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Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

• jennyyang 6y ago
  The creator of homebrew flunked a Google interview because he couldn't invert a binary tree. Everyone at Google that he interviewed said they used homebrew and loved it, but ultimately it didn't matter. He couldn't invert a binary tree. So side projects or even real projects that are used by millions are literally meaningless. Study LeetCode instead to get a job and focus on your job at work.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • gosukiwi 6y ago
    I don't think Google is a good place to work at really... And when interviewing a web developer, I don't think caring if they can invert a binary tree is a good thing. If you think things like LeetCode makes you a better programmer then you only show how inexperienced you are. You can know a lot about theory and algorithms and still write shitty, unmaintainable code.
  • dc443 6y ago
    It's like a little puzzle snack type of a thing that I've certainly never been lucky enough to need to solve in 15 years of programming yet. Yes, I think it's really limited in utility. But it can offer some insight into how quick and flexible you are generally speaking. My first impression is you can do a quick DFS recursive function that does a swap (can prolly use xor operator) on the left & right pointers
• surajs 6y ago
  Good advice, much needed
• adflux 6y ago
  "The satisfaction of seeing your career flourishing without you having to do anything will give you a valuable peace of mind." Without you having to do anything?
  • djstein 6y ago
    I believe they mean, you have to work either way and most people do as good a job as they can. You can either do this for a no name company or at FAANG. At FAANG, you’ll probably do the same work, maybe a little harder in crunch time, but you’ll find yourself in a far better situation five years down the line for virtually the same effort.
• sytelus 6y ago
  TLDR; Recruiters don't care about side projects. Side projects are often shallow and its better to use new tech in real job instead of side projects. I feel most of us would disagree with that. All new jobs in my career were result of learning something new on side projects. Recruiters show that as passion for learning. Many jobs don't allow for much exploration and you don't have leverage to call shots. It's usually uphill battle to even introduce any significant changes in large stable products. Also, side projects shouldn't be just for goal of finding new jobs and making recruiters happy anyway. It should be for passion for creating things, realizing ideas.
  • jordan_curve 6y ago
    I don’t think the article ever suggests that you shouldn’t work on side projects if it’s something you enjoy as a creative outlet. It’s saying that you shouldn’t work on side projects as a way to advance your career.
  • tylerchilds 6y ago
    and also using new tech in a work project is often a terrible idea unless you or someone else on the team has intimate experience with it. it's either going to be betamax or legacy spaghetti 9/10 times.
  • 0xEFF 6y ago
    > Many jobs don't allow for much exploration and you don't have leverage to call shots. It's usually uphil battle to even introduce any significant change. Also side projects shouldn't be just for goal of finding new jobs anyway. It should be for passion for creating things, realizing ideas. You're right, but your point also indicates why business value side projects less than career projects. The skills and experience to complete the project don't overlap much between the two types of projects. The success criteria is usually quite different as well.
  • peruvian 6y ago
    > its better to use new tech in real job instead of side projects. Lol this is why so many tech stacks at work go to shit. Someone wanting to add another bullet point to the resume and instead of doing it at home, they force a new tool/language at work (when possible).
• lostmsu 6y ago
  I turned a side project into a company, and recruiters contacted me non-stop during the entire journey. But maybe it is because I already had experience at Microsoft and Amazon.
  • zolland 6y ago
    I think there is a huge difference between what the author mentions as "shallow" side projects (where you are just trying to mess around with some new tech), and side projects where the aim is to develop a legit product. I imagine the latter, when seen all the way through, is much more attractive to recruiters. Although, I don't have any solid anecdotal experience with recruiting to validate that claim. I just think it's important to not classify all projects outside of your job as "shallow" side projects, and then completely discard them career wise like the article seems to be doing.
    • lostmsu 6y ago
      I don't think I would have arrived at the non-shallow project without churning through the shallow ones first.
• binarymax 6y ago
  Advice to my young self: put MORE effort into one of your 100 side projects, and stop messing around with other stuff.
  • JoeAltmaier 6y ago
    If only you knew which one!
    • XCSme 6y ago
      Doesn't matter, just choose one that shows potential and do it. The only thing that matters is that you have an end-product in mind that will provide more value to the users than existing alternatives AND that you actually implement it AND the user finds your product.
    • filoleg 6y ago
      >If only you knew which one! That one is actually pretty simple: pick the one that you have the most to learn from, because that's the whole point of doing a side project if you are trying to leverage it as something that would help your knowledge/career development (as opposed to doing a side project for some supplementary income, for example). And yes, I am aware that there are many unknowns, and when you are trying to pick a project with the goal to learn the most, sometimes the projects where you think you already know 90% of the solution end up being the ones where you know the least and have more for you to learn than projects that had initially more unknowns. But without the ability to know the future, picking the one that has the most "stuff to learn" (according to your first assessment) at the initial discovery phase is imo the most optimal strategy. It is fine if you discover later that the other project had a bit more to learn than the one you picked, because the goal is to learn a lot averaged down over a long period of time.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • omginternets 6y ago
      Which one do you think about when you're in the shower? Usually there's one project that you just can't get out of your head. If you don't know which it is, try to take a break from all of them, and you'll quickly learn which one maters.
• marketingPro 6y ago
  This _opinion_ can be countered with a single ancedote- I got a job because of my side projects and would be unemployed if I didn't work on side projects. Now, who's opinion is correct?
  • matz1 6y ago
    Both are correct
  • gallamine 6y ago
    First job or subsequent jobs?
  • xenihn 6y ago
    The best thing is to do both. Work at a top company, and have a side project that you can discuss with hiring managers.
  • borroka 6y ago
    If you think in terms of probability, there is no conflict. And that is also why "never do this if you want to get that" is often a necessary, but tautologically inaccurate, simplification.
  • tharne 6y ago
    My experience is identical to yours. Both my first programming gig as well as subsequent advancements has been a result of my side projects.
• actuator 6y ago
  > First, most recruiters don’t care about your personal projects or how many meetups you went during the year. What matters the most is your current company - and by that I mean the name of your current company. He is so much right here. Recruiters don't have the time to go through and understand your side projects, for that matter even engineers don't. Most interviews are 45-60 mins, you need to scope your interview such that the process remains same for all candidates. If someone is just beginning out then side projects matter a lot but for hiring experienced people, most won't care about side projects unless they got significant traction. Also, it is incredibly hard to judge side projects. Sure, I can go through your Github repo if it is open source, open 2-3 files to see code structure, see the automation suite you have setup but unless the project was complex there is not much to talk about. For experienced folks, there are other metrics you need to gauge them on which are absent in hobby projects.
  • halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
    If you can speak to the processes involved and have demonstrable knowledge about how to implement things learned from side-projects, what's the difference between having done it at work versus personal time? None in my opinion.
    • actuator 6y ago
      > If you can speak to the processes involved and have demonstrable knowledge about how to implement things learned from side-projects As I mentioned in my comment, no difference if the person is starting out or if the project gets traction. But for experienced positions like the post author was talking about. You don't get additional signals on the developer, like did the product scale well, how was the uptime, the performance optimisations he needed to do, evolving the product with customer feedback etc. Also, bigcos love to ask around conflicts within a team, working with other teams because it matters a lot to them. As an engineer I can admire the dexterity of a solution even if unproven but how do I verify it in an interview span. Easier to do this if I can attach it with a company name or some numbers. I hate this and I spent early part of my career trying to come up with methods that can make hiring easier and reduce biases like company name but I realised how difficult the process is with different stakeholders, each having his own criteria and biases.
• PankajGhosh 6y ago
  The possibility of side projects to create future value or wealth is rather low. Instead, I have started shifting my focus to "side-gigs" rather, with the goal that they create future value for me in some sense.
• polishdude20 6y ago
  Yeah side projects shouldn't be a thing that you do to find a job unless that's all the experience you have. For example, if you're a junior new developer. Side projects are valuable though in that they keep you happy. You are in complete control and you arent tied down by deadlines or random whims of a senior manager five lev ls above you. As a person trying to break into the software world to get a software developer job, I feel like side projects are the only thing I can show.
• monsieurbanana 6y ago
  One day you read that recruiters only look for people that do opensource every single minute of their free time, the next day that you better hide your side projects. Shrug.
• halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
  The only reason I have my job that I do now is because of side projects. How else are you suppose to learn different parts of the stack when you're (usually) only hired to work in one part? How are you suppose to learn DevOps/CloudOps unless you're on an Ops team? Many (most?) companies don't delegate full stack responsibilities to individual teams.
  • lsiunsuex 6y ago
    Agree with this. At least 2 jobs (I've lost count) I got based on side work I did. Full time employment history helped, but it was the side projects that showed a certain skillset that they wanted.
  • s1dewaysjects 6y ago
    Yeah, I share your experience and I disagree strongly with this piece. If I had joined a good company and focused on that, I would still be comfortably building web services for them like I learned to in school, and I would probably continue doing that indefinitely. That's fine, it's a nice salary, but it was also boring and soul-crushing. When I started to see the damage wrought by mass-scale social media, my side projects made it easy for me to transition into a much more interesting but specialized field that I saw more of a future in, and that has worked out great. The author's main complaints seem to involve recruiters and the poor value proposition of shallow projects. But if you have deep projects and poke your nose around the industries that you're interested in, you won't have to deal with recruiters, and you'll often be able to avoid the technical side of interviews entirely. Talent is very scarce. Although, I write this from a USA perspective and I notice this is a .fr domain; the labor markets and hiring practices might be very different.
  • bradstewart 6y ago
    It depends. On company culture, your manager, and your role, among other things. If you're doing a huge career change, side projects may be your only way. But most companies (in my experience at least) recognize the value in having their application developers understand some Ops work, and vise versa. Many (most?) companies won't entirely "firewall" you from other groups. Even if you're throwing an application over the wall to ops, there's usually opportunities to learn from them, help out on specific tasks, etc. That said, learning at work is probably _better_, but I do think side projects with a specific goal (e.g. to learn a technology) are a valuable supplement.
• binarynate 6y ago
  The most transformative change in my career was turning my side project into a profitable company, which I now work on full-time. This was a huge step change in terms of my personal happiness and wealth. So, I generally disagree with the advice of forgetting side projects.
  • techsin101 6y ago
    howd you find the idea
• diskzero 6y ago
  Focus on building your reputation and technical network. Your network will be the source of the best employment opportunities. Recruiters have presented me with some of my worst career opportunities. Former co-workers, technical collaborators and those who have been exposed to my previous work gave me the best opportunites. Sure, if you do a good job with your employer, you will build reputation. But so do side projects, speaking at developer conferences and going to meetups. Build your network!
  • yelloweyes 6y ago
    This. So much this. Dear lord, so much this. 99% of the good jobs are filled through internal references. All the shit jobs nobody wants to do are filled through recruiters and cold appliers. Learned this one the hard way, lol.
• maverickJ 6y ago
  Interesting article. The author has made an interesting conclusion and provided interesting premises to support it. In my opinion, it depends on what your career goal is and what you want out of life. If you are in a position where you use a technology you don't like or work on projects you don't enjoy, a side project on the weekends can be a way of addressing the gap. Not everyone has the chance of joining a great company. It also depends on what country or continent you reside in. It appears that in American culture, side projects are actively encouraged; A couple of silicon valley companies have come out of side projects. A different argument can also be made that doing multiple side projects would not make you a better programmer. Our culture tends to focus on quantitative factors for improving skills rather than qualitative factors. What if rather than doing side projects, one changes ones attitude in their current job? An excellent article on qualitative factors on excellence can be found in https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/what-is-excellence https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/what-is-excellence
• save_ferris 6y ago
  > Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job. My experience has been different than the author. I suffer from pretty bad anxiety, which doesn't exactly come in handy during interviews and coding challenges. Side projects have been a good way to talk deeply and technically during interviews about concrete problems that I've worked on because I can't show a potential employer code I wrote for someone else's company. That said, I think there's limited value in showing an employer the product of some tutorial, but side projects that came from my brain alone never hurt in an interview context, and almost always helped.
• bt3 6y ago
  If one is not currently at a company with a "brand name", how else are they supposed to get noticed amongst a pile of other "brand name" applicants? Is the same true for educational backgrounds? If you don't have an Ivy League degree, what methods can you use to put yourself in the running vs those that do? Side projects seems like a good option in both cases to appear competitive.
• blocked_again 6y ago
  I work on side projects on hope that I can one day make enough money from one of it and have financial freedom to do anything I want anytime. Hopefully soon and not when I am 60. If I die tomorrow and all I did was focus on my career that would be so sad.
• bluedino 6y ago
  I can understand not letting your side project get in the way of your job. If you have a slow day at the office, it's not the time to be working on your side project - although many people do. However, if it weren't for side projects, I would never have learned Linux, virtualization, handfuls of programming languages, or so many other things I ended up bringing into my 8-5 job.
  • jonathankoren 6y ago
    If you use work materials to work on your side project, your employer can make a claim to it. This is why you should always have a separate personal computer for personal stuff, and a work machine you use for only for work stuff.
• asadlionpk 6y ago
  I am who I am due to my side-projects. - They allow me to grow my skills and also test ideas in public. - Every code pattern or library I use in my main job has been put to test on my side-projects. If I had more hours per day, I would pour them all into my side-projects.
• hartator 6y ago
  Well if your side project became a $1b company, you would have a very different story. A better advice: focus with no apologies on what really interest you.
• encoderer 6y ago
  Side Business > Side Project A side project is a great way to get better at things you already have interest in. A side business is a great way to discover new interests and challenges.
• dvt 6y ago
  > First, most recruiters don’t care about your personal projects or how many meetups you went during the... Why are you trying to impress recruiters? I mean, the entire point of the post is wrong, but impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. If you aren't trying to do your own thing (which, let's face it, is the most exciting prospect), at least try to impress CEOs or product managers, or -- my goodness -- at least hiring managers. I heard a fun anecdote of Evan Spiegel attending an LA hackathon maybe 6 or 7 years ago. Some nerdy engineer showed him that he figured out how to get around Snapchat's spam filter. Spiegel offered him a job on the spot. Could a recruiter ever do that? Hell to the no.
  • kingnothing 6y ago
    At any company of any decent size, your resume isn't going to get to the hiring manager if it doesn't get through the recruiter. The CEO of any large tech company is never going to meet you, much less see your resume.
    • ch_123 6y ago
      I know quite a few hiring managers who will search Linkedin directly, and reach out to candidates themselves. This, for example, was how I was hired into my current employer (which is a company with over a thousand people)
      • isoskeles 6y ago
        This might be the case, but recruiters and sourcers can and do sometimes reach out with the first message on behalf of the hiring manager. It looks the same to the candidate.
    • sgtnoodle 6y ago
      Not necessarily. Elon Musk stopped personally interviewing every vetted candidate about a week before I interviewed at SpaceX. I had to write him a short essay instead. When I started, there were about 1000 employees. Also, if you do get hired and work on something important, it's pretty likely you'll meet the CEO at some point, even in a company with many tens of thousands of people.
• artembugara 6y ago
  I began my side-project [1] one year ago. I quit my very well-paid job 6 months ago to make my side-project my full-time job. It is going quite well (I am nowhere near making the same money). Just 2 of us at the moment. I've learnt so much over this period. Like what you would get over 10 years in a big tech company while jumping over all the hierarchy. Moreover, my very first side project turned me from a guy who knows only Python into a guy who can set up entire architecture on the cloud. Later, I became somewhat a "rockstar"/jack-of-all-trades engineer. But I agree, unless you do your side-project just to do something then it is your hobby. My advice would be: someone has to pay for your side project's product/service. Because only then you can show that it generates real business value. This is the only thing which should matter to your future employer. You generate business value. [1] https://newscatcherapi.com/ https://newscatcherapi.com/
  • person_of_color 6y ago
    How did you learn about cloud? That's what I'm missing ATM.
  • jamil7 6y ago
    I stumbled across your project recently while helping a friend with scraping project. I think the pricing is reasonable but I found that the non-commercial limitations of the free plan make it difficult for smaller developers to try it out in their projects. Just my 2c.
• arcticbull 6y ago
  I had a different experience, specifically it was my embedded software and hardware spare-time experience that gained me my most influential role to date (bridging iOS and embedded systems at a fast-growing start-up). It even helped me pass my technical screen as the CTO asked me to build a ring buffer. Little did he know I built one for an RS232 driver the week before. I'm heading soon to do the same thing at another fast-growing startup. I've actually talked about my side projects each time I've hopped jobs, and actually, when I took on advisory work. Niches are good!
• nbardy 6y ago
  I admire this approach and have many colleagues who operated this way. But for someone who didn’t get into a top school and had to start with “low prestige” jobs and work my way up focusing on side projects was essential to my career. By showing I could take risks and learn emerging technologies I was able to make myself attractive to startup and on the bleeding edge and just spent the last two years working in my dream field of AI/ML. If you’re young and believe in yourself more than society’s ridged idea of credentialism has don’t be afraid to buck the trend. I failed out of a mid tier college. And while my 20s has my been a stressful hodgepodge of jobs I was under qualifying for. A public track record of my ability to create something with emerging technologies has always meant someone is willing and excited to work with me.
• rhacker 6y ago
  It is interesting reading the comments. It's funny too because I would say most of the time people advocate others to create side projects because you never know if it will become the next big thing. Obviously there are some amazing success stories here related to side projects, but I wonder if that's just luck. Is the actual success rate of a side project going viral just as unlikely, for example, as a young basketball player getting a contract and going pro? (which is a scenario most people actively discourage pursuing)
• zhobbs 6y ago
  Agree -- recruiters don't care about side projects. But, if you hustle and track down the hiring manager they might be impressed, and at a minimum it could be a good conversation starter. My side projects have opened a lot of doors for me, particularly they have enabled career switches. I'm a B2C product manager, was interested in moving to B2B and was ignored until I launched a small SaaS side project (B2B vs B2C PM is considered quite different.) But the theme of this article is true, recruiters don't care and you should focus on enjoyable side projects.
• sbussard 6y ago
  It’s interesting how the author equates independence with leftist ideology. That seems more libertarian to me, leftist support of government expansion is more authoritarian. Ideally a career is a launch pad to a business, or else what are we all doing here?
• megalomanu 6y ago
  Hello HN! Author here. I wasn't expecting so much comments! I would have chosen a less provocative title if I had known :) Just to clarify: I founded a company a few years ago from a side project I had started three years before, and this year I released two projects, so I can say that I love side projects. I simply regret this tendency to start so many shallow side projects (which are little more than tutorials) just to build a portfolio instead of focusing on creating something really substantial, or something that at least you really like. It's a waste and an illusion to think that it could help to be hired. I know too many developers stuck into this pipe dream.
  • polishdude20 6y ago
    I think the overly general title doesn't help as your article narrows down exactly who that advice applies to.
• jnwatson 6y ago
  This should be taken with a generic serving of salt. The fact is, (even different parts of) organizations vary widely in their hiring practices. Some care and some don't. I've hired people almost solely on their side-project (nearly a proto-startup), and I've hired folks without them. If you interviewed Mssrs. Bellard or Hunt (and you didn't know of them beforehand) and they talked about their side projects QEMU or haveibeenpwned.com (respectively), you should probably rate them highly, maybe even hire them on the spot. You should aim to work for groups that value such projects.
• jamil7 6y ago
  I switched from web to mobile through learning Swift and Kotlin in my spare time and building and releasing side projects. I'm not sure how else I would have done it, if I'd been at a larger company maybe I could have transferred but I'd likely still have to show some examples of work.
• RIMR 6y ago
  This sounds like great advice if you want to be a follower and never accomplish anything innovative personally but just contribute as an employee until you retire. Which is fine if that's what you're looking for, but not so great if you consider yourself an entrepreneur.
• shortformblog 6y ago
  Most of the interviews I’ve ever gotten in my career have been a result of the side projects I’ve created. Never the job. This is just bad advice and I feel bad for anyone who feels this way. Side projects open the creative pipeline. Your job, all too often, closes it. Also, who cares about recruiters? This is your life—you should find a bigger pool of people to impress and delight.
• jyu 6y ago
  This is decent career advice, but it doesn't address the root of why. If you want FIRE, the best way is to optimize your career. How do you do that? It starts early before your first job, as you try out different school subjects, books, friends, hobbies. As you look out to the future, what do you see on the horizon? Thinking about the time I entered school, programmers were near the bottom of the totem pole. Mathematicians were trapped in academic ivory towers. Data was barely used as the alpha bros of finance dominated the talks of high compensation. The most sought after jobs did not even exist then. Youtuber, data science, deep learning, cloud computing, analytics, ecommerce, cryptocurrency, even professional video gamer were not real careers. Increasing revenues solve all problems. Jump on the waves of industries that are booming and will continue to boom. The world and culture is constantly changing as we march towards the future. Put yourself in a position to succeed by learning the fundamentals needed to pass interviews and recognize when something seems obvious to you but not to everyone else yet.
  • jackdh 6y ago
    For people unaware, FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early). There is some interesting stories of how people achieved it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/top/?sort=top&t=year https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/top/?sort=top&t=year
  • maverickJ 6y ago
    It's also important that one understands the career game. Especially early on. See this https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/early-career-tactics-to-accelerate https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/early-career-tactics... for example In this dynamic world, one need to constantly assess their career.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• vkammerer 6y ago
  It may be useful to remember that the author lives in France and has spent his whole professional life in France. As a French having worked in Germany, Canada and New Zealand, I can say that the recruitment process is very different in other countries, where side projects and open source contributions are really valued. In my opinion, his article should mention the geographical setting of his experience, and his advice should only apply to people living in France (and writing the article in French may have been more appropriate too)
• soneca 6y ago
  > ” He may not be smarter, but he has been hired by a company with a most demanding hiring process” > ” As we all know, the interview process is broken.” I don’t know how the author conciliate these two opinions. Other than that, I agree that being hired by a FAANG company is better for your career than any number of side-projects. The problem is that I don’t think I will ever be hired by a FAANG company (as many many many others). It is not about not wanting to focus on leetcode and Cracking the Coding Interview (and I don’t), but my resume would be rejected for sure much before that stage (as a self-taught developer with 41 years old and a degree in Eocnomics from an university in Brazil).
• polote 6y ago
  so this guy starts by explaining that he doesn't want to work for any company and then complains to not be hired by recruiters? that doesn't make sense, why do you apply to jobs if you want to work for yourself?
• watfly 6y ago
  How do I downvote this?
• 10-1-100 6y ago
  My side project over the last few years was more or less the deciding factor in me getting hired at my current employer and my previous one. Being able to demonstrate turning an idea into reality and talk about technical (and design) problems I encountered and how I solved them seemed to be much more interesting to interviewers than most of what I had done at my previous day jobs.
• waprin 6y ago
  It's a little ironic that this is on "hacker" news since I think that the original "hacker" ethos wasn't that you built things just to impress recruiters. If your goal is career advancement, then it is fair to acknowledge that some projects won't be useful for that. But there's plenty of other reasons that people work on side projects besides just career advancement. "Just for fun" might be the most famous reason, that is I believe how the Linux kernel started. While maybe big companies won't value side projects directly too heavily, there's still a good chance that if you learn new things and try to build interesting stuff, that it might open new doors in all sorts of unexpected ways. But there's no guarantee. I also think that full time coding jobs can be a lot of work, and people shouldn't feel too pressured if they don't want to have side projects, because they have other things like a busy family life or non-technical hobbies. But for many people, programming can still be fun and interesting, especially outside of the usual corporate routine, and that's all the motivation they need to pick up a side project. That to me is really what a "hacker" is, not a leetcode grinder climbing the ranks at FAANG.
• dorkwood 6y ago
  I understand what the article is getting at, but to me side projects are not a means to an end, they are the entire point. They are the thing I would work on full time if I didn't need a day job to survive.
• aj7 6y ago
  You weren’t wrong. You gave up too early, accepting the salaryman fantasy of steady growth if you just “work hard.” If this works past 50, you are 80th percentile. Past 55? 98th percentile. How will you feel when you begin to be handed boring, or fix-it projects? When your salary doesn’t keep up with 29-year-old versions of yourself? Layoffs? Perfectly acceptable or ignorable at 20-38. Lethal >48. You need to own the economic value of your output as early as possible. Read that sentence again. Side projects are about 10% effective here, if you get my drift.
  • maverickJ 6y ago
    Interesting comment. How do you capture value if I may ask? This article https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/dont-hinge-your-career-on-technical https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/dont-hinge-your-care... Uses Nikola Tesla ad an expample of not depending on your technical skills alone
    • aj7 6y ago
      You are thick! (I’m not trying to insult you!) You capture value by OWNING shit! That’s a syllogism. Sorry that I used “corporate” words when I was suggesting the opposite.
  • robocat 6y ago
    > Past 55? 98th percentile Reference? Are you implying that developers over 55 are unemployed against their choice? I suspect sampling bias: Any half competent 55 year old has lived through some golden opportunities to make bank, or decide on a career change by choice. Also the intake cohorts results in not many over 55 as a % of total. My experience in New Zealand is that older devs are doing fine as a cohort, although I also can see poor performers who stuck with old tech who may have bitter anecdotes. > You need to own the economic value of your output as early as possible I disagree. I have plenty of 50+ acquaintances doing very nicely on their boring salary without the stress or risk of trying to get a slice of equity. Plenty of people do not have the traits required, or their personal circumstances are not flexible enough to allow for risk, or they just want a 9 to 5 and a comfortable retirement (which they will get, and their rockstar friend might not). Edit: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. The outcomes for the first cohort of developers is very unlikely to be anything like the latest cohort who you are advising - “as early as possible” doesn’t apply to 55+ year old developers?! We haven’t had 30 years of hindsight bias to know what the successful path for a current 20 year old will be.
• keithnz 6y ago
  heh, this seems common with devs who get to around the 10 year mark, they try and distil wisdom from their experience, but all too often it is quite rigid advice...I did it too, I would have plenty of advice for my "younger" self when I hit the 10 year mark. I'm at 40 years coding now, and I'd be hard pressed to make any definitive advice or claims about anything. Maybe my advice now would be don't buy into any strong claims about anything, instead, try and understand what underlying forces are shaping advice / claims
  • sims18 6y ago
    Best response so far imo. There are so many opinions and advice about how to get ahead in this field that it is literally debilitating. Should I work on side projects? Should I grind leetcode? Shoukd I study algs? Should I build mobile apps...the list goes on and on. Seems like the only thig to do is chase down what's most interesting and hope the time spent will benefit the career as well? Would your 40 years agree with that?
• pantulis 6y ago
  There's also another strategy: focus on the company you work for until you begin managing people, projects and may be never write a line of code again. And that would probably be good if that made you happy. There is always something for everyone.
• NanoWar 6y ago
  I think the question to ask here is, why your side project is not actually within the company! You can try to move it there or find another one that would "fit" better.
• dustingetz 6y ago
  Marketing 101 - don't present as hot shit research programmer to IBM
• umutisik 6y ago
  A lot of people who do side projects do them for themselves rather than simply for improving career prospects. Many folks need a balance between being an independent creator, and being part of a bigger organization and side projects are a great way to get to that.
• jimbob45 6y ago
  Here's a more reasonable take: #1: No one will ever look at your side project. However, it can still be of use to your job hunt if you can talk about it. In fact, it's possible to get away with a empty project provided you can talk about what would have been in there in great detail (as if you'd actually done it). #2: If you can't talk about your project in great detail, then it has as much worth as if you'd never actually completed the project.
• Milank 6y ago
  This is just one of the many approaches to building a career. As with many other things in life, there is now one-size-fits-all. For someone else, a complete opposite will work. Stay informed, learn about different approaches, and simply choose what you think is best.
• pier25 6y ago
  Technical expertise and experience doesn't really tell the whole story. CV bling is mostly irrelevant to know if someone will perform well on a job. You can have the best engineer in the world coming from a top tech company and be a total asshole that will only cause problems and make the team underperform.
• justinlloyd 6y ago
  Anecdotally my experience is completely orthogonal to the author’s. My side-projects gave me the career I have today. They have gotten me jobs without interviews. Because of my side-projects, every job I have had in the past two decades has been without a formal interview or usual take home/coding/white boarding/hazing ritual. I have used a resume precisely twice in the past 15+ years, and one of those two times was because of the company we built and turned profitable was being acquihired. Some of my side-projects have turned into products that generated real world value. Side projects let me explore new technologies that I don’t get to deal with at work. I would say, because of my side-projects, that I have frequently drowned in opportunity in terms of offered work. I have gotten offered a “when can you start” job, without interview, in an unsolicited approach, on more than one occasion simply because someone was using one of my side-projects in their day-to-day work. I recently did a few “test the waters” interviews with a couple of companies (FANGMAN being two of them), just to get some practice in, to see if I “still got it.” Only the FANGMAN companies required a resume before they would even talk to me. Apparently, I’ve still got it, but I realized those kinds of positions weren’t for me. Having spoken to several people about “focusing on your job” many realise that they have a great job, but what they don’t have is a great and diversified career. They get pigeonholed in to a single role, whether that is marketing, or project management or even software development. When that career dries up, Flash programmer anyone? COBOL programmer? Then they have to reskill and hope someone gives them another chance. “I am an $X” where $X is how they identify themselves. I’ve always struggled to answer that question of “what is it you do?” Perhaps that is a failing on my part. The majority of software development is code that is not customer facing, that is never seen outside of the business unit for which it was developed. For each and every job you will have through your career you will be told to take a number, stand in line, wait your turn, do as your told, learn to compromise and if we like you enough and you check all the boxes, we’ll let you know at our convenience. In the words of Casey Neistat, “this… is terrible advice.” My last job was without anything more than a 20 minute chat and “here’s what I’ve been building these past few months as a side-project.” My job before that was “we really liked what you did on Project $X for Company $Y, do you have any experience in Technology $Z?” (Yes, here’s a side-project you can look at that uses Technology $Z). Every single job, for 20+ years, “here’s something I did on a side-project that’s really neat and interesting, do you want me to do that neat and interesting thing for your company?” I have studiously avoided any and every company that has tried to pigeon hole me, or get me to jump through the hoops of their hiring process, so far it has worked out pretty well for me. I don’t think I have ever worked a single day in my entire life. Not everybody can do this, not everybody wants to do this, but it has worked out pretty well for me. If I had to give advice to my younger self, if my younger self would actually listen to the advice, I would say “Do more of the picking one project in any given year, and hyper focus on that for 12 months, rather than only doing things for a few months. If you need to figure out which project that is, do three or four for a couple of weeks, then abandon the ones that don’t have enough interesting problems.” I do focus on single projects for extended periods of time, and it is those projects that have built my career. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7dSXcfVqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7dSXcfVqE
• matthewhartmans 6y ago
  I feel working on side projects actually helps boost my career. Having a diversified portfolio betters myself in other areas I didn't get an opportunity to do at work and employees love the creativity factor.
• throwaway7281 6y ago
  If I would have went deep on a weekend hack I did once, I would probably looking at $25K MRR or something like that. But article is good, nonetheless, everything needs a balance.
• cryptica 6y ago
  I've always had a side project (I enjoy it) but I understand the author's sentiment. When it comes to financial matters, working on a side project doesn't make any sense. Unless you're connected to big VC money or have a good business network, your side project has 0% chance of success no matter what you do. No matter how much better than the competition it is. On the other hand, corporations or hotshot startups are connected to big VC money so they have a very good chance of success and most of the founders of these companies don't fully realize how lucky they are and so it's easy to get a sweet deal from them... You can get a lot more money for a fraction of the work. You don't need to add any value, just support the status quo (which requires almost no effort).
• Sodman 6y ago
  I think the biggest advantage of side projects is for when an interviewer asks you an open-ended "tell me about a project you enjoyed working on". As an applicant, I can speak in great detail about any of my side projects, discuss any design decisions, trade-offs and compromises I made. Personally this usually involves some interesting trade-offs made on personal projects to optimize for AWS bill, vs decisions I'd have made at any company where a $100 /mo bill wouldn't even register as a line item on a budget. It also is a great way to differentiate yourself if you're trying to make a move from eg an Enterprise Java B2B company to a consumer-facing SaaS startup using $NEW_TECH. As a hiring manager, I can see the candidate isn't being challenged enough by their current job, or they had a curiosity they wanted to satisfy outside their regular hours. Either way it shows initiative and a hunger to learn, both of which are good signals. Usually when people are talking about these projects, they are passion projects and you get a good feeling if somebody actually likes programming, as well as hints towards what specifically they find interesting. Did they spend 10 minutes talking about progressive enhancement techniques and bundle sizes? Did they talk about user feedback? Or maybe they focused on CI/CD, auto-scaling, or API design choices? This to me is far more useful than "Worked on team X and performed assigned tasks Y, Z".
• ufmace 6y ago
  Interesting post. I don't necessarily agree 100%, but I think it's a useful perspective in addition to the counter-idea that side projects and meetups will get you jobs. It's not every company or set of interviewers, but there are lots of interviewers and recruiters who don't care at all about your side projects. I've done plenty of interviews, and don't really ask about them much, or really have time to check them out in any detail before the interview. Lots of tech meetups are also jammed with aggressive recruiter-bros and newbies who need a paycheck and aren't all that interested in tech. Keep your expectations in check for finding good employers or employees at them. For side projects, I wouldn't say not to do them. But don't do "hello world" level side projects in a trendy language in the expectation that anybody will care or it will get you a job. Do a side project to accomplish something that you are actually interested in. If you don't feel like it or don't have any interesting ideas, then by all means do something else instead. Half-hearted projects to fill a perceived recruiting checkbox definitely won't get you anything. Doing something interesting, or even doing something kind of boring in an interesting way, might help. Or doing something and taking it into Production enough to feel some of the pain points of maintenance, uptime, marketing, etc.
• elorant 6y ago
  My main job used to be a side project while my main job was working at some company. And I still have side projects because they keep my interest in programming alive even if they turn into total failures.
• umaar 6y ago
  I've been putting more and more effort into my side projects recently (all on GitHub). It's kept me sharp, passionate, always gives me something to optionally think about (e.g. when exercising), provides conversation pieces (with the right crowd of course), has taught me a whole bunch of new techniques and has kept me relevant in this fast moving industry. My side projects include: - An Air Quality Monitoring Dashboard - A leaderboard app built with redis - A WebGL globe to show live wikipedia edits - A web service to scrape any number of GitHub stars from any number of people - A node.js app which extracts 1 second of footage from your media library, and combines it into a '1 second everyday'-style video - An audio reactive image slideshow from instagram selfies - A visualisation dashboard to show stats about your blood from some diabetes bluetooth thingymajig - 3D renders of popular logos, like the GitHub logo - An Alfred workflow app to trim X seconds from the currently playing video from VLC - A script which downloads the top 250 websites to your drive, so you can then run other scripts upon them, as often as you want, without getting blocked - An augmented reality music website (where you can use the webcam to control audio) I'm really grateful I'm able to do such things and have no intention of stopping.
  • rektide 6y ago
    How do you feel about the author's conclusion? > I don’t want to make this blog post a rant against side projects. In fact, I’m advocating the exact opposite. Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job. IMHO, that's over-doing it, but fairly on target. Like dating, one wants to be an interesting person. Your projects, to me, demonstrate that you are an interesting person, but as per the topics of collaboration & communication that the author starts with, while yes I want to work with interesting people, it's not what I've found to be the primary nor even all-that-distinguishing characteristic of hirees. Somewhat sadly; keep hacking! ;)
    • umaar 6y ago
      Thanks for the compliment :) A long time ago I would've agreed. But now I think we live in a world where you can land a job with the right sort of Instagram post which goes viral. Side projects can broaden your horizons, increase your network size, put you in touch with that random CEO who wants to interview you because you used their API in your side project. I agree with you, most hirees still don't care. However the people I've enjoyed working with most in my career had fascinating quirks to them, maybe they do carpentry or maybe they're building a compiler for fun. Work can drain people, so having a bit of naive optimism that your side projects could help people/make money/land you a job/or whatever, is not a bad idea IMO. Like with anything, one should manage their own expectations though!
• d_burfoot 6y ago
  It's a good thing Steve Wozniak didn't get this advice (Woz created the Apple I as a side project while he was working for HP).
• fizx 6y ago
  I split time between a successful side project and early Twitter, both at around 30 hours a week, with spikes up to 50hrs. While they both netted positive outcomes for me, if I had gone all-in on either one, I think I would have had an order-of-magnitude better outcome. Splitting my attention cost me serious advancement & money at both.
• evo_9 6y ago
  Honestly when I interview someone and they have no side-projects, or any interest in that sort-of-thing, it's a huge warning sign they're not likely to succeed and/or stick around long. I mean I don't expect people eat/sleep/breath code but I also don't want to hire folks that just got into CompSci/Coding cause it was a 'good/safe' career choice. In my experience the guys that are self learners, doing side projects, playing with the latest 'for fun' are the dudes that really get stuff done.
  • brundolf 6y ago
    That's a false dichotomy. There are plenty of smart, capable, hardworking programmers who enjoy their jobs and aren't just taking the easy-street, but have enough else going on in their lives that they don't want to spend their free time writing code. I say this as someone who does write lots of code outside of work: it is not fair to gate people based on the number of side-projects they have. It's not even a reasonable indicator of job performance.
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • mdructor 6y ago
      Isn't it reasonable to assume the person spending a lot of extra time programming will generally become a better programmer than someone who doesn't? I'm aware that there are many factors that have nothing to do with raw programming skills which are factors of job performance. But considering the day to day duties of most junior/ic roles often consists mostly of programming, shouldn't this extra time spent programming make them, at least eventually, better, more efficient developers on-the-clock?
  • brookside 6y ago
    Likely unintentional, but your language around hiring is quite gendered. Guys / dudes ?
    • armatav 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
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• lowbloodsugar 6y ago
  FTA: "I don’t want to make this blog post a rant against side projects. In fact, I’m advocating the exact opposite. Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job." Clickbait title that even author doesn't agree with.
• ChicagoDave 6y ago
  I wouldn't have been half the programmer and architect I became without side projects.
• spiffytech 6y ago
  Every time this topic comes up on HN I feel like the only person who does side projects because I enjoy them as a hobby. Learning for the job is distantly secondary, and getting my next job is tertiary. They're perks to something I'm doing anyway, not justifications for doing it. Yeah, I program at work, but the tasks I get at a software job don't scratch the itch that got me into tech in the first place. Just like how most workers in "creative" fields don't get paid to do the interesting things that first attracted them. They're stuck using their arts degrees to write marketing copy instead of their dream novel, or they became a civil engineer to design inspiring architecture but their day job is trying to update someone else's vision to include the safety features the designer didn't leave room for. I get that lots of people get their fill of technology at their job and don't want to see a screen when they get home. Live the life that makes you happy. I'm just boggled at how many people appear to find it unimaginable and unrelatable that a technologist likes technology enough to mess with it for fun, even after work.
  • ck425 6y ago
    > I'm just boggled at how many people appear to find it unimaginable and unrelatable that a technologist likes technology enough to mess with it for fun, even after work. It's not that I can't understand it. I don't have that urge personally but I can see where it comes from and if that makes you happy go for it! The reason I personally get so defensive and anti side project is because as someone who's very defensive of their non-work time (due to spending it on other productive hobbies that bring more joy into my life than anything else) I've experienced a lot of colleagues/managers who have tried pressure or belittle me into doing side projects. It's been implied that I'm not a 'real' engineer or that I can't be successful in my career if I don't. And frankly I resent that attitude because it's bullshit and it tries to take away time from the things that make my life truly joyful. As you say do what makes you happy, side projects or not. Unfortunately a lot of folk on the side projects side don't/won't accept them as optional if you want to be seen as a competent engineer.
    • spiffytech 6y ago
      I think side projects can open career doors that you wouldn't otherwise have, and not doing side projects can close some doors. There is a probabilistic value of pursuing those doors and a cost to the time spent doing so, and it's fine to decide it is or isn't worth it. I'd happily do side projects even if there was zero chance they'd help my career. Two of the best engineers I've ever worked with did basically nothing on the side that resembled a technical side project. The worst engineer I ever worked with also did no side projects. And I knew brilliant engineers who were big into things like the Hacker Cup or aerial robotics, just for fun. It's tempting to think that if we ourselves are competent, people who act similarly must also be competent. But the longer my career goes on, the less weight I place on seeing someone does or does not do side projects.
• megadeth 6y ago
  Leetcode is the new side project if you value a day job.
• mekoka 6y ago
  There was much I disagreed with in this post, but I had a hard time even addressing a single point, as I felt that it was a bit all over the place. I decided to first try to condense it a bit. In the end I realized that I understood the author a bit better. I still don't agree, but I get where he's coming from. Here's my paraphrased summary. So the author originally found much satisfaction in his exploratory, entrepreneurial, and hacking activities, as it offered a counter-balance to the corporate culture that he perceived as shallow and alien. It didn't matter that his ventures ended up as failures, he found something worthy out of the process. Sometime later he had a change of heart and decided to pursue a "career". He was then confronted by a clash of culture when he realized that all his tinkering didn't matter to HR. Now, he's a manager and he understand HR's perspective on reality. He gives you a glimpse. His time spent working on projects was a waste at best and a liability at worst. Companies don't need innovators or free thinkers, they're afraid of them. What they need are good soldiers unburden with ideas of freedom. Exploring new shiny stuff does not make you appealing to HR, your capacity to endure the grind does. The author offers some philosophical digression where he posits that side projects, much like the theoretical stuff that you learn in school, serve to expand your mind, but don't let them delude you into thinking that you can make that enriched vision serve you in the real world (of employment I suppose). True valuable experience comes from getting a first job and to do that you should brush up on your DS & algo theory and do coding exercises. Don't expects all your shallow side projects to come to your rescue at your next technical interview. The author concludes that if you want to make things easier for yourself, you should get a job. It will free you to be yourself, to go fishing, to have a life. If you still want to work on some side projects, you'll do so because they truly matter to you, not because you think they will be strategically helpful in your career. It will suck becoming dependent on a company, but it's the price to pay to be safe from the relentless competition in the job market.
• joshxyz 6y ago
  That's the most stupid thing i heard lol, I'd rather drag my body across 87 miles of sharded glass and blades than do that.
• cactus2093 6y ago
  Side projects remind me a lot of extracurriculars in college admissions. To the extent that they show that you have really accomplished something difficult they can be very impressive and differentiate you from other candidates. E.g. in terms of high school extracurriculars, if, say, you've reached the title of chess grandmaster that's impressive, if you went to chess club practice a couple times a week and were just decent at it that's not going to help. As a software engineer, if you've built a site with millions of page views or written an open source library that many engineers have heard of, that definitely opens doors. (Though even then, maybe not in the way you're expecting. Any given recruiter still might not care or might not be able to remove the red tape for you just because of that. But you'll likely have certain unique opportunities become available). If you've thrown together a few sites in your free time and then moved on to other things, it's not that impressive.
• puranjay 6y ago
  What's the point of knowing a powerful, creative skill like coding and not using it to create stuff? This is like a writer telling you to "forget blogs/articles/novels/stories and focus on your newspaper writing job".
• andreyk 6y ago
  FYI, the title is a bit misleading, the content here is moreso just about not expecting side projects to be good career development strategy, but it ends on a note saying that you should do side projects just because you feel like it: "I don’t want to make this blog post a rant against side projects. In fact, I’m advocating the exact opposite. Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job. Don’t do all the tutorials you find about Vue.js, but use this weird technology that you saw yesterday on Hacker News. Don’t think about what are the best blog post topics that could expand your personal branding, but write poetry or a review of the last movie you saw. Create the apps, services, websites, or video games you want to use. This may not make your portfolio or your public image convincing for the next recruiter you’ll meet, but this is how you will be able to express all that you have in you and end up affirming yourself. At least, you should end having something meaningful to show, something to be proud about."
• mattkevan 6y ago
  Every change in my career began as a side project or idle curiosity, from design to development, to product to UX, to whatever's next. Basically, what I'm doing now, when I should be doing what I'm paid to be doing is what I'll be paid to do in a few years' time. Experimentation and side projects are vital to stretch creativity and learn new things. Not all of my side projects have been successful, but they've all played a vital role in my career development, more by happy accident than design. It's all about following interests to see where they lead.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• throwaway23483 6y ago
  I don't know where this advice comes from. If this can be advice to your young self, good luck with your young self. Do you know how many successful startups come from side projects? To some extent, a large number of startups are from "side projects": If a college student starts a company when they are at school, by definition, that's pretty much their side project from the beginning, because their main job is to study and get degree at school. Those are side projects. Zuckerberg stole the FB idea from his side project. Look at how many successful people quit their jobs and then started their successful companies. You think they all really quit their jobs first and then begin to work on the startup they founded? Come on, very few of them have this clean start. Even if they are on paper looking clean, there are overlaps. Those are side projects, side ideas.
• nojs 6y ago
  I think side projects have become a casualty of Goodhart's law, they stopped being a very good metric for hiring as people started gaming the recruitment system and building side projects that were really showpieces. But a genuine curiosity for technology outside work is still a very valuable attribute I think.
• mlang23 6y ago
  Was it always like that? Did people only write free software to eventually get hired by someone for their great side project? I never wrote any code to impress someone. I always wrote code to learn things, for my own benefit. And yes, usually there was a lot of synergy, but with high latency. Much of the knowledge I use at work comes from so-called "side projects" I used to do months or even years earlier. I also find the headline rather sad. As if everything you do in your spare time has to be geared towards maximum efficiency in the day job. That is a pretty sad path to go down.
• city41 6y ago
  My personal experience has been quite the opposite. My side projects (and my blog) have been instrumental in me getting two key jobs that really boosted my career quite a bit. I'm not saying "you should definitely do side projects". I'm just disagreeing they aren't always useless. Like pretty much anything in life, your mileage will vary.
• hop655 6y ago
  That's about the right advice for folks who are still climbing the ladder. As an IC, if you're talented and lucky, you'll eventually stall at the "senior coder" at FANG level. That comes with a respectable salary of 500k/year and a hard glass ceiling. At that point doing even more IC work won't bring you any further. Most settle there, buy a house, start a family and continue doing their "senior coder" work till retirement. Nothing wrong with that. There are two primary paths from that level: middle management and senior management. If you like the first, learn to speak well, work on your image and build the reputation of a responsible and reliable person who takes the rules seriously. You'll get promoted and eventually you'll stall at the "director" level. The senior management path is about financial and personal risk. This is where you'll need to build a successful side gig, turn it into a multi million dollar business and negotiate a senior manager position, with very nice compensation, with competitors who will try to take you down in the process. A lot more fun, more risk and a lot more reward.
  • siquick 6y ago
    This is one of the most unrealistic descriptions of the reality of work & life that I've ever read.
• rektide 6y ago
  > I’ve always been involved in my work, being proactive in bringing new technologies, mentoring the other developers, helping the team to grow, but I was doing this just because I liked my job. I was not considering this as something important in my career, simply because I didn’t want too. To develop my career, I was spending a lot of time outside work reading technical books, doing toy projects, going to meetups, browsing Hacker News. This is a very good & important assessment, realization, & I appreciate the author's reassessment. > Secondly, I don’t think that multiplying the side projects is useful unless they are substantial. A phrase that recuringly comes to mind when hearing of a lot of side projects is, "Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men." I very much want to see a world where computing is a good & sensible place, for scratching your own itch. But at the moment, just getting started on a modest web project is pretty hard. Even if you don't need user accounts, it's still a lot of grunt-work, gulp-work, webpack-work, and or babel-work. Oh you want users with their data? Now multiply the number of hours by 20x. Folk like hood.ie & UserGrid have attempted to lower the effort-to-start, Firebase & others are certainly selling themselves on trying to accelerate the mid-level lift here, the 200's & 300's level courses of "getting your app going". But it's hard. We're not great. So at the moment, scratch your own itch is hard to do well in a time effective manner. My take-aways are two fold: 1. on a macro scale, we should work harder to build a better systematic base to work from, and 2. a lot of side projects are over-invested in. As a chronic maker-of-side-projects, knowing how to put something down & walk away is a crucial skill. Unlike the author, I do think there's a quite considerable value in having some shallow experience, including with things you are not likely to use (understanding the meta-patterns of computing, seeing similarities across systems is where mature understanding starts). > I don’t want to make this blog post a rant against side projects. In fact, I’m advocating the exact opposite. Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job. Don’t do all the tutorials you find about Vue.js, but use this weird technology that you saw yesterday on Hacker News. An imo unfortunate & accurate statement of a dwindling spirit of the technical community! We have heavily industrialized[1] these days, & our hunger to explore outer bounds & interesting potential is much diminished. As a result, those of us who are pioneering by nature are less in demand, more settlers and town planners are needed[2]. For now, we are "technically mature", we believe we have "good solutions" to the problems that are common & identified. For this to shift, we need more cause for adventure, more sense that computing has bigger open possibilities than what we've settled down around. I for one continue to believe the future is still exciting. [1] https://daverupert.com/2020/01/the-web-is-industrialized-and-i-helped-industrialize-it/ https://daverupert.com/2020/01/the-web-is-industrialized-and... [2] https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-town-planners-and.html https://blog.gardeviance.org/2015/03/on-pioneers-settlers-to...
• echelon 6y ago
  Boo! This is awful advice. I'm constantly commended on my side projects, and I excel at them because I enjoy them: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x034jVB1avs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x034jVB1avs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XTi-jf-ans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XTi-jf-ans - https://vo.codes https://vo.codes - https://trumped.com https://trumped.com The laser stuff made me wealthy, and that wasn't even my intention. People at the time told me it was a huge distraction from my academic career and a waste of time. My current side project is a real time voice converter (like Mission Impossible). Follow your passion. You'll deliver better results and open lots of doors. Your side projects will also usually be pretty novel. It's fertile ground for startup material.
  • Nevaeh 6y ago
    Vocodes is super cool and fun to play with, well done. I wonder if it's possible to turn it into a text-to-speech donations service for Twitch streamers? The current TTS voices are rather monotone. Some donators test how their text donations would sound like on this website: https://textreader.pro https://textreader.pro P/S: Small typo on the first sentence on the about page.
    • echelon 6y ago
      Thanks! That's an awesome idea I hadn't thought of. Is there anybody in particular I should reach out to? And thanks for the bug report too :)
      • Nevaeh 6y ago
        Hmm, I'm not sure. On second thought, it could be a legal copyright issue to use famous voices in a monetary setting. Also, it could perhaps be abused somehow despite its huge entertainment potential.
  • heleninboodler 6y ago
    The laser stuff is cool. If you don't mind me asking, how did it make you wealthy? Do you sell it as a service for events? Or maybe sold/licensed the tech to someone? Or maybe it just got you a really great job?
• archeantus 6y ago
  I made this same decision a few years ago and can attest that this is true. The side projects I was working on were pretty small potatoes, so that needs to be pointed out. But overall a higher focus on my job has led to two promotions and a ton more money. Maybe I could have struck it rich with a startup, but the golden handcuffs feel so nice right now that I may never find out.
• werber 6y ago
  I think I agree with this post, I personally almost never discuss side projects with a recruiter, but I've gotten jobs based on having code I could actually (to say, legally) show in interviews that I made in my free time. I can abstractly talk about what I've done professionally, but, having solid code I did in isolation, especially early in my career was invaluable. And to that end, "culture fit" probably worked more in my favor than my code, it's royally messed up, but being young-ish and a cis american white man totally gave me an unfair advantage. And those side projects probably spoke more to me as a culture fit than a technical one in retrospect.
• monadic2 6y ago
  I've found that an effective way to bypass recruiters and advocate for employment with your personal projects is to a) aim at small companies and b) cold-email with a cover letter. YMMV.
• b0rsuk 6y ago
  I think side projects are for fun and potentially for impressing technical reviewers in stage 3. Soft skills are for impressing recruiters. During the recruiter phase, they're not going to understand the projects anyway. The only value they have at this point is they boost your confidence and let you move on to next questions. Just list them briefly if asked what you've been doing recently. Most recruiters can't recognize a good programmer, so they approximate it by judging your confidence. The weapon of choice against recruiters is being prepared for the questions they ask. You pull out a lot of paper, write the questions down, and write answers. Ron Fry's 101 questions book describes them in detail. What the recruiter wants to hear, what she doesn't want to hear. All recruiters have the same set of questions, and although it changes every couple of years it's a solved problem. Yes, I know telling a recruiter what she wants to hear is manipulative :-(.
• lhorie 6y ago
  Eh. I'd tell my younger self the exact opposite. My side project is what eventually led me to a 2x increase in income. In fact, it was only after I started to spend time on a open source project that I started getting recruiters to initiate contact with me. Heck, my entire career was born out of immersing myself in an area of interest in my free time, outside of my original field of study.
• deleted 6y ago
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• didip 6y ago
  Is the goal to have a boat load of money? If so, then optimizing your day job preferably at FAANGMULA, is the way to go. But side projects have tons of other benefits outside of making money: * It satisfies your curious mind. * It is a learning tool to discover new technologies. Consider this as investment for your future career. Imagine learning Kubernetes or ReactJS when it just came out. * It is a learning tool to understand old technologies (because you simply don't have the time to do so on day job). * It's a teaching tool if you have kids that's interested in computer. * It solves some practical annoyance at home (for example: Homebridge).
  • vonmoltke 6y ago
    Personally, my goal is to amass a boatload of money so that I can spend the rest of my days doing nothing but side projects without any care as to whether or not they make me any money. More of a dream, really. I doubt it will happen anytime soon. I think I can swing it by 401k/IRA withdrawal age, though.
• xchip 6y ago
  As always, it depends... depends what your side project is, what your job is, etc etc....
• 01100011 6y ago
  So many times on HN I feel we disagree because we each touch different parts of the elephant(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant). Systems programmers have different experiences than web developers who have different experiences from ML researchers. Things that benefit junior Ruby devs may make no sense for a middle aged, embedded dev working for the defense industry. There are people who benefit greatly from side projects, and others who should never bring them up in an interview. I don't think anyone should be significantly swayed by the arguments I've seen here so far. Know your situation and react accordingly. Don't lose sight of the complex world of software and how many times the experiences of others only apply loosely, if at all, to your situation.
  • raindropm 6y ago
    Right? Maybe the speck of hostility is as little as we interpret the word 'side projects' differently and forget about other context and variable, or simple fact that not everyone have a knack on side project...I found that if you're not side project guy, then you're not, and that's fine. I mean, I believe many people don't have side project and still have perfectly happy life.
  • arminiusreturns 6y ago
    Coming from the sysadmin side of things I have noticed this glaringly many times over my years on hn. So much miscommunication just because it's easy to assume other people are like you or like your company.
  • snak 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing that parable. It reminds me of the times I've discussed about Kubernetes with colleagues.
• princevegeta89 6y ago
  Your side projects will never go to waste - you'll get to keep that learning and experience at the very least. The only thing that needs attention paid to is have a flow of income while you're still working on your side project. It becomes mainstream as your only job when it starts bringing back decent money or VC support. There's a reason they're "side" projects.
• ku-man 6y ago
  Focusing in your employer/job was a good career move up until the 70's. Nowadays, you are being a fool if you dedicate 100% of yourself to your company. Your company doesn't want you, you are too expensive. You may think you are worth that money because you bring value to the company. Think again. Apologies if I am being too blunt.
• kodah 6y ago
  This is a really stunning representation of how someone started out with the right idea, shifted to the wrong idea due to outside pressures, and then wrote a blog post about it.
• ulises314 6y ago
  What if you are Albert Einstein?
• abhinuvpitale 6y ago
  Its super important to focus on your career based on your interests, rather than recruiters priorities. The author has some point in there, however, focussing on side projects does help you expand and broaden your experiences. Its supremely helpful when switching between slightly different industries.
• Aeolun 6y ago
  What a weird perspective. While I agree that side projects ultimately matter less than your previous working experience, I am highly sceptical that they don’t teach you anything. Anecdotally my side projects are of a consistently higher standard than the projects I work on at the company. I also get way more chance to experiment with new things than I get at my job.
• deleted 6y ago
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• typon 6y ago
  This is the kind of advice that applies perfectly to groups of people but is terrible advice for individuals.
• sacks2k 6y ago
  My 'side project' turned into a full-time business for 5+ years and it was making a million dollars in sales/year at one point in time. It really depends on your goals. My goal has always been to have my own business, so I put lots of time and energy into side projects. If I only wanted to have a career, I probably would use that time and energy on something more career-oriented.
• emmanueloga_ 6y ago
  > I’ve always been involved in my work, being proactive in bringing new technologies This one I learned with the years, that it is so much work to introduce new technology to a team, sometimes not the most productive endeavor. Involves some perfect timing, support from key stakeholders and a team open to the idea... Unless the current stack is absolutely insufferable, it could be better to try and find what's interesting about it and become proficient with it.
• namelosw 6y ago
  I wouldn't agree. Since it's an 'Advice to my young self'. I would say either forget side projects (to be boring as hell), or invest more in side projects (take some risks). I have been haunted by sloppy side projects for many years because day job makes me both mentally physically exhausted. Until recently I realized if I quit my job and my life wouldn't fall apart that much, and I can spend more time on the projects I'm interested in without worrying about the return rate.
• cambalache 6y ago
  The irony is that this poorly argued piece was written by a guy who founded a company to teach you to write. _In the blacksmith’s house, wooden knife_
• raindropm 6y ago
  Here's my experience. Until you have the luxury to pursue any side project you want, I found that side project that scratch your itch on your main job work best. You have fun with problem solving at your own pace, and also make your work life continuously a little better(because you know where your itch at, and since no one cares, so you do it yourself) At the end of the day, you ship something useful and practical and learn something new along the way. Ain't that count? Unless your side project = side business, now that'll be another beast. Even something you do out of love that doesn't involve money making, you still have to think about it, find time to do it and when you can't(mostly because your main job took all your time) you will feel guilty and depressed. And the cycle continue.... seriously, I think it's worse than having no side project.
• mavster 6y ago
  I wholeheartedly disagree with this entire statement. If you want to grow as a programmer (in my case), then side projects are going to get you the skills to advance your career and get you a better job over "buddying up" with recruiters. Sure, you can be a 9-5 kinda person and then "switch off" when you get home, but you will be the one stuck wondering where it all went wrong and write a blog article complaining about it. insert principal skinner out-of-touch meme here
• 627467 6y ago
  Reads like someone who's deeply frustrated with their career history... "Forget side projects and focus on job" sounds as terrible as the opposite: "ignore your job and just send time on personal interests" It is my experience that most recruiters are superficial to the point that unless they received instructions to literally hire someone with most meetup attandances, they will ignore any candidate that list those in resume. But, there ARE recruiters who can see through a weak resume and help you make it more targeted, surface keywords that help you get interviews. I see .fr in domain: is going through recruiters the main way to get hired in IT in france? Where I am the best way to get hired (beyond entry level) is through referrals and for those, I find that side projects and collaborations are much better at generating a future lead that just proving you were good at your job
• cpill 6y ago
  I hire exclusively on side projects. everything else in a résumé is a lie or boring but side projects show you who they really are.
• dschuetz 6y ago
  First: Don't do side-projects. Then later: Do as many side-projects you possibly can, but don't think your projects will impress recruiters. Most of the most successful companies started out as someone's side-project. So, I don't see the point of that article that is basically saying be passionate about your job, not your own ideas. And he's saying that to his younger self. Wow.
• gitgud 6y ago
  A good analogue is: "When a painter goes home, he might not want to paint more walls... But he may paint murals or canvases... regardless of the monetary reward" Building software is a form of artistic expression for many people, doing it without the limits of business requirements can be very satisfying.
• known 6y ago
  Sounds rational till you're 40 https://archive.is/4lhX6 https://archive.is/4lhX6
• TrackerFF 6y ago
  Side projects are great (for recruiting) if: 1. You don't much or any professional experience with software development. 2. You are experienced, but are trying to break into another field - and haven't done any relevant work in your current position (for example - front-end developer pivoting to systems development, or whatever) I've encountered a lot of recruiters lately, that were more than interested in checking out personal projects. Hell, I've also seen some data science and ML positions where they explicitly asked for cool/interesting side-projects, where you'd use the tech to solve some problem.
• goku99 6y ago
  I see most of comments in disagreement with the topic, either partially or totally. And yet, the post has so many upvotes. What does this mean exactly?
  • gen_greyface 6y ago
    This means that whoever is upvoting the item, isn't doing so because they disagree/agree with it. but instead for item visibility, because of which it will attract more discussion. this is what i always use the upvote button for.
• bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  advice to your older self - your job is now relatively secure, try to do side projects. or another advice - you need to diversify your skills, choose the skills you believe will be in demand in the future to learn, also try to choose ones that it will be ok you are older.
• testmen 6y ago
  "If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery—isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is." charles bukowski expressed it better.
• GuB-42 6y ago
  Important note: the author is French, working in France. I am French myself and from what I've heard about how it happens in North America, the way recruiting works is a bit different. The general idea is that French recruiters are more cautious, which is understandable since there are stronger employee protection laws and it is harder to let go of a problematic employee. For that reason, employees are also expected to stay longer. It also looks like recruiting criteria are less technical. Your degree, years of experience, companies you worked for, certifications, etc... play a more important role than showing off your skills. Wages also tend to be defined more by your experience and position than how much money the company can expect to make out of your work. So if you are not working in France, keep that in mind when reading such advise.
• zach_garwood 6y ago
  Is this satire?
• SpecialistEMT 6y ago
  that's interesting to me, cause the complete opposite worked out for me well. I treated 9-5 work as a necessity to put food on the table and pay for rent(I always tried to find a comfy job where I can put in a few hours/day max and survive), and my side projects as the possible real money makers. And it worked out very well for me - have been able to achieve my main goals in less than 10 years since graduating.
• confidantlake 6y ago
  If you have made it to the stage of talking to a recruiter, haven't you already passed that hurdle? My experience is the recruiter talks to you to tell you more about the company, the job, and to explain the hiring process, not to evaluate you.