Mostly agree, but will say that there doesn't seem to be a silver bullet. Small project weekend stuff doesn't seem to phase employers as they read like dime-a-d

Mostly agree, but will say that there doesn't seem to be a silver bullet. Small project weekend stuff doesn't seem to phase employers as they read like dime-a-dozen undergraduate projects, while ambitious projects can require an incredible amount of time and breadth of knowledge, time that someone on the market wants to spend efficiently. Exceptions (for small projects) might be highly sought-after skills (devops/ML/Cloud/security), but you can also get certification in any one of these. Maybe trying different stacks for web counts for something.