Most of mine are more of demo's I built for blog posts and teaching rather than SaaS products people are actually using. Some of my projects are rather complex and (at least I believe) do well to show knowledge and understanding, but I feel like the fact that they are demos rather than products make them rather useless.
Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?
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Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?
#2I feel like the fact that they are demos rather than products make them rather useless.
Why would you think that? Anything that shows off your skills has value. Well, it would to me anyway. I mean, if I were evaluating your candidacy for a job, I wouldn't care if your projects were demos or "actual products".
Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?
#3I made a video game and I have had two jobs thanks to that code base.
The thing which is valuable is to show you can get things done. That's it. Nothing special, just do what you want to be doing then show it to be who need engineers to do that thing.
Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?
#4Beyond just showing potential employers you have skills and can apply/talk through them (and demos work fine for this purpose; I would't worry), if you want a specific job then it's helpful to have side projects in the target domain. e.g if you want to do data science for a civic minded nonprofit, maybe have a side project doing analytics on one of the census data sets, etc.
Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?
#5I'm a junior web developer (1.5 years of experience) and I don't have a degree in the field, so references are all I have to proof my worthiness. And similarly I have a lot of small (mostly useless too) projects that nobody uses. But I still put them online. I have my own domain for development purposes only and whenever I finish a project to a satisfiable degree I put it on some subdomain amd add it to my list of references. Purely as a quick way for people to check what the code they were looking at actually does.
My references vary from simple image-upload site to a (more complex) link-hosting site that does a lot of magic behind the scenes. And a lot in between.
Even projects from hackathons. [Here's](http://helpmehelp.herokuapp.com/) a perfect example. The code is opensource (terrible though :D). The project is old, irrelevent and unused. But still no reason not to have it hosted somewhere.
Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?
#6Most of my side project are spread on many months (years sometime). I try to ship something valuable and meaningful, but the main idea remains to practice, learn and get my hands dirty.
Small demos, most of time time, keep you on the main, easy, default road while a bigger project let you see a lots of side scenarios which are more representative of what you will hit in job.
However, I would recommend, from my experience to always scope down features since at some point you may fell in the trap of adding feature and not learning the technologies, hence moving away of the primary goal. I am wrapping a 30 months project and will definitely not do any project that would take that long. I aim project between 4 to 12 months for the future (at about 40 hours per month).
Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?
#7The difference between a demo or prototype and an actual SaaS with paying users is significant. The former can land you a technical job if it's well done. The latter will getyou a C-level job for an upstart if it's well executed (read: shows important growth). But you haven't explained what kind of job you're applying for.
Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?
#8The difference between a demo or prototype and an actual SaaS with paying users is significant. The former can land you a technical job if it's well done. The latter will getyou a C-level job for an upstart if it's well executed (read: shows important growth). But you haven't explained what kind of job you're applying for.
> The latter will getyou a C-level job for an upstart if it's well executed
Could you expand on this? Are you referring to an acquisition?
Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?
#9Finished ones.
This sounds trite, but honestly, finishing things is hard. If you can show off a couple of finished side projects, that reflects much better than a half-dozen abandoned halfway through.
Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?
#10Here's a piece of advice from actual experience (from both sides):
Invest your time studying for interviews than wasting time building side projects if you're doing this purely for getting a job, period.
In my experience, companies don't care about your little side project when hiring--that is, unless your "little side project" had some huge impact or is something they have been aware of--the best you could get is "huh that's cool", and that's it, unless you created something really unique.
This whole process of job interview is broken because it's extremely easy to study for them and give the right answers if you invest a couple of weeks to a few months. But since we're talking about getting a job, I think you should take full advantage of this. If I were you, I would be doing this instead of doing side projects for the sake of getting a job.
Also, "side projects" should be something that you build because you think they're cool, not because you want to get a job. That's another reason why I say study for the interview instead of bothering to do side projects if the purpose is to get a job. It's neither meaningful for the employer nor for yourself.
If you still really want to do a side project, just pick a problem you want to solve, and apply some new technology you want to learn to build it. That's the best side project for yourself and the potential employer.