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Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

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

#31
At a previous job, my interview was mostly me discussing my side project (and having given some folks on the team my testflight). I had a lot more prepared to talk about previous work projects but it wasn't needed. For context this was for a product design role, but I also built the backend and iOS app.

This was the side project that I ended up writing about in more detail later on: https://paulstamatiou.com/stocketa/

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

#32
My contributions to SerenityOS[0] helped me get my current job. My team lead (who was also my interviewer) was interested in what I did since I listed some of it in my CV, and I showed him some PRs I made and explained what went into each of them. It was really exciting because I didn't have professional experience with low-level development, and basically got the job due to hobby programming.

[0]: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pulls?q=is%3Apr+autho...

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

#33
Back in 2002 I lost my job during a regional financial crisis (I’m from Uruguay).

I was working at a bank (as a contractors) and some coworkers and I were working on a HA project for MySQL at the moment (to use it at work). Once I got laid off, I focused on it to the point that it became quite useful, and at some point, someone from Israel reached out with questions.

I answered with a lot of delay, and when I explained that was due to me being out of a job and not able to afford a permanent internet connection, he offered to hire me and also set me up with a permanent connection with a contract paid by him.

If you’re reading this, thank you Aric, I’m forever grateful for that chance!

Curiously, last year I switched jobs and during the interview process it turned out the hiring manager had been a user of my project back in 2003 or so, which definitely helped with the interview process.

The project’s name was mysql-ha, later renamed to highbase due to a Copyright infringement notice from Sun (who were good about it and gave me a free 1 year subscription to Enterprise MySQL when I renamed the project). I abandoned it around 2008 as better things became available around that time .

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

#34
post #27

A long time ago sonos didn't support apple airplay. I did some protocol reversing and wrote a small program that pretended to be an airplay speaker to pipe audio to a sonos speaker (archive: https://github.com/stephen/airsonos ) I ended up getting recruiting messages from both the airplay team at apple and some folks from sonos. I didn't end up taking either offer, but it was also an interesting talking point when in…

> I did some protocol reversing

This would make for an interesting blog post.

Could you recommended resources to learn to do the same?

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

#36

My side project NumPad https://numpad.io got me my current job at Decipad https://www.decipad.com/ (the similar naming scheme is a coincidence!). I came across Decipad while looking for a job, and messaged the founder, highlighting my work on NumPad. They were impressed enough that the hiring process ended up being just a few interviews, I've been there for almost a year now, and it's been pretty good! If there's a m…

It's funny you say this. After struggling to find work (but mostly to find meaningful work), I've committed myself to pursuing jobs related to my curiosities/interests. I didn't really do that before. Over time, I've started to narrow down based off of what I'm genuinely interested in. That way I don't have to lie when I say I'm "passionate" about something I'm working on. :-)

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

#37
post #33

Back in 2002 I lost my job during a regional financial crisis (I’m from Uruguay). I was working at a bank (as a contractors) and some coworkers and I were working on a HA project for MySQL at the moment (to use it at work). Once I got laid off, I focused on it to the point that it became quite useful, and at some point, someone from Israel reached out with questions. I answered with a lot of delay, and when I explain…

I mean better things became available to manage HA in a MySQL deployment.

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

#38
A few years ago I got fed up with then-popular JavaScript linter, JSLint, and forked it to make JSHint. I wouldn't say JSHint was the only criteria that landed me the job but it definitely help when interviewing for positions where JavaScript was important. At the very least, it put my name thru the first filter both at Mozilla and then at Medium.

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

#39
For current job, when I started interviewing with them, I mentioned a side project relevant to their space. I didn't learn until a few interviews in that they had started to build basically the same project. Now, that's the project I have been working on exclusively for them.

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

#40
I have only worked for two companies so far. I got both jobs through my side projects. The first job was my apprenticeship. The second was with a Swiss sensor developer.

[0] The first was a Minecraft server software with a web interface similar to an operating system. Players could log in, upload items, xp and trade etc.

[1] The second was a note-taking app similar to Obsidian, but completely real-time, based on a CRDT (yjs)

[0] https://github.com/iojanis/creaftOS [1] https://lity.cc

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