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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?

#91

Post by zlg_codes »

fipar wrote: 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…

That's a fantastic story. I hope fortune has followed you. I would be thrilled to find even one user of software I've wrote. To be interviewed by one for a job? That's amazing.

Good stuff!

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

#93

Post by mraza007 »

xena wrote: post #90
mraza007 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have gotten very good engagement of my blog content as I write for fun sometimes I got to learn a lot of from folks who read my Content. Also if you don’t mind me asking How can a blog aid in finding or landing a job

Become an expert in a thing, companies that need expertise in that thing will come knocking.

Great advice thanks for sharing

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

#94

Post by tmountain »

whycombagator wrote: post #34
stpn wrote: 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?

Step 1 — study popular protocols to understand how client/server interactions typically work.

Step 2 — deploy the network appliance in question to your LAN and intercept its packets with wireshark.

Step 3 — begin inference of protocol from observed behavior and test hypothesis by sending hand-crafted payloads to the server in question.

Step 4 — rinse and repeat until assumptions are proven to be correct with a high degree of reliability.

A good way to ensure you’ve captured the major parts of the protocol is to record about 72 hours of traffic and then replay it through a proxy that directs traffic to your newly created service.

If you can interpret the vast majority of the messages without error, you’re getting close to a reliable implementation.

Step 5 — use this strategy to develop a deep understanding of both protocols in question.

Step 6 — write an “adapter” that can translate protocol A to protocol B and vice versa.

Step 7 — implement the adapter towards whatever use case you have in mind.

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

#95

Post by [deleted] »

tmountain wrote: post #94
whycombagator wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I did some protocol reversing This would make for an interesting blog post. Could you recommended resources to learn to do the same?

Step 1 — study popular protocols to understand how client/server interactions typically work. Step 2 — deploy the network appliance in question to your LAN and intercept its packets with wireshark. Step 3 — begin inference of protocol from observed behavior and test hypothesis by sending hand-crafted payloads to the server in question. Step 4 — rinse and repeat until assumptions are proven to be correct with a high d…

[deleted]

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

#96

Post by rikafurude21 »

bifurcations wrote: post #86
rikafurude21 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but this sounds like LARP, who the hell wouldnt jump on a job offer from apple? Even if it doesnt work out, having Apple on your resume wouldve been an insane career booster, telling people you got an offer from them but didnt take it sounds very unbelievable, atleast personally, I wouldnt have believed you

Not everyone on this site is a student with nothing on their resume.

Interesting projection, but to respond to your point: anyone could just put in a decade at Averagecorp inc. or even just hop around and throw together a decent resume. If a random OSS side project lands you an offer from apple thats gotta be jackpot level luck.

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

#97

Post by rikafurude21 »

KomoD wrote: post #85
rikafurude21 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but this sounds like LARP, who the hell wouldnt jump on a job offer from apple? Even if it doesnt work out, having Apple on your resume wouldve been an insane career booster, telling people you got an offer from them but didnt take it sounds very unbelievable, atleast personally, I wouldnt have believed you

> who the hell wouldnt jump on a job offer from apple? Lots of people, including me.

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

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

#98

Post by dgunay »

Maybe it didn't land me a job on its own but it helped in the interview process. I wrote a limited Slay the Spire rules engine[0]. If I could do it again I wouldn't choose PHP, but my current job had an interview round where I walked the hiring manager through something I've written and it did a great job of showcasing a variety of things like writing testable code, separating concerns, making an extensible framework in which to easily implement new cards, etc.

In some ways the backend at my current job is slowly coming to resemble some of the patterns I used here, funnily enough.

[0]: https://github.com/dgunay/slay

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

#99

Post by willemh »

Earlier this year I went to the Australian F1 GP. Between qualifying on Saturday and the race on Sunday I built an integration between a live timing API and Telegram to send me position updates every minute with lap times.

This was because anywhere near a screen was packed with crowds and my mobile network couldn’t keep up using the official app.

I was job searching and wrote it up and posted to LinkedIn. My now manager saw it and was trying to hire for a role building integrations. My project was enough for him to reach out and set up a chat. Without the project we wouldn’t have connected.

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

#100

Post by cqqxo4zV46cp »

rikafurude21 wrote: post #82
stpn wrote: 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…

Sorry but this sounds like LARP, who the hell wouldnt jump on a job offer from apple? Even if it doesnt work out, having Apple on your resume wouldve been an insane career booster, telling people you got an offer from them but didnt take it sounds very unbelievable, atleast personally, I wouldnt have believed you

I am genuinely unsure if this is a parody comment. I am assuming that you are fairly green behind the ears? The thing about Big Tech companies is that they hire lots of developers. That’s in large part makes them Big Tech. “Having Apple on your CV” is not as prestigious as you’re making out. It doesn’t mean you have The Knowledge that makes you a ‘10x developer’ or whatever anywhere you work. In fact, it could mean that your mind has been poisoned by a Big Tech working style, and you’ve developed a bunch of habits that aren’t nearly as applicable to most other organisations.

I say this as someone that’s never worked for any tech company anybody has heard of, nor any hip SV startup.

It takes a particular sort of person to thrive in Big Tech. That isn’t just code for ‘really really really good’. It sounds like you still believe that it is. Plenty of ‘really really really good’ people wouldn’t do well at Apple, and plenty wouldn’t want to work there. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself ‘really really really good’, but I know that I don’t want to work at Apple. Not because I think I’m not good enough, not because k don’t think that I could keep up, and not because I don’t like their output as a company.

Putting companies in a pedestal the way that you are is ultimately damaging for the industry. It fosters the increasingly cringey “get a job at FAANG!!!” culture. I’m sick of my YouTube recommendations being poisoned with “here’s how you pass a system design interview at Google” BS. I implore you to stop putting companies on a pedestal. You need only look at accountants talking about working at the ‘big 4’ to see how utterly ridiculous it can get.

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