Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 538 posts

Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#461

Post by actionfromafar »

candiodari wrote: post #410
ath92 wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> upward mobility in German society is very low compared to the US This appears to be untrue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index Germany ranks 11th on social mobility, while the us ranks 27th.

I'm not sure why this would be called "social mobility index": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index#M... I would argue this measures governments services available to the poorest for free + to some extent how successful those government services are in fixing social issues (like teen pregnancy, "checked out" NEET youngsters, ...) This Doesn't seem to me to at all measure how likely you are to ge…

You can't get ahead if you get dragged down the bottom all the time, though. However, the chance of outsized success in the US if you make it, is larger though. I guess because of access to a larger market, but probably cultural factors, too.

Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#462

Post by petabytes »

kejaed wrote: post #213
petabytes wrote: post #199

Hacking the firmware in Fuji cameras definitely impressed a few recruiters, and helped me get a position recently.

Any interesting things I could do with my X-T2?

Not yet, although I'm slowly working on an alternative to Fuji's X app

Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#463

Post by atlintots »

Sophistifunk wrote: post #205
rikafurude21 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people love being contrarian in theory. If it happened to you for real, no chance youre gonna say no to that

Move to California, go back to an office for 60 hours a week, sign my life away and swear to secrecy about my thrilling position on some compiler team? Yeah I think could say no to that.

compiler enthusiasts catching stays:(

Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#464

Post by ggambetta »

fipar wrote: post #420
ggambetta wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many of us got their life trajectories completely altered by that crisis. Mine sure was. There's this fun question "if you could change one thing from the past...", and I don't know how to answer it truthfully, because we are the sum of everything in our past, the good and the bad, and I like where I am today... but man, that crisis was rough.

> because we are the sum of everything in our past, the good and the bad Oh, definitely! I had a bunch of obviously bad things happen to me and I’ve gone through your “if you could change one thing “ exercise many times, until I learned to accept all of it got me to where I am. In late 2001 my mother killed herself so by the end of 2002 I had a crash course on dealing with adversity! Anyway, while I’m slightly older…

Wow, that sounds pretty rough, I hope you're doing better now :)

Thanks for the kind words, your name definitely rings a bell. Small world!

Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#466

Post by doublemint2203 »

tyleo wrote: post #114

I made a sweet visual programming editor for JavaScript that no one really ended up using: https://devev.com/ Rec Room saw the product and hired me as their visual scripting architect. I ended up building Circuits which is used by millions of players: https://recroom.com/cv2 . I've even had children message me in Discord that they've chosen to get degrees in programming because they used Circuits. My team is currentl…

y'all take interns?

Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#467

Post by doublemint2203 »

logtempo wrote: post #146
doublemint2203 wrote: post #2

Working on cubesat club for my university. Helped me get 2nd round internship interview @ Mr. Beast studios. not sure if this counts since internship + haven't got job yet, but I think it played a big role in helping me advance.

Did a similar thing. I did a cubesat internship at some university (different from where I was), which played a role in getting a master and then an other internship at a lab working on a part of a scientific satellite to study Jupiter's moons (launched in 2023!). And so on. It's crazy how pushing a series of little things can put you on the right path, especially early on life.

Europa Clipper?

Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#468

Post by device_id »

carabiner wrote: post #350
device_id wrote: post #335

Created a financial markets tech project, put it on sourceforge. Didn’t even get to the second commit. A hiring manager from a nyse group co emails me: “can you implement this for us to completion we will give you money”. I go “sorry I am busy building a startup [in some unrelated area]”. Startup grew and then failed, and I became poor, temporarily.

sourceforge? must be ancient. what did the project do?

Yes 2007! Without going into details, a piece of infrastructure related to one of the then new Fix protocol specifications.

Re: Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

#469

Post by carabiner »

It seems like the vast majority of these are from 15-20 years ago. A lot of websites from earlier internets, not so many iOS apps. Is the tech industry too developed or formal these days to seek out random programmers who have built something on the side, rather than leetcode experts with degrees?
Post reply on HN