docs. I rarely write anything new without a quick search, it wastes valuable time reinventing the wheel.
- corporateslave3 9y ago
  I had this as well, an off by one error on a binary search resulted in a rejection...
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    I had a really good tech interview a while back, where I had to reverse a string in place, and then reverse only the words in a string in place (so "this is a test" => "siht si a tset") Anyway, I had a couple of off by errors. The interviewer asked me if I was sure I didn't have any, so I had a look through, stepped through the code, and lo and behold, I did. While I was doing this process, we ended up having a discussion about how unit testing would help avoid problems like off by 1 errors, and would make iterating through the code and refactoring a lot easier. That's what a good tech interview should look like, not expecting someone to write perfect code, first time. On a side note, I didn't end up getting the job, since they had apparently hired someone the day before I came in for the interview. Apparently I managed to apply for the job the day they closed applications, but they asked if I wanted to interview anyway, out of courtesy.

kraftman 9y ago

It would be interesting to know what proportion of employers even look at your Github, let alone dig into detail enough to investigate your side projects to this level. I work on quite a few side projects in my own time because I enjoy it, but I've never been asked about my projects on Github or my blog.

deedubaya 9y ago
I'd guess it depends on the employer. When I hire, code samples (like Github contributions) are my first screen of a candidate before I decide to interview them. It is proof of ability to write code and a testament to what I consider to be quality. I do this in lieu of whiteboard challenges or Fizzbuzz tests.
mundo 9y ago
I always do. For mid-to-senior it's more out of curiosity, but for entry-level it can impact my decision, especially for bootcamp grads. I know the prevailing sentiment on HN is sometimes that hiring managers like making candidates jump through hoops to make themselves feel important, but I don't think that's the issue here. It's simply that someone who came to programming late in life is at a severe disadvantage compared to people who have been interested in it since fifth grade, and some kind of programming in your spare time is the best (only?) way to catch up. Contra the article, I don't care if the project shipped, or if it's thoroughly unit tested, or how many iterations or whatever. I just want evidence that you're in the larval stage.
- itronitron 9y ago
  Whenever I interview candidates I am always looking for things to talk to about with them so if I can find information on previous projects or publications of theirs then that is a good entry point to learn about their expertise.
lkrubner 9y ago
This surprises me all the time. Most people hire me without ever doing any research on me. I get to a job interview and they ask me if I know what "object oriented programming" means. Had they searched for my name, they would have found my name on the Wikipedia page for object oriented programming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_programming And I've never gone to a job interview where people knew I had a blog, even though I list the blog on my resume: http://www.smashcompany.com/ http://www.smashcompany.com/ I have to assume that other people put a blog on their resume, but its a mostly un-used site, so the maybe the employers get in the habit of ignoring personal sites? I've written on hundreds of technical topics over the years, but no one is ever aware of this when I arrive in a job interview. Likewise, no one has ever checked my projects on Github.

eigenhombre 9y ago

I was a bit nonplussed reading this as well. If I'm interviewing a future colleague I am especially curious about their side projects on GitHub ... but I don't care how well what they have done dovetails with my current technical needs, or many "iterations" they have shipped, but rather: are they passionate/do they make things they care about? Can they write clearly? Is the code of high quality? Have they interacted with others well (respectful/helpful tone in PRs, Issues, etc.)? I find most candidates don't bother with half, or any, of these, but the ones that do tend to be good ones (and, alas, are also employed already).

mganekko 9y ago

To be honest, this submission gives me the impression that it's clickbait material. The article is field with platitudes and small things you can glean from Cracking the Coding interview book. Judging from the user's submissions, this seems to be self advertising.

Apocryphon 9y ago
It resembles the lightweight listicles of a career site's newsletter.

eggie5 9y ago

here's my side project I just finished: http://www.eggie5.com/126-semantic-image-search-video http://www.eggie5.com/126-semantic-image-search-video Semantic Image Search: takes high dimensional images vectors from a Deep Convolutional Neural Network and searches for similar images using Locality Sensitivity Hashing. Search is O(1) + O(n/B) where the last term is a small fraction, B, of the complete search space n. The goal was an E2E machine learning project: modeling, training, validation, deployment and serving. Using VGG-mased CNN w/ tensorflow, redis for database, Flask for web frontend , tensorflow serving and docker+kubernetes for orchestration. It all works on my local machine but when I went to deploy it to my prod website the tensorflow serving part broke down and I haven't had time to fix it yet :( It was just supposed to be a one weekend project after I got the inspiration from the AlexNet paper, but it took over a month. Most of the time was fighting k8s. So another data science project doesn't make it to production...

symlinkk 9y ago

Why do I have to build side projects and memorize algorithm trivia to prove to employers that I know enough to do a job? What's the value of my degree if it doesn't tell employers that I know what I'm talking about? Why are software engineers the only ones with this problem (can you imagine if doctors had to memorize random trivia to get a job)?

quickthrower2 9y ago
Doctors have to memorize a lot of information to just do their job. They have to have the answers to a lot of things or look incompetent as Googling would make people lose their trust. I think we have it cushy. My experience is that side projects mean nothing to employers (as an experienced dev) and memorizing algorithm trivia is rarely needed. Usually doing a coding test with internet access is the norm.
itronitron 9y ago
Apparently there are a lot of people applying to developer positions that make it to the technical interview and don't know how to code. I have never encountered this personally, probably because the people I have interviewed have always had prior work experience as developers.
flukus 9y ago
> Why are software engineers the only ones with this problem (can you imagine if doctors had to memorize random trivia to get a job)? Because we don't have professional organisations like doctors and lawyers do. > What's the value of my degree if it doesn't tell employers that I know what I'm talking about? Well there's an open ended question. For one, assuming you went to a reputable university, the degree says that you understand the foundations of computer science, which isn't particularly relevant to what most of us spend our days doing. Understanding computer science fundamentals isn't a huge help when your building a CRUD web form and sticking data in the database. Then there's the profit driven centers that universities have become, it's in their best interest not to fail anyone, that would decrease their revenue. I've had interns that are freshly graduated with masters degrees that would fail a CS101 test if you put it in front of them. > Why do I have to build side projects and memorize algorithm trivia to prove to employers that I know enough to do a job? Because employers are trying to compensate for the issues I mentioned in the cheapest, quickest way possible. Sure they don't do a great job of it, but neither does anyone else in the pipeline.

spraak 9y ago

Another great way to impress employers (and in some ways much simpler): write blog posts about what you've read, learned or done. Even if it's on a current employer's blog.

ronilan 9y ago

I have nothing to add to the article, but just wanted to point out regarding that YouTube instant thing: 1. Feross never got the job he was "offered" and reportedly "accepted"[1]. He went on to do other things. 2. He is on Patreon, and you can support his Open Source efforts here: https://www.patreon.com/feross https://www.patreon.com/feross 3. Or... you can try and hire him. He was excellent to begin with and seemes to have only gotten better through the years. 4. 2010. That was an era. "Must have been love, but it's over now."[2] [1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/24/youtube-instant-instant/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/09/24/youtube-instant-instant/ [2] https://youtu.be/s-XolL_1dN0 https://youtu.be/s-XolL_1dN0

s3nnyy 9y ago

My own experience as tech recruiter, who looks at dozens of resumes a day, is that I only take some minutes to review your publicly available code. If I see commented code, rough violation of coding standards etc., that is bad and I will ask about it. So if you share side projects, remember that it gives the interviewer "attack surface" to disqualify you. However, good interviewers won't look 20% for your weaknesses and 80% for your strengths. If you are a regular open source contributor, I might use this information to argue that you are be better than other engineers who don't regularly code in their free time.

pacaro 9y ago
Be careful, the coding in free time is an interesting signal to be sure, but considering one engineer to be better than another purely on the basis that they code in their free time is anti-diverse
- s3nnyy 9y ago
  But if I only care about coding capability I might want to hire the one who programs 16 hours a day and not just 8 hours a day. We live in a free market and I can optimize for such parameters, if I want. Obviously, if I really take this as a main parameter, I will be hiring probably 22 yr old kids with no relationships. I only see an indirect relationship to diversity. Still, good hint to keep that in mind.
gagabity 9y ago
Commented code is a negative now? Damned if you do, damned if you don't in this industry.
- zcoyle 9y ago
  I think they meant commented-out code.
  - s3nnyy 9y ago
    Yes. And good commit messages are better than (stale) code comments.

paulie_a 9y ago

Personally when I was unemployed my side projects helped me learn new skills, and fit my desire to do something with my spare time. Applying for jobs was a pain, building something was enjoyable and gave me hope

dvt 9y ago

Man this article is so flawed, it's not even funny. I was going to comment earlier today but I was certain it would get buried. I'm a bit disappointed that it's still on the main page. Here's my take.. > Make sure your side project isn’t a waste of your time A side project is never a waste of your time. It's a way to build something new, to exercise your creativity and passion, and to (when it's all said and done) ship something! I'd wager that 90%+ of "coders" have never built something from zero to hero. That is inherently a valuable thing, regardless of what your future boss thinks. > Your side project, by itself, probably won’t get you a job Okay, so? I'm pretty sure no sane person is going to go through the hard work of building a side project to impress during an interview. Not only that, but for a side-project to be successful, it also needs marketing, PR, networking, and so on. You probably won't have to do any of those things at your next programming job, but you most definitely need to do it when launching a side project. > 1. Is your side project relevant to the job you’re applying to? Again, who cares? Side projects should never be contingent on what jobs you're applying to. > 2. Does your side project have depth? Doesn't matter. A side project can be as shallow as Snapchat 1.0 (disappearing images? Sign me up). Run with it. Build something awesome and win at life. > 3. Has your side project at least had 2 iterations? I actually agree with this. Most of my MVPs are kind of shitty until I show them to a select group of friends and family that more often than not rip them to shreds. Fail fast, fail often. > You have to bring attention to your side project Yes, yes you do. But guess what: looking for a regular 9-5 programming job is completely antithetical to "bringing attention" to your side project. The latter of which involves emailing zillions of people, setting up mailing lists, getting featured on blogs, product design, going to talks, giving talks, and so on.

deleted 9y ago
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drvdevd 9y ago
The article also misses the point about intrinsic VS extrinsic motivation in software. Personally I think being motivated by money, careers, nice cars — whatever — is just fine. But I think the only way to know if you really want to stick with Programming, and especially any particular branch of programming, is by finding out what intrinsically motivates you. That can be your rock to hold onto as burnout approaches...

J2K 9y ago

Feel like some of the other comments are sort of missing the point of the article although the author probably could have been clearer in what his point was. My take is that this is targeted toward people without any sort of traditional/university CS background trying to get into tech from scratch and in addition to taking a basic javascript course or whatever are following the standard advice you hear of "you need to have some side projects to get employers attention." Think its just trying to give some pointers to people going down that path with the very specific larger goal of it leading to a full time job. So ya, I would bet the author would probably agree that side projects are almost valuable in and of themselves, but some are going to be more likely then others to lead towards a full time position, etc.

hemendrasingh 9y ago

If you have more time remain after you get a job. Side project is not waste your time.side project also gives you extra work & money for you.