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 y

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.