> Just making one server run well won't do much to your resume. That's pretty much true, because doing that and that only will also mostly get you hired at a p

> Just making one server run well won't do much to your resume. That's pretty much true, because doing that and that only will also mostly get you hired at a place which has a single server (like say "use SQLite" instead of RDS). On the other hand, if you can justify what you did to make a single request better (as in, "what I did meant that a single request came back in 40ms instead of 120", like that mixed API example - like if you bypassed the standard 1+N problems), then I'd be very keen to pick out what that person did. A lot of work involved for the latter is also the same for the first, but it is a difference in attitude towards user relevant functionality which I've noticed in the best people I've worked with. That is not to say don't use SQLite, but more along the lines of this is a simplicity hack, I can make a complex working system out of this simple system, because I used the right abstractions for that bit (like say, JDBC or PDO - maybe not a full on ORM).