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I should stress that it is not the side-projects themselves that got me the jobs but the knowledge I acquired while working on them. I usually do side-projects

I should stress that it is not the side-projects themselves that got me the jobs but the knowledge I acquired while working on them. I usually do side-projects on topics that interests me, and usually apply on jobs that also interests me, and I just hope for the two to converge: at some point the interviewer will ask a question about a technical topic I never worked on professionally, but on which I have intimate knowledge thanks to those side-projects. And then I'll be able to give an interesting answer while my previous jobs and education would not have prepared me for that question.

danjac 6y ago
Sure, I think we're in agreement here. The $dayJob is usually too limited in scope - you can't just drop in, say, GraphQL into a project because you want to learn it (and nor should you). Plus in a large enough company backend devs are kept away from touching frontend code and vice versa. Companies usually don't like to invest in training either so side projects are often the only outlet developers have to learn and explore.