15 ms·

Why you should have a side project

263 points by guillaumec 7y ago

nikanj 7y ago
No. Your free time should be about rest and recovery, not about grinding out even more code. Even if it looks bad on your CV
- Insanity 7y ago
  Your free time should be about enjoyment. If you enjoy doing some code that is fine. If you enjoy playing on your PS4 or (hopefully) enjoy spending time with your kids, that is fine to. You're an adult, do what you want in your free time. Edit: softened the response a bit because I do agree with the parent that you also need some rest and relaxation. :P
  - blub 7y ago
    Do what you want, but keep in mind that spending too much time coding can harm your back, eyes, wrists and so on. 8 hours per day is already pushing it.
    - phito 7y ago
      I don't get why everyone here seems to be assuming that a side project = coding...
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        Because that is what head hunters and employers expect from their "passionate developer for...".
      - quickthrower2 7y ago
        In that case side project = what? Anything? Netflix binge?
    - Insanity 7y ago
      Yeah getting some sports during your free time seems to be a good idea. Will alleviate a lot of the physical issues!
- outime 7y ago
  Everybody is different and some people may prefer to spend their free time in fun side projects. Nothing wrong with that.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  But what could be more rejuvenating, not to mention fulfilling, than spending your free time working on your career and making more money? It's a win-win. Work, work, work until you die!
- mattlondon 7y ago
  I agree to this to a certain extent. This view that everyone must be passionate about programming is dangerous. What does "passion" mean - working an extra 4-8 hours every day on some random side-project to prove to a hypothetical future employer that you are "passionate"? I don't know if that is what "passionate" means, but I know that for junior people I have in my team that I will repeatedly bang home the need for work-life balance if I ever catch them sending emails or submitting code late into the evening. That said, if you enjoy spending all your work time coding and your spare time also coding, sure fine go ahead (and I think that probably all of us go through this from time to time). But I really don't think we should be encouraging that you should be trying to hustle a genuine revenue-generating side business as well as your normal 9 to 5. I fear that it is unhealthy to set these expectations that you need to be working two jobs simultaneously.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    I don’t think anything done to prove something to a hypothetical outsider is done out of passion. I do all kinds of random side things (fewer now that we have kids). None have a purpose to prove anything to a future employer (or anyone else beyond sometimes my family [demonstrating to my kids the value, or even mere possibility, of doing more than passively compnsuming, for example])
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  Why are some people so strongly opposed to others using their free time to better themselves and stretch their minds a bit? Many of humanities greatest scientific discoveries and works of art were 'side projects'. It's better than lounging around like a lemon doing nothing with your time.
  - mattlondon 7y ago
    Do that if you want to, but I worry that people feel like they should be doing this because that is what "everyone else is doing" or that you need to because otherwise you wont get a job without revenue-generating side projects etc. We're setting expectations for and normalising something which is not normal IMHO. By all means do side projects if you want, but don't feel compelled.
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      Yeah, this breeds insecurity among those who don't yet have a strong enough base to believe in themselves and their abilities, and even more FOMO isn't really something to be encouraged.
  - tylermac1 7y ago
    The people that I see react most negatively to the suggestion of having a "side project" are those that either don't enjoy programming or don't have time to outside of work. That being said, I think the main point that most people fail to get across about "side projects" is that they don't have to be programming. I play music with a band in the area and would very much consider that to be a side project. It would be a much healthier exercise if we focused the narrative on doing anything you enjoy outside of work.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      Yeah I'm writing a local history book as one of my side projects. Maybe I should lie on the sofa like a slob instead, but it doesn't seem as healthy or fun to me.
    - 7y ago
- british_india 7y ago
  There will be plenty of time for rest when you're taking the dirt nap. Claim every hour of the day until then.
- relativeadv 7y ago
  A tangent: I also think that rest & recovery should be about just that. Too often I see articles extolling the importance of R&R to make you a better, refreshed, worker. I see popular books like Digital Minimalism urging us to get away from our phones and newsfeeds but it all amounts to some grand productivity hack. Disconnect, relax, refresh yourself so that you can hit the ground running on monday and outperform others. R&R can be almost anything, but don't make it look like work and certainly don't do it because you think it'll make you a better capitalist.
- roland35 7y ago
  I do sometimes worry about that, like when applying to jobs I am competing against other people who are out there doing side projects and contributing to open source. Hopefully employers don't place too much weight on those factors for my sake! I like to refer to my kids as my side projects! As they get older I would like to do things together which to me seems like the best option.
- voidmain0001 7y ago
  If a side project _is_ recommended or advisable, then perhaps it should be about diversification. If my main job is software development, then my side project should be import/export. Branching into different areas will provide the growth and understanding of self that the author speaks about. Plus diversification will help me when AI takes over my coding job and I'm left jobless.
- boomlinde 7y ago
  I agree with your point that free time should be about rest and recovery, but I think that programming can be a fulfilling and engaging recreational activity that aids in recovery. Maybe not for you, but definitely for myself. When I program at home, I don't "grind out even more code" in the sense that it's in any way a continuation of what I do at my day job, more than watching TV, reading or browsing the web would be. I work on totally different projects, unrelated to what I do at work, and I do it for myself under no pressure to perform. The playing field is very different.
- baron_harkonnen 7y ago
  I'm guessing the people complaining have never had side projects of their own. One of the huge benefits of side projects isn't to pad out your CV, but to decouple your career and your professional life from your employer. When work sucks family, friends and hobbies can be great at taking your mind off of your work problems, but they can't really free you from the fact that one company controls not only your income, but your entire professional identity. When you do work that is recognized outside of your office, you own that work and shitty managers can't take that away. Not everyone has to be start their own business, but I highly recommend that everyone "owns" something related to their livelihood outside of their 9-5. It means that friends, family and hobbies don't become merely a means of "recovery" from an oppressive job, but things that I can honestly enjoy more because I have an identity outside of my employer.
  - player_zero 7y ago
    Agree with that. Having a few side projects really made me happier.
- redisman 7y ago
  40h of work. 10h side projects. 5h leetcode and interview prep. Ah, what a life!
- kilo_bravo_3 7y ago
  Competent lawyers, doctors, engineers, and teachers spend time improving and honing their craft through continuing professional development (CPD). Sometimes it is required by licensing and professional bodies for those occupations, other times it is optional. Sometimes it is compensated by employers and other times it is not. It can include: participating in conferences, meetings at informal local professional organizations, independent study through journals or other professional publications, coaching/mentorship, and personal time spent working on career-related research and development. I expect my doctor to spend at least some time during the week while not seeing patients and attending to administrative tasks browsing professional journals to stay abreast of the the state of the medical art. I don't understand why there is a reflexive revulsion to software developers having a github where they throw up stuff they've tried out. Unless software development is less of a professional occupation and more like wage-slave drudgery. Grocery store cashiers don't typically spend their down time reading the quarterly "Proceedings of the Supermarket Checkout Professional" to stay up-to-date on cash register developments. Civil engineers do typically read civil engineering journals in their spare time, at least all of the ones I know do. A few nights per week, for a little while, they'll sit in their recliner after dinner and page through a civil engineering magazine and occasionally jot things down in a notebook that interest them. I don't think programmers are exposed to a level of stress that requires more "rest and recovery" than a physician.
onion2k 7y ago
If you read the "making money" numbers as how much you could make from a side project, remember that the values appear to be revenue and not profit.
5trokerac3 7y ago
If you've never done a side project, I would definitely recommend the experience. That being said, the people I know who always have to have something software and/or business related on the side are stretched thinner than anyone else I know. I've gotten the most mileage out of the extracurricular pursuits that have the least to do with programming - usually those around art or sports. When I have an interesting idea for a technical side project I pursue it, but when I was in a phase where I felt obligated to do so, it brought more stress than enjoyment.
hugg 7y ago
More like, "Why I feel like I should have a side project"
jpm_sd 7y ago
Might as well title it "Why there should be more hours in the day"
rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
Is anyone else working full time and getting a degree part time? I’m a year away from my masters and it’s just been grueling, especially given that the government sees no difference in terms of taxes whether my tuition is paid directly by my employer or if they just gave me a $20,000 check every year and I ran it straight to the bursar on my own accord, so I’ve been screwed for money and time for it seems like as long as I can remember. I really want to do side projects (I’m getting a degree in machine learning and google colab is free) but I have a job to go to, classwork to do, tests to study for, groceries to shop for and dinner to cook because I can’t afford instacart or delivery...and then I read posts like this about the joys of side projects. It’s really depressing.
- Traubenfuchs 7y ago
  I am in the last year of my master degree and I have been working for 7 years. The pressure from both work and studies have left deep scars in my body and soul.
  - rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
    This attempt on my education has left me scarred and deformed...but my resolve...actually that’s pretty worn down too. I don’t think there’s enough discussion in spaces like this on how hard it is to continue education while working full time. Working full time is already hard enough. Life is hard enough. We in tech like to pretend that ours is the most meritocratic of industries, but we also contend with job postings that wouldn’t dare a second glance at a candidate without an advanced degree next to their name. I just wanted a skill set that couldn’t be as easily outsourced or replaced by H1-Bs so I could make art with A.I. Shit’s crushing.
- roland35 7y ago
  I did a masters in Electrical Engineering while working full time, it took me 4 years. Luckily I wasn't married or had kids at the time, but my school was next door to my office so it was easy enough to get back and forth for night classes. It did take up all my free time for those years though. I wouldn't stress about doing more than you are right now! Getting a degree is just as good if not better than any side project! Take a long term look at the skills you want to develop and maybe map out how to get there after the degree is finished. Good luck!
mibzman 7y ago
Alright, I have many thoughts on this. In summary, this article says: "I like side projects! I have done a bunch of them, and here are the reasons why you should do them too: 1. You can make money 2. They're a gateway drug to entrepreneurship 3. You can learn new skills, including business skills 4. They look good on a resume/when networking 5. You can learn about yourself 6. Work with friends/make new ones” I don’t think there is anything _wrong_ with this article, but I think it misses the mark a bit. In my experience there are 3 reasons to work on a side project: 1. Learning- picking up a specific skill you didn’t have before. 2. Experience- doing more programming in total (making you more experienced). 3. Fun- sometimes programming is a fun thing to do! I think if you don’t really hit at least one of those, you shouldn’t be doing side projects. On some days I take the even stronger position that unless you are trying to make a career change or you really find programming fun, you should not be doing side projects. Making money can be part of it, but as the author says it can't really be the driving force of a side project. If making money is your goal, I would argue that that isn't a side project, it's a small business and should be treated as such. It’s also worth thinking about what value you get out of which parts of side projects. You can hit all those goals without actually finishing and releasing your project. I see a lot of devs not bother starting projects when they hit all 3 reasons, because they don’t want to polish their project into a full product. I don’t want to go off too much here, I blog at length about side projects at https://weeklyproject.club https://weeklyproject.club , and I wrote an article recently about this phenomenon at https://weeklyproject.club/articles/finish/ https://weeklyproject.club/articles/finish/
rb808 7y ago
I really think with a proper full time job working long hours its unrealistic to spend much time on any side project. Its much healthier to try to spend time with friends and family, or hobbies. If you have young children there is little chance. What everyone should strive for is the side project at work. Making new tools, monitoring systems, refactoring some library, user friendly applications, experimenting with new languages. Google is famous for the 20% project, but most people can get away with spending a few hours a week on whatever they want while working. If you deliver something useful its also a good way of getting recognition.
- robohoe 7y ago
  Agreed - having a pet project at work can really make you well known. It's far more realistic since you're already in the working mode in your brain. At the end of the long day you could not get me to code anything anymore. But while I'm at work I still have some mental strength left to do the code gymnastics. Who knows, that pet project might get picked up by the enterprise as a product or an internal tool that others might use. In my past experience, some of the pet project dashboards that I made to make my life easier have been picked up by higher ups since they improved troubleshooting/time to recovery metrics.
- baxtr 7y ago
  I really think it depends. You would not say that it’s a bad idea if someone did more sport, started a new language or went hiking. The point is: it might give you a lot of energy and doesn’t feel like an extra burden, and, may potentially develop into something bigger. In any case it’s better than binge watching Netflix
  - MS90 7y ago
    But sports, languages, hiking, etc. are all different activities. I'm already coding at work 40+ hours a week, the last thing I want to do when I get home is code even more.
    - johnward 7y ago
ainar-g 7y ago
A very much related article, which can even be considered a response to the articles like OP of sorts, is “I Can't Do Anything for Fun Anymore”[1][2] by Dave Bennett. I seriously recommend reading it. [1] https://www.bennettnotes.com/post/making-money-out-of-every-hobby/ https://www.bennettnotes.com/post/making-money-out-of-every-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19727156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19727156
art4ur 7y ago
I've never understood the grind culture. When I'm not at work there are a millions things I'd rather do than more work. I know some people who are always working. I can't. I need down time.
chooseaname 7y ago
I don't have side projects. I don't really want one. What I do is satisfy my intellectual curiosity. I've always been very curious how things work. If I see an app with a widget that does something, I will (try to) recreate it. I'll then move on to the next curiosity. I like protocols, so maybe I'll implement a minimalist IRC server. Then move on. I don't fully flesh out these applications. I do the minimum I need to understand and learn and satisfy myself and then move on. I am curious about so many things, I don't have time to have a side project. Another thing is, I love reading code, so if I see an Open Source project that does something really interesting, I'll read the code. If there's a particularly tricky piece of code, I'll print it out, grab a sharp pencil and go sit on the back porch to trace through it and understand it. I don't do side projects. I don't have a github account. But I do code a lot. And I do read a lot of code.
- foobarrio 7y ago
  I end up doing exactly the same thing though I start with the intent of starting a project. What usually happens is there is no particular algo or technique I wanted to explore and once I do that I lose interest and feel bad about never finishing a useful side project. This was especially true with video games when I was younger!
- robohoe 7y ago
  Would satisfying one's curiosity count as an extracurricular activity on a CV? For example, I love learning about how airplanes work. I spent this weekend reading about Boeing 737 bleed air systems and how they power many things on a jetliner. Sure it's not code, but something interesting.
  - non-entity 7y ago
    I don't think so, unfortunately. I think that that sort of thing says something (positive) about a person that the traditional hiring pipeline misses.
- lifeisstillgood 7y ago
  So you have many interesting side projects. You just don't have a consistent approach to self-marketing. That's fine. But a couple of days to set up a blog may pay you back.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
stinos 7y ago
I actually count much of my hobbies as 'side projects' as well even though almost none of them include actual programming. It's something I do which isn't work. And most of them do involve some other kind of skill and labour. And also almost none of them get me any money, and that also usually isn't a main motivator for me. tldr; I sort of agree with the general sentiment here, but feel the article is written a bit too much from personal experience without much more general reflection on the topic and focussing only on programming and not treating other things as side project. Or maybe that's the definition of side project, not sure :)
julee04 7y ago
Wow I love the map on citymayor. What did you use to make it?
- eric_khun 7y ago
  Thanks! it was done with mapbox :)
non-entity 7y ago
I've never been able to get into side projects, but I have recently taken up contributing to open source projects. It was accidental, but I ended up making my first ever real contribution to an open source project after patching a driver to work with some hardware I was too lazy / cheap to replace. I'm in the process of moving, but I think afterwards I'm going to ramp up my work because that was the first time I generally enjoyed programming in years and it could also have a good impact on my career. I don't have any real friends or family right now so I have plenty of free time.
mumblemumble 7y ago
So, assuming you're early career, I get the idea that you are anxious about your CV and your job security, and you want to build up something of a portfolio that you can show publicly. Me, I'm mid career, and wish I hadn't focused so much on doing more programming in my off time. Most of the side projects I worked on never really came to any sort of long-term fruition, and I'm not even sure that they were that helpful in my career. What really helped was being able to demonstrate domain expertise, and I built that up by becoming less focused on programming, and spending more of my work time just talking to people and understanding their business. There are two big problems with just working on raw programming skills: First, if all you are is a programmer, then you're fungible. The only programming skills that aren't particularly fungible are skills in entrenched-but-uncool languages like COBOL and RPG. The cools ones are cheap; anyone who can stick to a MOOC can build up a portfolio of side projects on popular technologies. On the other hand, domain expertise is very difficult to replace. The resources to build it up typically aren't publicly available, so they're less common. And there are plenty of side projects you can work on that give your brain a break, or at least a change of pace, while still looking good on your CV and opening up job opportunities you might not otherwise have. Lately, for me, it's been learning languages. It's a lot easier to fit into a life, because you can do it while commuting or doing housework. Having a business proficiency can definitely open doors. And, once you get past the beginner stage (which is best undertaken as a solitary pursuit), it's a _great_ social activity.
- lucideer 7y ago
  This is great advice if you are early career and anxious about your CV and job security. I don't believe side-project-as-portfolio is the ideal strategy for career building for most people (though it may be for some). However... > you're early career, I get the idea that you are anxious about your CV and your job security From reading the article, I didn't get this impression about the author at all. I strongly got the impression that the author is mid-career, and that they feel their career has benefitted from side-projects (I still don't necessarily believe this will be the case for most people, but certainly can for some). What about the article gave you that impression? Side note: I think outside of career progression, side-projects have many ancillary benefits and are very worthwhile.
asdkhadsj 7y ago
On this note, I'm setting up an OSS side project (finally going public after a year+ of internal revisions) for many of the reasons cited in this project. It's something I care about. With that said, part of my plan is to have a hosted version of the application - at least until the moderation of content makes me regret it, hah. However, I am concerned about the overhead of both writing and maintaining a complex FOSS project, but also handling [dev]ops of the project. I know enough ops to be dangerous, but not much beyond that. I also know enough to know how little I know. Due to budget constraints, I will likely be hosting this on a very low cost server and exploiting CDN caching/etc very, very heavily - but I do imagine I'll need a cheap VPS. Ie, I don't think I can exploit a fully managed Function as a Service architecture; I think I'll be managing a VPS. So for a low budget project with minimal ops experience, how can I ensure security and safety? What path to growth can I walk, without consuming my time trying to become an expert in [dev]ops?
algodaily 7y ago
I somewhat agree. I've written about this before, but working on AlgoDaily[1] has helped me develop an amazing amount as a software engineer and entrepreneur. I've gotten to work with tech that I don't get to play with at work, learned what really makes a business tick, and have been able to network with many amazing people. At the same time, there's been days that I've had to step back and reflect on the time spent in front of a computer, when I could've been traveling or partying like many peers. It also can be a ton of work on top of your regular job. [1] https://algodaily.com/lessons/getting-your-first-software-job-without-professional-experience#get-experience-via-your-own-projects https://algodaily.com/lessons/getting-your-first-software-jo...
- jpamata 7y ago
  Hey, about algodaily, when are you guys planning to add Java?
FabioBertone 7y ago
I have strong feelings about the "making money" reason. As much as I do like 2-3,000 USD extra in my pocket every year, investing the time directly into getting better skills and better-paid jobs trumps such amounts even if you get just 1% more every year.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  An extra £200 a month before tax -and how much effort doe that require.
rinchik 7y ago
Ah all these comments. I pity those who are in this industry only for money :( It sounds so miserable not to get any joy from your profession . What side project can we talk about if you can't wait to get out of the office, to run away from the code to literally do ANYTHING except coding. What creativity and progress can we talk about when we have a bunch of miserable oompa loompas.
- MS90 7y ago
  I get joy from coding and five years in, my programming job is far and away the best job I've ever had and the most I've ever been paid. That being said, I also realize that there's more to life than writing code. I spend all day at work writing code. The last thing I want to do is go home and write more code. There's an entire world out there that I won't see any of it if I stay inside locked to my computer 24/7. Why does everyone HAVE to have a side project?
  - rinchik 7y ago
    You are ok with your job but there is no passion. That’s what I’m talking about. You don’t have to have a side project. Passion is so rare these days, isn’t it?
    - MS90 7y ago
      I don't think it's rare, it just doesn't always put food on the table.
    - redisman 7y ago
      Passion fades. How long have you been professionally programming?
      - rinchik 7y ago
        Not too long (~9years), and getting used to the absence of passion. Unfortunately. I disagree that passion (if you have one) fades in this industry. There is so much going on! All the time! It touches every domain you can think of! Passion here is rare, but it never fades, its not marriage. You are free to create, and to explore, and to mentor, and to contribute! It’s certainly never boring. And oh boy those passionate discussions, even something as simple as tabs vs spaces, can be so much fun! Picture marriage. But not an ordinary marriage, an extraordinary one! Imagine marriage where you are married to all attractive men in the universe, and you are free to experiment, and have full access to every single one of them! That’s how software development works for me. Eh, I should probably cut a bit on exclamation marks, but I can’t, I’m passionate!
lagadu 7y ago
I already spend 7 to 8 hours a day working on software, the odds that I'll spend a single minute working on anything remotely close to that are close to 0: I have significantly more enjoyable stuff to occupy my time with. Sure, I find my work to be interesting and engaging but there are extremely few activities that I enjoy doing for over 8 hours.
dusted 7y ago
You should ask yourself, does side project bring joy? If it does not, must go out.
player_zero 7y ago
Doing some side projects for a while. Nothing else made me happier and more fulfilling then this. It makes you grow and challenge yourself and opens your eyes to what you can do or be without your employer.
codingdave 7y ago
I agree with some of the points from the article, but I also agree with the people saying to spend your free time with your family and on your hobbies. So I have always had side projects that combine them. I'll write tools that help my family do something together. It used to be mapping tools to help us plan outdoor exploring in the mountains and deserts. Then it was conversion programs to turn photos into craft patterns. Most of those are offline now, too, I just left up a basic cross-stitch one. I turned the others off for the same reason I stopped the mapping tools -- similar tools were popping up everywhere, so I stopped putting my time into it. Now my kids are getting into writing, and I am working on a writing tool that can help them organize their thoughts... which will probably get seen and copied into more robust tools, and then I can turn it off. These projects always go the same way -- they are something cool to help my family, they let me practice new things, I learn more, and some day people with more time surpass my idea with a real product. I really have no problem with this cycle. It seems like everyone involved gets something out of it. And I'm way too old to play the game of every new idea having to have a goal of becoming a startup.
brudgers 7y ago
[random internet advice] Don't should on yourself. Consider the source when should on .
einpoklum 7y ago
Why you should have a side project? So you don't waste all your off-time reading HackerNews comments, that's why...
ThrowMeAwayOkay 7y ago
I feel switching two words around in the article title brings things into better focus: Why Should You Have A Side Project? Ask yourself: - What do you want out of this side project? Money? Fame? Learning? - How would you define success for this side project? - What will you do if it succeeds? (unlikely) - What will you do if it fails? (likely) You need to chart a rough path. Creating something open source and aiming for popularity and notoriety is much different than hoping to make enough money to quit your day job from your side project. You end up in two vastly different places if you succeed. If you fail, you end up in the same place. Plan and be ok with both end results.
Zaheer 7y ago
www.Levels.fyi started out as a side project! One benefit of starting out as a side project is it allowed us the flexibility and freedom to focus on user features without needing to worry about revenue.
melvinroest 7y ago
I'm currently full-time on my side project as I'm done with graduating, tired from searching for the right job (it has been months) and I just need to do some actual coding, to get it out my system or something. It is a code vacation, because when job hunting, I'm not coding that much. I'll try to be brief: 1. I am passionate about digital creation again What I find really cool is that learning to program has been worth it. It has taken one bachelor and 2 masters, but it has been worth it. Studying computer science has been worth it. I'm capable of deep diving if I have to, and otherwise just stay on a web stack flying on a high level zipping code together by gluing npm packages but creating my own ones if I have to. 2. Passion has downsides I'm seeing my friends less, I'm seeing my girlfriend less. I feel that everyone around me tolerates my behavior, but I don't suspect they like it too much as I'm thinking 24/7 about this thing. It also makes me a bit mentally absent when I'm with them. The issue is, I can't help it. IMO, it's a good lesson on how passion is overrated as the downsides of pure passion are not being discussed. My sleep (and code quality) is terrible as I'm too excited to get up again, and the problem is: I can sustain this a lot longer than I thought I could. 3. It allows me to do some much needed self exploration Why do I like this? Why am I now procrastinating on creating the backend but am neck deep in learning how to rearchitect the backend to a p2p architecture (easy: because p2p web apps are more unusual ;-) ). I'm getting a lot of questions and answers that I need. 4. It feels like a game I think the reason it feels like a game is because I have my own agency. I get to decide to solve a problem that I think is worth solving for whatever reason. That type of agency is quite common in games: you're in a big world with tons of quests and you can decide what to do (even abandon the whole quest line!). --- All in all: doing your own side project on a full-time basis is a much needed and interesting exploration for me. For 9 years people told me what I should do. It's interesting to see what I do when I tell myself what to do. It's a much needed break from just doing what other people want.
tech_dreamer 7y ago
I had been been working for 18 hours a day (for a duration of 1 month) - this is what happened to me. 1. Woke up at 4 am - 15 minutes - planning and thinking about the schedule for the rest of the day. 2. Review the code I wrote previous day (30 mins)(though I was the only one developing this I do PRs :)(iOS mobile app - swift for front end, golang for microflow, docker, k8s and google cloud) 3. Refactor and add features for the next 2 hours. 4.Glance through NYTimes(liberal left), Fox(republic) RT, South China Morning Post, Global Times(CN), Economic Times(IN) and DW(EU) to understand where world stands. 5 Get ready for office (train 30 mins) - attend the standup - provide and listen updates - fix issues , develop features - (NodeJS & Java) 5. Thankfully all the office meetings - are scheduled only on Mondays. 6. 5:30 leave office, get into train and reach home at 7:20 pm (walk from train station to home - 2 km approx. - and take a shower 7. Play with kids, read stories (and fight with wife :)) 8. Family prayer and got to bed. 9. On Fridays - have a beer or a glass of wine after prayer. 10. Saturday & Sunday - take children for extra curricular activities, shopping (mostly groceries and house hold items. After one month - I couldn't carry on with waking up at 4:00 am - couldn't concentrate at work - getting irritated easily etc. I switched to waking up at 6:00 am. Side projects are possible - but there is a cost :)
sloopy543 7y ago
Well first of all, we need to abandon the concept of the 40 hour work week. Very few people are actually working all of those 40 hours and even if they were, it's just a bad way to work for any client or company. In all likelihood, the people managing you aren't technical and have a very small window into the work you're actually doing. On top of that, even if you can outperform your colleagues by as much as 200% by working more or working "harder", there's no point in doing so because our work world doesn't really understand how to deal with exceptional individuals. You'll just get 15% more pay and some meaningless title for all of that hard work anyway. So you work up to the point where people tell you "that's amazing", then you go work on side projects. Simple customer management. They're happy, you're happy. No more exchanging hours for dollars, we all get what we want. Just focus on what matters, both for your own longterm happiness (building skills, scratching an itch, whatever) and for the happiness of your customers (they won't get their project completed if you're burned out and disengaged). Reject the 40 hours. This isn't a factory and we aren't slaves. It will all be fine.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  I agree! But shame we have contracts that say stuff like work you do at work is the property of the company, and you need to be at work for 40 hours per week. I'm sure individuals on HN do negotiate, and working remote gives you this freedom probably, but for most of us it doesn't seem realistic.
  - sloopy543 7y ago
    My only advice is to get your finances together and have a giant ball of "FU" money so you can afford to quit situations where you're wasting your time. Software engineers have the luxury of making large sums of money, so it shouldn't take too long to get a few hundred K together. Things start to look much more rosy after that. Just remember to think like a business person. They're doing that. Why not you?
    - quickthrower2 7y ago
      Saving "A few 100k" is one solution, probably for the American FAANG (or equivalent) engineers. But there are other solutions. Frugality helps - less money is required if you live in a shared house or a couch (you can invest in property at the same time but not live in it). Having a life partner helps, one of you can have a job at all times, so one of you has the FU card. Other sources of income. I think coding side projects are hard to make work, but real estate is more doable (but there is more risk and patience required). Even with none of that, a good CV, interviewing technique, keeping up with the interview puzzles, and living somewhere with plenty of jobs will give you a FU card to your current company (but not the industry).

263 points by guillaumec 7y ago

No. Your free time should be about rest and recovery, not about grinding out even more code. Even if it looks bad on your CV

Insanity 7y ago
Your free time should be about enjoyment. If you enjoy doing some code that is fine. If you enjoy playing on your PS4 or (hopefully) enjoy spending time with your kids, that is fine to. You're an adult, do what you want in your free time. Edit: softened the response a bit because I do agree with the parent that you also need some rest and relaxation. :P
- blub 7y ago
  Do what you want, but keep in mind that spending too much time coding can harm your back, eyes, wrists and so on. 8 hours per day is already pushing it.
  - phito 7y ago
    I don't get why everyone here seems to be assuming that a side project = coding...
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      Because that is what head hunters and employers expect from their "passionate developer for...".
    - quickthrower2 7y ago
      In that case side project = what? Anything? Netflix binge?
  - Insanity 7y ago
    Yeah getting some sports during your free time seems to be a good idea. Will alleviate a lot of the physical issues!
outime 7y ago
Everybody is different and some people may prefer to spend their free time in fun side projects. Nothing wrong with that.
asdfman123 7y ago
But what could be more rejuvenating, not to mention fulfilling, than spending your free time working on your career and making more money? It's a win-win. Work, work, work until you die!
mattlondon 7y ago
I agree to this to a certain extent. This view that everyone must be passionate about programming is dangerous. What does "passion" mean - working an extra 4-8 hours every day on some random side-project to prove to a hypothetical future employer that you are "passionate"? I don't know if that is what "passionate" means, but I know that for junior people I have in my team that I will repeatedly bang home the need for work-life balance if I ever catch them sending emails or submitting code late into the evening. That said, if you enjoy spending all your work time coding and your spare time also coding, sure fine go ahead (and I think that probably all of us go through this from time to time). But I really don't think we should be encouraging that you should be trying to hustle a genuine revenue-generating side business as well as your normal 9 to 5. I fear that it is unhealthy to set these expectations that you need to be working two jobs simultaneously.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  I don’t think anything done to prove something to a hypothetical outsider is done out of passion. I do all kinds of random side things (fewer now that we have kids). None have a purpose to prove anything to a future employer (or anyone else beyond sometimes my family [demonstrating to my kids the value, or even mere possibility, of doing more than passively compnsuming, for example])
chrisseaton 7y ago
Why are some people so strongly opposed to others using their free time to better themselves and stretch their minds a bit? Many of humanities greatest scientific discoveries and works of art were 'side projects'. It's better than lounging around like a lemon doing nothing with your time.
- mattlondon 7y ago
  Do that if you want to, but I worry that people feel like they should be doing this because that is what "everyone else is doing" or that you need to because otherwise you wont get a job without revenue-generating side projects etc. We're setting expectations for and normalising something which is not normal IMHO. By all means do side projects if you want, but don't feel compelled.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    Yeah, this breeds insecurity among those who don't yet have a strong enough base to believe in themselves and their abilities, and even more FOMO isn't really something to be encouraged.
- tylermac1 7y ago
  The people that I see react most negatively to the suggestion of having a "side project" are those that either don't enjoy programming or don't have time to outside of work. That being said, I think the main point that most people fail to get across about "side projects" is that they don't have to be programming. I play music with a band in the area and would very much consider that to be a side project. It would be a much healthier exercise if we focused the narrative on doing anything you enjoy outside of work.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    Yeah I'm writing a local history book as one of my side projects. Maybe I should lie on the sofa like a slob instead, but it doesn't seem as healthy or fun to me.
  - 7y ago
british_india 7y ago
There will be plenty of time for rest when you're taking the dirt nap. Claim every hour of the day until then.
relativeadv 7y ago
A tangent: I also think that rest & recovery should be about just that. Too often I see articles extolling the importance of R&R to make you a better, refreshed, worker. I see popular books like Digital Minimalism urging us to get away from our phones and newsfeeds but it all amounts to some grand productivity hack. Disconnect, relax, refresh yourself so that you can hit the ground running on monday and outperform others. R&R can be almost anything, but don't make it look like work and certainly don't do it because you think it'll make you a better capitalist.
roland35 7y ago
I do sometimes worry about that, like when applying to jobs I am competing against other people who are out there doing side projects and contributing to open source. Hopefully employers don't place too much weight on those factors for my sake! I like to refer to my kids as my side projects! As they get older I would like to do things together which to me seems like the best option.
voidmain0001 7y ago
If a side project _is_ recommended or advisable, then perhaps it should be about diversification. If my main job is software development, then my side project should be import/export. Branching into different areas will provide the growth and understanding of self that the author speaks about. Plus diversification will help me when AI takes over my coding job and I'm left jobless.
boomlinde 7y ago
I agree with your point that free time should be about rest and recovery, but I think that programming can be a fulfilling and engaging recreational activity that aids in recovery. Maybe not for you, but definitely for myself. When I program at home, I don't "grind out even more code" in the sense that it's in any way a continuation of what I do at my day job, more than watching TV, reading or browsing the web would be. I work on totally different projects, unrelated to what I do at work, and I do it for myself under no pressure to perform. The playing field is very different.
baron_harkonnen 7y ago
I'm guessing the people complaining have never had side projects of their own. One of the huge benefits of side projects isn't to pad out your CV, but to decouple your career and your professional life from your employer. When work sucks family, friends and hobbies can be great at taking your mind off of your work problems, but they can't really free you from the fact that one company controls not only your income, but your entire professional identity. When you do work that is recognized outside of your office, you own that work and shitty managers can't take that away. Not everyone has to be start their own business, but I highly recommend that everyone "owns" something related to their livelihood outside of their 9-5. It means that friends, family and hobbies don't become merely a means of "recovery" from an oppressive job, but things that I can honestly enjoy more because I have an identity outside of my employer.
- player_zero 7y ago
  Agree with that. Having a few side projects really made me happier.
redisman 7y ago
40h of work. 10h side projects. 5h leetcode and interview prep. Ah, what a life!
kilo_bravo_3 7y ago
Competent lawyers, doctors, engineers, and teachers spend time improving and honing their craft through continuing professional development (CPD). Sometimes it is required by licensing and professional bodies for those occupations, other times it is optional. Sometimes it is compensated by employers and other times it is not. It can include: participating in conferences, meetings at informal local professional organizations, independent study through journals or other professional publications, coaching/mentorship, and personal time spent working on career-related research and development. I expect my doctor to spend at least some time during the week while not seeing patients and attending to administrative tasks browsing professional journals to stay abreast of the the state of the medical art. I don't understand why there is a reflexive revulsion to software developers having a github where they throw up stuff they've tried out. Unless software development is less of a professional occupation and more like wage-slave drudgery. Grocery store cashiers don't typically spend their down time reading the quarterly "Proceedings of the Supermarket Checkout Professional" to stay up-to-date on cash register developments. Civil engineers do typically read civil engineering journals in their spare time, at least all of the ones I know do. A few nights per week, for a little while, they'll sit in their recliner after dinner and page through a civil engineering magazine and occasionally jot things down in a notebook that interest them. I don't think programmers are exposed to a level of stress that requires more "rest and recovery" than a physician.

onion2k 7y ago

If you read the "making money" numbers as how much you could make from a side project, remember that the values appear to be revenue and not profit.

5trokerac3 7y ago

If you've never done a side project, I would definitely recommend the experience. That being said, the people I know who always have to have something software and/or business related on the side are stretched thinner than anyone else I know. I've gotten the most mileage out of the extracurricular pursuits that have the least to do with programming - usually those around art or sports. When I have an interesting idea for a technical side project I pursue it, but when I was in a phase where I felt obligated to do so, it brought more stress than enjoyment.

hugg 7y ago

More like, "Why I feel like I should have a side project"

jpm_sd 7y ago

Might as well title it "Why there should be more hours in the day"

rm_-rf_slash 7y ago

Is anyone else working full time and getting a degree part time? I’m a year away from my masters and it’s just been grueling, especially given that the government sees no difference in terms of taxes whether my tuition is paid directly by my employer or if they just gave me a $20,000 check every year and I ran it straight to the bursar on my own accord, so I’ve been screwed for money and time for it seems like as long as I can remember. I really want to do side projects (I’m getting a degree in machine learning and google colab is free) but I have a job to go to, classwork to do, tests to study for, groceries to shop for and dinner to cook because I can’t afford instacart or delivery...and then I read posts like this about the joys of side projects. It’s really depressing.

Traubenfuchs 7y ago
I am in the last year of my master degree and I have been working for 7 years. The pressure from both work and studies have left deep scars in my body and soul.
- rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
  This attempt on my education has left me scarred and deformed...but my resolve...actually that’s pretty worn down too. I don’t think there’s enough discussion in spaces like this on how hard it is to continue education while working full time. Working full time is already hard enough. Life is hard enough. We in tech like to pretend that ours is the most meritocratic of industries, but we also contend with job postings that wouldn’t dare a second glance at a candidate without an advanced degree next to their name. I just wanted a skill set that couldn’t be as easily outsourced or replaced by H1-Bs so I could make art with A.I. Shit’s crushing.
roland35 7y ago
I did a masters in Electrical Engineering while working full time, it took me 4 years. Luckily I wasn't married or had kids at the time, but my school was next door to my office so it was easy enough to get back and forth for night classes. It did take up all my free time for those years though. I wouldn't stress about doing more than you are right now! Getting a degree is just as good if not better than any side project! Take a long term look at the skills you want to develop and maybe map out how to get there after the degree is finished. Good luck!

mibzman 7y ago

Alright, I have many thoughts on this. In summary, this article says: "I like side projects! I have done a bunch of them, and here are the reasons why you should do them too: 1. You can make money 2. They're a gateway drug to entrepreneurship 3. You can learn new skills, including business skills 4. They look good on a resume/when networking 5. You can learn about yourself 6. Work with friends/make new ones” I don’t think there is anything _wrong_ with this article, but I think it misses the mark a bit. In my experience there are 3 reasons to work on a side project: 1. Learning- picking up a specific skill you didn’t have before. 2. Experience- doing more programming in total (making you more experienced). 3. Fun- sometimes programming is a fun thing to do! I think if you don’t really hit at least one of those, you shouldn’t be doing side projects. On some days I take the even stronger position that unless you are trying to make a career change or you really find programming fun, you should not be doing side projects. Making money can be part of it, but as the author says it can't really be the driving force of a side project. If making money is your goal, I would argue that that isn't a side project, it's a small business and should be treated as such. It’s also worth thinking about what value you get out of which parts of side projects. You can hit all those goals without actually finishing and releasing your project. I see a lot of devs not bother starting projects when they hit all 3 reasons, because they don’t want to polish their project into a full product. I don’t want to go off too much here, I blog at length about side projects at https://weeklyproject.club https://weeklyproject.club , and I wrote an article recently about this phenomenon at https://weeklyproject.club/articles/finish/ https://weeklyproject.club/articles/finish/

rb808 7y ago

I really think with a proper full time job working long hours its unrealistic to spend much time on any side project. Its much healthier to try to spend time with friends and family, or hobbies. If you have young children there is little chance. What everyone should strive for is the side project at work. Making new tools, monitoring systems, refactoring some library, user friendly applications, experimenting with new languages. Google is famous for the 20% project, but most people can get away with spending a few hours a week on whatever they want while working. If you deliver something useful its also a good way of getting recognition.

robohoe 7y ago
Agreed - having a pet project at work can really make you well known. It's far more realistic since you're already in the working mode in your brain. At the end of the long day you could not get me to code anything anymore. But while I'm at work I still have some mental strength left to do the code gymnastics. Who knows, that pet project might get picked up by the enterprise as a product or an internal tool that others might use. In my past experience, some of the pet project dashboards that I made to make my life easier have been picked up by higher ups since they improved troubleshooting/time to recovery metrics.
baxtr 7y ago
I really think it depends. You would not say that it’s a bad idea if someone did more sport, started a new language or went hiking. The point is: it might give you a lot of energy and doesn’t feel like an extra burden, and, may potentially develop into something bigger. In any case it’s better than binge watching Netflix
- MS90 7y ago
  But sports, languages, hiking, etc. are all different activities. I'm already coding at work 40+ hours a week, the last thing I want to do when I get home is code even more.
  - johnward 7y ago

ainar-g 7y ago

A very much related article, which can even be considered a response to the articles like OP of sorts, is “I Can't Do Anything for Fun Anymore”[1][2] by Dave Bennett. I seriously recommend reading it. [1] https://www.bennettnotes.com/post/making-money-out-of-every-hobby/ https://www.bennettnotes.com/post/making-money-out-of-every-... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19727156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19727156

art4ur 7y ago

I've never understood the grind culture. When I'm not at work there are a millions things I'd rather do than more work. I know some people who are always working. I can't. I need down time.

chooseaname 7y ago

I don't have side projects. I don't really want one. What I do is satisfy my intellectual curiosity. I've always been very curious how things work. If I see an app with a widget that does something, I will (try to) recreate it. I'll then move on to the next curiosity. I like protocols, so maybe I'll implement a minimalist IRC server. Then move on. I don't fully flesh out these applications. I do the minimum I need to understand and learn and satisfy myself and then move on. I am curious about so many things, I don't have time to have a side project. Another thing is, I love reading code, so if I see an Open Source project that does something really interesting, I'll read the code. If there's a particularly tricky piece of code, I'll print it out, grab a sharp pencil and go sit on the back porch to trace through it and understand it. I don't do side projects. I don't have a github account. But I do code a lot. And I do read a lot of code.

foobarrio 7y ago
I end up doing exactly the same thing though I start with the intent of starting a project. What usually happens is there is no particular algo or technique I wanted to explore and once I do that I lose interest and feel bad about never finishing a useful side project. This was especially true with video games when I was younger!
robohoe 7y ago
Would satisfying one's curiosity count as an extracurricular activity on a CV? For example, I love learning about how airplanes work. I spent this weekend reading about Boeing 737 bleed air systems and how they power many things on a jetliner. Sure it's not code, but something interesting.
- non-entity 7y ago
  I don't think so, unfortunately. I think that that sort of thing says something (positive) about a person that the traditional hiring pipeline misses.
lifeisstillgood 7y ago
So you have many interesting side projects. You just don't have a consistent approach to self-marketing. That's fine. But a couple of days to set up a blog may pay you back.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

stinos 7y ago

I actually count much of my hobbies as 'side projects' as well even though almost none of them include actual programming. It's something I do which isn't work. And most of them do involve some other kind of skill and labour. And also almost none of them get me any money, and that also usually isn't a main motivator for me. tldr; I sort of agree with the general sentiment here, but feel the article is written a bit too much from personal experience without much more general reflection on the topic and focussing only on programming and not treating other things as side project. Or maybe that's the definition of side project, not sure :)

julee04 7y ago

Wow I love the map on citymayor. What did you use to make it?

eric_khun 7y ago
Thanks! it was done with mapbox :)

non-entity 7y ago

I've never been able to get into side projects, but I have recently taken up contributing to open source projects. It was accidental, but I ended up making my first ever real contribution to an open source project after patching a driver to work with some hardware I was too lazy / cheap to replace. I'm in the process of moving, but I think afterwards I'm going to ramp up my work because that was the first time I generally enjoyed programming in years and it could also have a good impact on my career. I don't have any real friends or family right now so I have plenty of free time.

mumblemumble 7y ago

So, assuming you're early career, I get the idea that you are anxious about your CV and your job security, and you want to build up something of a portfolio that you can show publicly. Me, I'm mid career, and wish I hadn't focused so much on doing more programming in my off time. Most of the side projects I worked on never really came to any sort of long-term fruition, and I'm not even sure that they were that helpful in my career. What really helped was being able to demonstrate domain expertise, and I built that up by becoming less focused on programming, and spending more of my work time just talking to people and understanding their business. There are two big problems with just working on raw programming skills: First, if all you are is a programmer, then you're fungible. The only programming skills that aren't particularly fungible are skills in entrenched-but-uncool languages like COBOL and RPG. The cools ones are cheap; anyone who can stick to a MOOC can build up a portfolio of side projects on popular technologies. On the other hand, domain expertise is very difficult to replace. The resources to build it up typically aren't publicly available, so they're less common. And there are plenty of side projects you can work on that give your brain a break, or at least a change of pace, while still looking good on your CV and opening up job opportunities you might not otherwise have. Lately, for me, it's been learning languages. It's a lot easier to fit into a life, because you can do it while commuting or doing housework. Having a business proficiency can definitely open doors. And, once you get past the beginner stage (which is best undertaken as a solitary pursuit), it's a _great_ social activity.

lucideer 7y ago
This is great advice if you are early career and anxious about your CV and job security. I don't believe side-project-as-portfolio is the ideal strategy for career building for most people (though it may be for some). However... > you're early career, I get the idea that you are anxious about your CV and your job security From reading the article, I didn't get this impression about the author at all. I strongly got the impression that the author is mid-career, and that they feel their career has benefitted from side-projects (I still don't necessarily believe this will be the case for most people, but certainly can for some). What about the article gave you that impression? Side note: I think outside of career progression, side-projects have many ancillary benefits and are very worthwhile.

asdkhadsj 7y ago

On this note, I'm setting up an OSS side project (finally going public after a year+ of internal revisions) for many of the reasons cited in this project. It's something I care about. With that said, part of my plan is to have a hosted version of the application - at least until the moderation of content makes me regret it, hah. However, I am concerned about the overhead of both writing and maintaining a complex FOSS project, but also handling [dev]ops of the project. I know enough ops to be dangerous, but not much beyond that. I also know enough to know how little I know. Due to budget constraints, I will likely be hosting this on a very low cost server and exploiting CDN caching/etc very, very heavily - but I do imagine I'll need a cheap VPS. Ie, I don't think I can exploit a fully managed Function as a Service architecture; I think I'll be managing a VPS. So for a low budget project with minimal ops experience, how can I ensure security and safety? What path to growth can I walk, without consuming my time trying to become an expert in [dev]ops?

algodaily 7y ago

I somewhat agree. I've written about this before, but working on AlgoDaily[1] has helped me develop an amazing amount as a software engineer and entrepreneur. I've gotten to work with tech that I don't get to play with at work, learned what really makes a business tick, and have been able to network with many amazing people. At the same time, there's been days that I've had to step back and reflect on the time spent in front of a computer, when I could've been traveling or partying like many peers. It also can be a ton of work on top of your regular job. [1] https://algodaily.com/lessons/getting-your-first-software-job-without-professional-experience#get-experience-via-your-own-projects https://algodaily.com/lessons/getting-your-first-software-jo...

jpamata 7y ago
Hey, about algodaily, when are you guys planning to add Java?

FabioBertone 7y ago

I have strong feelings about the "making money" reason. As much as I do like 2-3,000 USD extra in my pocket every year, investing the time directly into getting better skills and better-paid jobs trumps such amounts even if you get just 1% more every year.

C1sc0cat 7y ago
An extra £200 a month before tax -and how much effort doe that require.

rinchik 7y ago

Ah all these comments. I pity those who are in this industry only for money :( It sounds so miserable not to get any joy from your profession . What side project can we talk about if you can't wait to get out of the office, to run away from the code to literally do ANYTHING except coding. What creativity and progress can we talk about when we have a bunch of miserable oompa loompas.

MS90 7y ago
I get joy from coding and five years in, my programming job is far and away the best job I've ever had and the most I've ever been paid. That being said, I also realize that there's more to life than writing code. I spend all day at work writing code. The last thing I want to do is go home and write more code. There's an entire world out there that I won't see any of it if I stay inside locked to my computer 24/7. Why does everyone HAVE to have a side project?
- rinchik 7y ago
  You are ok with your job but there is no passion. That’s what I’m talking about. You don’t have to have a side project. Passion is so rare these days, isn’t it?
  - MS90 7y ago
    I don't think it's rare, it just doesn't always put food on the table.
  - redisman 7y ago
    Passion fades. How long have you been professionally programming?
    - rinchik 7y ago
      Not too long (~9years), and getting used to the absence of passion. Unfortunately. I disagree that passion (if you have one) fades in this industry. There is so much going on! All the time! It touches every domain you can think of! Passion here is rare, but it never fades, its not marriage. You are free to create, and to explore, and to mentor, and to contribute! It’s certainly never boring. And oh boy those passionate discussions, even something as simple as tabs vs spaces, can be so much fun! Picture marriage. But not an ordinary marriage, an extraordinary one! Imagine marriage where you are married to all attractive men in the universe, and you are free to experiment, and have full access to every single one of them! That’s how software development works for me. Eh, I should probably cut a bit on exclamation marks, but I can’t, I’m passionate!

lagadu 7y ago

I already spend 7 to 8 hours a day working on software, the odds that I'll spend a single minute working on anything remotely close to that are close to 0: I have significantly more enjoyable stuff to occupy my time with. Sure, I find my work to be interesting and engaging but there are extremely few activities that I enjoy doing for over 8 hours.

dusted 7y ago

You should ask yourself, does side project bring joy? If it does not, must go out.

player_zero 7y ago

Doing some side projects for a while. Nothing else made me happier and more fulfilling then this. It makes you grow and challenge yourself and opens your eyes to what you can do or be without your employer.

codingdave 7y ago

I agree with some of the points from the article, but I also agree with the people saying to spend your free time with your family and on your hobbies. So I have always had side projects that combine them. I'll write tools that help my family do something together. It used to be mapping tools to help us plan outdoor exploring in the mountains and deserts. Then it was conversion programs to turn photos into craft patterns. Most of those are offline now, too, I just left up a basic cross-stitch one. I turned the others off for the same reason I stopped the mapping tools -- similar tools were popping up everywhere, so I stopped putting my time into it. Now my kids are getting into writing, and I am working on a writing tool that can help them organize their thoughts... which will probably get seen and copied into more robust tools, and then I can turn it off. These projects always go the same way -- they are something cool to help my family, they let me practice new things, I learn more, and some day people with more time surpass my idea with a real product. I really have no problem with this cycle. It seems like everyone involved gets something out of it. And I'm way too old to play the game of every new idea having to have a goal of becoming a startup.

brudgers 7y ago

[random internet advice] Don't should on yourself. Consider the source when should on .

einpoklum 7y ago

Why you should have a side project? So you don't waste all your off-time reading HackerNews comments, that's why...

ThrowMeAwayOkay 7y ago

I feel switching two words around in the article title brings things into better focus: Why Should You Have A Side Project? Ask yourself: - What do you want out of this side project? Money? Fame? Learning? - How would you define success for this side project? - What will you do if it succeeds? (unlikely) - What will you do if it fails? (likely) You need to chart a rough path. Creating something open source and aiming for popularity and notoriety is much different than hoping to make enough money to quit your day job from your side project. You end up in two vastly different places if you succeed. If you fail, you end up in the same place. Plan and be ok with both end results.

Zaheer 7y ago

www.Levels.fyi started out as a side project! One benefit of starting out as a side project is it allowed us the flexibility and freedom to focus on user features without needing to worry about revenue.

melvinroest 7y ago

I'm currently full-time on my side project as I'm done with graduating, tired from searching for the right job (it has been months) and I just need to do some actual coding, to get it out my system or something. It is a code vacation, because when job hunting, I'm not coding that much. I'll try to be brief: 1. I am passionate about digital creation again What I find really cool is that learning to program has been worth it. It has taken one bachelor and 2 masters, but it has been worth it. Studying computer science has been worth it. I'm capable of deep diving if I have to, and otherwise just stay on a web stack flying on a high level zipping code together by gluing npm packages but creating my own ones if I have to. 2. Passion has downsides I'm seeing my friends less, I'm seeing my girlfriend less. I feel that everyone around me tolerates my behavior, but I don't suspect they like it too much as I'm thinking 24/7 about this thing. It also makes me a bit mentally absent when I'm with them. The issue is, I can't help it. IMO, it's a good lesson on how passion is overrated as the downsides of pure passion are not being discussed. My sleep (and code quality) is terrible as I'm too excited to get up again, and the problem is: I can sustain this a lot longer than I thought I could. 3. It allows me to do some much needed self exploration Why do I like this? Why am I now procrastinating on creating the backend but am neck deep in learning how to rearchitect the backend to a p2p architecture (easy: because p2p web apps are more unusual ;-) ). I'm getting a lot of questions and answers that I need. 4. It feels like a game I think the reason it feels like a game is because I have my own agency. I get to decide to solve a problem that I think is worth solving for whatever reason. That type of agency is quite common in games: you're in a big world with tons of quests and you can decide what to do (even abandon the whole quest line!). --- All in all: doing your own side project on a full-time basis is a much needed and interesting exploration for me. For 9 years people told me what I should do. It's interesting to see what I do when I tell myself what to do. It's a much needed break from just doing what other people want.

tech_dreamer 7y ago

I had been been working for 18 hours a day (for a duration of 1 month) - this is what happened to me. 1. Woke up at 4 am - 15 minutes - planning and thinking about the schedule for the rest of the day. 2. Review the code I wrote previous day (30 mins)(though I was the only one developing this I do PRs :)(iOS mobile app - swift for front end, golang for microflow, docker, k8s and google cloud) 3. Refactor and add features for the next 2 hours. 4.Glance through NYTimes(liberal left), Fox(republic) RT, South China Morning Post, Global Times(CN), Economic Times(IN) and DW(EU) to understand where world stands. 5 Get ready for office (train 30 mins) - attend the standup - provide and listen updates - fix issues , develop features - (NodeJS & Java) 5. Thankfully all the office meetings - are scheduled only on Mondays. 6. 5:30 leave office, get into train and reach home at 7:20 pm (walk from train station to home - 2 km approx. - and take a shower 7. Play with kids, read stories (and fight with wife :)) 8. Family prayer and got to bed. 9. On Fridays - have a beer or a glass of wine after prayer. 10. Saturday & Sunday - take children for extra curricular activities, shopping (mostly groceries and house hold items. After one month - I couldn't carry on with waking up at 4:00 am - couldn't concentrate at work - getting irritated easily etc. I switched to waking up at 6:00 am. Side projects are possible - but there is a cost :)

sloopy543 7y ago

Well first of all, we need to abandon the concept of the 40 hour work week. Very few people are actually working all of those 40 hours and even if they were, it's just a bad way to work for any client or company. In all likelihood, the people managing you aren't technical and have a very small window into the work you're actually doing. On top of that, even if you can outperform your colleagues by as much as 200% by working more or working "harder", there's no point in doing so because our work world doesn't really understand how to deal with exceptional individuals. You'll just get 15% more pay and some meaningless title for all of that hard work anyway. So you work up to the point where people tell you "that's amazing", then you go work on side projects. Simple customer management. They're happy, you're happy. No more exchanging hours for dollars, we all get what we want. Just focus on what matters, both for your own longterm happiness (building skills, scratching an itch, whatever) and for the happiness of your customers (they won't get their project completed if you're burned out and disengaged). Reject the 40 hours. This isn't a factory and we aren't slaves. It will all be fine.

quickthrower2 7y ago
I agree! But shame we have contracts that say stuff like work you do at work is the property of the company, and you need to be at work for 40 hours per week. I'm sure individuals on HN do negotiate, and working remote gives you this freedom probably, but for most of us it doesn't seem realistic.
- sloopy543 7y ago
  My only advice is to get your finances together and have a giant ball of "FU" money so you can afford to quit situations where you're wasting your time. Software engineers have the luxury of making large sums of money, so it shouldn't take too long to get a few hundred K together. Things start to look much more rosy after that. Just remember to think like a business person. They're doing that. Why not you?
  - quickthrower2 7y ago
    Saving "A few 100k" is one solution, probably for the American FAANG (or equivalent) engineers. But there are other solutions. Frugality helps - less money is required if you live in a shared house or a couch (you can invest in property at the same time but not live in it). Having a life partner helps, one of you can have a job at all times, so one of you has the FU card. Other sources of income. I think coding side projects are hard to make work, but real estate is more doable (but there is more risk and patience required). Even with none of that, a good CV, interviewing technique, keeping up with the interview puzzles, and living somewhere with plenty of jobs will give you a FU card to your current company (but not the industry).