I think the only time it "mattered" that I had side projects was one CEO who emailed me on two different occasions that he "noticed" my one-commit abandoned git

I think the only time it "mattered" that I had side projects was one CEO who emailed me on two different occasions that he "noticed" my one-commit abandoned github project and was interested in talking further about hiring for a position at his startup. In other words, the project was meaningless (probably scraped off linkedin) and just served as an icebreaker to try and get me onto a phone call.