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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?

#91

Post by chris11 »

Arizhel wrote: post #62
nrjdhsbsid wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 100%. When I'm involved in the interview process I make a point to check out all candidates side projects but over 90% of people don't care. In getting my last job I thought I would have a slam dunk because I have a bunch of cool stuff I work on but nobody cared at all. I failed multiple on site interviews until I gave in and read a couple CSCI 101 books cover to cover. I had too much specialized knowledge and n…

Do you have any recommendations for the best CSCI 101 books to read?

I'd recommend Cracking the Coding Interview for studying for interviews.

Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?

#92

Post by T-hawk »

grovegames wrote: post #81
DanHulton wrote: post #9

Finished 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.

There is no such thing as a finished project. Just one you no longer work on.

I think the parent really meant publishable where he said finished. Some kind of minimum viable product. That's what shows you can cut through the BS and wishlist and fun-to-code stuff in favor of the details and grind of getting something out the door and functioning to serve an audience.

Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?

#93

Post by jamesmp98 »

pmiller2 wrote: post #72
bsvalley wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I remember so far at Airbnb it used to be tough when they were small. I don't know today if they still attract a lot of rock stars. But still, all I had to do was to write up a mini-web app and connect to their API in order to pull out some data, in about 2 hours. Then after this interview they had an onsite with classic CS and culture fit. They were very tough on culture fit and you had to meet with the 3…

Interesting. What does "tough on culture fit" mean exactly?

In Silicon Valley I can imagine it means "over 30"

Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?

#94

Post by namelezz »

huehehue wrote: post #61
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #10

Here'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 "h…

It really, really, really depends on where you're interviewing though. Remember Google infamously rejecting Max Howell, the original Homebrew author? I know there has to be more to the story, but he's become the poster child for talented programmers getting rejected because they can't play the interview game. My point is, though, that his side project absolutely had a huge impact and it still wasn't enough. 90% of my…

> Remember Google infamously rejecting Max Howell, the original Homebrew author

If Donald Knuth interviewed with Google, he would fail too because he would need 24 hours to solve a hard level leetcode question[1]. Unfortunately, Google loves throwing those kind of questions at interviewees and expect them to come up with solutions within 1 hour interview, lol.

[1] - http://keithschwarz.com/interesting/code/?dir=find-duplicate

Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?

#95

Post by adrianN »

logicallee wrote: post #70
akhilcacharya wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stupid toy problems in minutes. What sort of toy problems are you talking about?

I'm going to be snarky but I'll say it anyway: you know, stupid stuff like balanced binary trees and shit like that, when nothing's going to fall apart if the user's browser shows a spinning wait animation for 7 seconds (45 seconds at peak times but that happens for just a few hours per week at most) while you iterate through the data sequentially. honestly, who ever needed an algorithm or data structure. /s (I'm sor…

the last time i had to implement a datastructure was in class. on the job i use the standard library. i hope you do the same.

Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?

#96

Post by djmill »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #10

Here'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 "h…

Totally agree. It's great for fellow engineers to poke around on to make sure you aren't an idiot or aren't copying/pasting projects from the web, but you're right.. for the most part, no one cares about side projects when it comes to trying to snag a new job.

Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?

#97

Post by philip1209 »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #10

Here'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 "h…

I second this. If you have a software day job, then you should already be practicing coding every day. I think it's more useful to spend your extra time learning rather than applying. This can be algorithm books, coding courses, interview guides, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?

#98

Post by ooqr »

mindcrime wrote: post #52
jamesmp98 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you on the east coast?

The RTP (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill, NC) area.

I moved to this area from the West Coast and found the market much better for these same reasons. Happily living in a forested area while working as a developer.

Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?

#99

Post by Robin_Message »

namelezz wrote: post #94
huehehue wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really, really, really depends on where you're interviewing though. Remember Google infamously rejecting Max Howell, the original Homebrew author? I know there has to be more to the story, but he's become the poster child for talented programmers getting rejected because they can't play the interview game. My point is, though, that his side project absolutely had a huge impact and it still wasn't enough. 90% of my…

> Remember Google infamously rejecting Max Howell, the original Homebrew author If Donald Knuth interviewed with Google, he would fail too because he would need 24 hours to solve a hard level leetcode question[1]. Unfortunately, Google loves throwing those kind of questions at interviewees and expect them to come up with solutions within 1 hour interview, lol. [1] - http://keithschwarz.com/interesting/code/?dir=find-…

I thought the trick with this one was to sum all the entries and subtract the sum of 0 to N-2. The remainder is the duplicate entry.

It's just a trick though; I don't think skill in coming up with these is particularly well-correlated with being a good programmer, and for that reason Google claims not to do teasers like this any more.

Re: Ask HN: What sort of side-projects are useful for getting jobs?

#100

Post by 79d697i6fdif »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #59
nrjdhsbsid wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 100%. When I'm involved in the interview process I make a point to check out all candidates side projects but over 90% of people don't care. In getting my last job I thought I would have a slam dunk because I have a bunch of cool stuff I work on but nobody cared at all. I failed multiple on site interviews until I gave in and read a couple CSCI 101 books cover to cover. I had too much specialized knowledge and n…

> stupid toy problems in minutes. What sort of toy problems are you talking about?

Anything you could write in less than a half hour.

Lets take fizzbuzz for example. These types of problems almost always require manipulating strings and dumping them to the console in the simplest scenario possible. Usually the main method or equivalent in a console program.

It would be easy as hell except they don't let you use google or an IDE, so you need to memorize the syntax for the main method and string manipulation.

1) In real life you almost never write directly to the console. 2) In real life, you never manipulate strings using sub-string or regex really... In fact the only time I do this a lot is for terrible reasons in bad code. 2) Main method? If your real life app even has one it was written by the first guy 10 years ago and is 3 lines long, just some function that looks like this:

  var app= new BootStrapMainApp();
  app.run();
  logger.log("App crashed if we get here");
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