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

manuel.darcemont.fr

191–200 of 396 posts

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

#191
post #138

Honestly when I interview someone and they have no side-projects, or any interest in that sort-of-thing, it's a huge warning sign they're not likely to succeed and/or stick around long. I mean I don't expect people eat/sleep/breath code but I also don't want to hire folks that just got into CompSci/Coding cause it was a 'good/safe' career choice. In my experience the guys that are self learners, doing side projects,…

Likely unintentional, but your language around hiring is quite gendered. Guys / dudes ?

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

#192
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to throw a bit of shade here, but there's a lot of irony in thinking that "hiking" is some exciting hobby while denigrating people building stuff in their spare time.

All hobbies are irrelevant.

I work at a company as a consultant. Devs here have been doing the same thing for 10 years. Webforms. Guess what? None of their hobbies include coding. Stuff like git is like fire to these cavemen.

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

#193
post #183

Every time this topic comes up on HN I feel like the only person who does side projects because I enjoy them as a hobby. Learning for the job is distantly secondary, and getting my next job is tertiary. They're perks to something I'm doing anyway, not justifications for doing it. Yeah, I program at work, but the tasks I get at a software job don't scratch the itch that got me into tech in the first place. Just like h…

You're far from alone, it just seems like as hobby/passion programmers tend to spend more time programming and less time posting about work life balance on Twitter or HN. So naturally they have a quieter, smaller voice in these kind of discussions.

Not sure if that's true. The (small, local, biased) sample I have suggests the reverse. People I know who program only on the job generally don't participate in the wider programmer community, and don't frequent discussion sites, unless they're looking for something directly job-related.

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

#194

The only reason I have my job that I do now is because of side projects. How else are you suppose to learn different parts of the stack when you're (usually) only hired to work in one part? How are you suppose to learn DevOps/CloudOps unless you're on an Ops team? Many (most?) companies don't delegate full stack responsibilities to individual teams.

Similar experience here. I can attribute all my jobs to side projects - it always so happened that the technology I got employed for was something I tried to write a game in few months to years ago.

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

#195
I made this same decision a few years ago and can attest that this is true.

The side projects I was working on were pretty small potatoes, so that needs to be pointed out. But overall a higher focus on my job has led to two promotions and a ton more money.

Maybe I could have struck it rich with a startup, but the golden handcuffs feel so nice right now that I may never find out.

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

#196
post #164

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…

Kudos on making something of yourself from humble beginnings. You are now privileged.

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

#197
post #177

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…

>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-proj…

Perhaps. But one rich person once gave me a tip: don’t show weakness.

It bugged me at the time, but I’ve come to accept he was probably correct. It’s not a good idea to bring attention to matters that might work against you. Focus on selling yourself, and treat your business associates as customers (in the sense that you work hard to please them, in exchange for getting what you want). http://www.paulgraham.com/judgement.html

It’s important to know how people in better situations open doors. Because you can play that same game, with crafty use of time and words. And you might have more time than it seems, even in the position you mentioned (though I would not ever say it’s a guarantee): between Uber shifts, I’d park in a random store parking lots and build things, partly to keep sharp, but partly to get a job at a certain place, since the work was related. I didn’t get that job, but I gained so much knowledge that turned out to be much less obscure than it seemed; I still use it to this day.

You’re right in general though. People on a strong upwards trajectory have different concerns.

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

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a matter of competence, or a deliberate tradeoff regarding false positives and false negatives? Or are they just motivated to show high numbers?

Almost universally these types of behaviors emerge from self-interest. So it's pretty safe to assume that whatever approach recruiters tend to follow, they do so because it is the optimum for them. That means either that the incentives are a problem, or that the seemingly foolish recruiting techniques you've been exposed to are more effective than you might realize, not being a recruiter yourself. Probably a mix.

The problem is that sometimes what is "optimal to the recruiter" is not optimal for the applicant nor optimal to society. This is why applicants get frustrated or angry.

I heard a recruiter once (socially) tell me that they ignore all resumes with foreign names for sales positions because on average their yield on such calls is too low to bother.

Fair -- absolutely not.

Optimal to recruiter -- probably.

Good for the organization - no.

Good for society - no.

I'd love if there was something company owners and operators did to prevent things like this which are local maximums but globally inefficient (as well as unethical and unfair)

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

#199
post #182

That's about the right advice for folks who are still climbing the ladder. As an IC, if you're talented and lucky, you'll eventually stall at the "senior coder" at FANG level. That comes with a respectable salary of 500k/year and a hard glass ceiling. At that point doing even more IC work won't bring you any further. Most settle there, buy a house, start a family and continue doing their "senior coder" work till reti…

This is one of the most unrealistic descriptions of the reality of work & life that I've ever read.

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

#200
I think I agree with this post, I personally almost never discuss side projects with a recruiter, but I've gotten jobs based on having code I could actually (to say, legally) show in interviews that I made in my free time. I can abstractly talk about what I've done professionally, but, having solid code I did in isolation, especially early in my career was invaluable. And to that end, "culture fit" probably worked more in my favor than my code, it's royally messed up, but being young-ish and a cis american white man totally gave me an unfair advantage. And those side projects probably spoke more to me as a culture fit than a technical one in retrospect.
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