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Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

manuel.darcemont.fr

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Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#171

Post by tylerhou »

dvt wrote: post #164
sillysaurusx wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment. Out here dropping stories about…

> My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. Oh man, only if you truly knew how off-base this is :) My parents moved to the US with $2000, two kids (I was 11), and two carry-ons. But I'm not here to compete in the Victim Olympics. > Most people don't know any CEOs, PMs, or hiring managers. Good thing attending a hackathon is free. Good thing you can interact with literal SV royalty here on HN for…

> My parents moved to the US with $2000

My parents also say this, except they say $40. But US immigration policies generally require immigrants to have some way of supporting themselves. While my parents didn't have much cash, they did have college educations and my father had been accepted to a PhD program — which is privilege.

I'm not trying to assume your parents' particular situations — just that there are things we unconsciously take for granted.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#172

Post by jsmith12673 »

dvt wrote: post #147
jsmith12673 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders Recruiters are just people just doing their jobs. It's a shame that you've labelled a diverse group of people so heavy-handedly.

Oh come on. Even as engineers , it's important not to have delusions of grandeur: we're replaceable cogs in an infinite machine. Unless you're engineer #2 or work as a VP or a part of the C-suite, you truly don't really matter to the company. Thinking otherwise will only lead to heartbreak.

I'd argue that even as engineer 2, or VP of whatever, you're still replaceable.

Outside whatever thin veil of prestige your job offers you, the larger world couldn't care less about what you do or what you make.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#173

Post by throwaway23483 »

I don't know where this advice comes from. If this can be advice to your young self, good luck with your young self.

Do you know how many successful startups come from side projects? To some extent, a large number of startups are from "side projects":

If a college student starts a company when they are at school, by definition, that's pretty much their side project from the beginning, because their main job is to study and get degree at school. Those are side projects. Zuckerberg stole the FB idea from his side project.

Look at how many successful people quit their jobs and then started their successful companies. You think they all really quit their jobs first and then begin to work on the startup they founded? Come on, very few of them have this clean start. Even if they are on paper looking clean, there are overlaps. Those are side projects, side ideas.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#174

Post by krisroadruck »

dnautics wrote: post #106
vbezhenar wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people are hired through standard recruitment process and how many people are hired by impressed CEO?

I've only been hired by impressed CEOs (small startup CEOs), and have to date never gotten a job offer in software through the standard recruitment process (n=5 offers out of ~100 applications moved to interview, not counting applications seen but not considered via services like triplebyte). Well that's not entirely true, I did finally get an offer last week but it was downgraded from the advertised offer to "let's…

^ Same. The last time I was out of work my wife was asking why I wasn't pounding the pavement sending out tons of cover letters and resumes and the like. I told her that in the 21 years I've been working, I've not gotten a single job via that route. It's always been networking. At some point about 10-15 years ago I just stopped even bothering with a resume at all. If I can't get in front of a decision maker, I don't consider it a viable opportunity. In contrast, About 75% of the time I've been able to speak directly to a department head, manager, or C-suite executive I've been hired on the back of a 30-45 minute conversation. I'll take a 3 out of 4 hit rate on a pair of conversations over sending out dozens of customized cover letters and resumes any day of the week.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#175

Post by nojs »

I think side projects have become a casualty of Goodhart's law, they stopped being a very good metric for hiring as people started gaming the recruitment system and building side projects that were really showpieces. But a genuine curiosity for technology outside work is still a very valuable attribute I think.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#176

Post by sillysaurusx »

achillesheels wrote: post #166
sillysaurusx wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment. Out here dropping stories about…

Don’t take offense, sir, but how did you wind up in your unfortunate position? “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Your implication is precisely that recruiters are useful as a last resort. Wisdom beseeches to avoid decisions where that becomes necessary. Where, clearly, the recruiter is just using you and you are using them as a stop-gap measure. Yet wisdom is co…

No offense taken! I have narcolepsy, which means attending a 9-5 job is difficult. I woke up at 2pm today, for example.

It’s an advantage to conceal that fact, and the one company I did disclose it to, fired me about a month later. For completely unrelated reasons that totally didn’t violate any disabilities laws, of course /s.

It was also partly my own fault, but in hindsight I wasn’t able to recover until I even understood what was happening. I wrote a bit about it several years ago, shortly after being diagnosed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984478

So my career progression has been more of a stochastic random walk. And I’m fine with that. :) Ended up being able to contribute one or two things to the ML scene, which is all I really wanted anyway. Just a scientist at heart, I suppose.

There’s nothing wrong with being used, and using someone, by the way, if it’s mutually beneficial. Aligned incentives are how society comes together.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#177

Post by scythe »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #153
dvt wrote: post #28

> First, most recruiters don’t care about your personal projects or how many meetups you went during the... Why are you trying to impress recruiters? I mean, the entire point of the post is wrong, but impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. If you aren't trying to do your own thing (which, let's face it, is the most…

impressing recruiters is downright stupid. Let's be frank: recruiters are bottom-of-the-totem-pole, lowest-common-denominator, bottom-feeders. My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment. Out here dropping stories about…

>I sense you've never been in a position where you have $3,000 in the bank, your wife is depending on you to get through college, and you have to get a job or you lose your apartment.

When I was at my lowest point I was delivering sushi rather than waiting for a job that would look good on a resume. Most of the people in desperate situations like that aren't (don't have time to be) padding their resume with side-projects, and therefore aren't the topic of the original argument.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#178

Post by brailsafe »

tylerhou wrote: post #171
dvt wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My friend, this isn't personal, but a fact: you're privileged. Oh man, only if you truly knew how off-base this is :) My parents moved to the US with $2000, two kids (I was 11), and two carry-ons. But I'm not here to compete in the Victim Olympics. > Most people don't know any CEOs, PMs, or hiring managers. Good thing attending a hackathon is free. Good thing you can interact with literal SV royalty here on HN for…

> My parents moved to the US with $2000 My parents also say this, except they say $40. But US immigration policies generally require immigrants to have some way of supporting themselves. While my parents didn't have much cash, they did have college educations and my father had been accepted to a PhD program — which is privilege. I'm not trying to assume your parents' particular situations — just that there are things…

It's an aspect of someone's life that may mean better odds of making more money or pursuing some intellectual path. Your parents' degree does not prevent them from being shitty parents.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#179

Post by mlang23 »

Was it always like that? Did people only write free software to eventually get hired by someone for their great side project?

I never wrote any code to impress someone. I always wrote code to learn things, for my own benefit. And yes, usually there was a lot of synergy, but with high latency. Much of the knowledge I use at work comes from so-called "side projects" I used to do months or even years earlier.

I also find the headline rather sad. As if everything you do in your spare time has to be geared towards maximum efficiency in the day job. That is a pretty sad path to go down.

Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job

#180

Post by city41 »

My personal experience has been quite the opposite. My side projects (and my blog) have been instrumental in me getting two key jobs that really boosted my career quite a bit.

I'm not saying "you should definitely do side projects". I'm just disagreeing they aren't always useless. Like pretty much anything in life, your mileage will vary.

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