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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

#221

Post by westoncb »

jrumbut wrote: post #125
curiousllama wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the process still goes through recruiters Does it? Idk, maybe it’s because I’m not a SV SWE, but I’ve found all my jobs through my network.

Yeah I would split the issue raised in this post along two axes. The first is junior vs senior positions. For a junior position a half-baked github project or a little meetup presentation does wonders for you. At the senior level unless you did something incredible or highly relevant in your side-projects no one cares, it can even be a negative. The other is how are you getting the job. Are you sending in your resume…

That is very interesting, and would account for what I considered a mysterious experience of having a very hard time finding work this past year (while that had not remotely been an issue for me in the past).

I've been doing freelance for a few years now, but when I was hired at two startups prior to that, in each case it was clear that my side projects were the driving factor. (The first time, it was an offer directly in response to a ShowHN I'd posted; the second is harder to explain since it comes down to a series of calls/emails with the guy who hired me, and the fact that my unimpressive formal schooling was in stark contrast to everyone I worked with.)

In any case, during that time I'd turned down many inquiries sent to me by people potentially interested in hiring me, and the only places I applied to I was hired at.

More recently when I've tried applying for positions it's like my portfolio is irrelevant. Where previously those projects were met even with astonishment at times, and frequently with what seemed like genuine curiosity, now it seems like people are more interested in 'gaps in my resume' (where I was in fact working on more research or entrepreneurial software projects).

What's strange to me is that I wasn't particularly young during the first phase I spoke of: I posted the ShowHN that landed me my first real startup position when I was 27 (I'm 34 now)—so it's not like people's reactions to my projects were about it being impressive 'for my age' or something.

It seems like more and more the work I've done on my own on is irrelevant or even seen as a negative, while more traditional resume items take the forefront.

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

#222

Post by armatav »

evo_9 wrote: 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,…

I agree with this - an exploratory mindset is super important, and high quality side-projects do make you stand out - that's a fact.

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

#223

Post by mdructor »

brundolf wrote: post #141
evo_9 wrote: 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,…

That's a false dichotomy. There are plenty of smart, capable, hardworking programmers who enjoy their jobs and aren't just taking the easy-street, but have enough else going on in their lives that they don't want to spend their free time writing code. I say this as someone who does write lots of code outside of work: it is not fair to gate people based on the number of side-projects they have. It's not even a reasona…

Isn't it reasonable to assume the person spending a lot of extra time programming will generally become a better programmer than someone who doesn't? I'm aware that there are many factors that have nothing to do with raw programming skills which are factors of job performance. But considering the day to day duties of most junior/ic roles often consists mostly of programming, shouldn't this extra time spent programming make them, at least eventually, better, more efficient developers on-the-clock?

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

#224

Post by didip »

Is the goal to have a boat load of money? If so, then optimizing your day job preferably at FAANGMULA, is the way to go.

But side projects have tons of other benefits outside of making money:

* It satisfies your curious mind.

* It is a learning tool to discover new technologies. Consider this as investment for your future career. Imagine learning Kubernetes or ReactJS when it just came out.

* It is a learning tool to understand old technologies (because you simply don't have the time to do so on day job).

* It's a teaching tool if you have kids that's interested in computer.

* It solves some practical annoyance at home (for example: Homebridge).

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

#226

Post by vonmoltke »

curiousllama wrote: post #86
actuator wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. No matter how we feel, the process still goes through recruiters. In a company I used to work for, we built a way where we removed the company and uni name to remove biases from recruiters. Most recruiters flat out refused to…

> the process still goes through recruiters Does it? Idk, maybe it’s because I’m not a SV SWE, but I’ve found all my jobs through my network.

Never worked in SV, but I have found 0/5 jobs via my network, which is pitifully small (because I spent the bulk of my career in the defense industry).

1 was from a college recruiting visit.

1 was from a direct, blind application.

1 was from an in-house recruiter.

2 were from third-party recruiters.

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

#227

Post by Quarrelsome »

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…

It doesn't matter if someone is privileged or not, recruiters _are_ bottom feeders. Its a shit job that nobody wants and anyone with a modicum of ability seems to get out of asap in my experience. They don't seem to know who their client is, what technology is or who you need to be but they can just about play snap (although they may struggle with java and javascript) and get someone to a job interview.

The whole point is that impressing these people is _pointless_ because they'd be impressed by a snow globe and mostly know nothing about tech. They're just a roadblock between you and the other technical people that you have to go round.

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

#228

Post by alex_anglin »

winrid wrote: post #209
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…

Impressing recruiters is easy. Doing that doesn't make you privileged. I drove from PA to CA when I was 18, working along the way on my own business, and got a job in SV on my third interview as a "software engineer" making 65k. Bottom of the barrel coding job. I'm somehow privileged now? Because I worked literally every day from the time I was 17 in high school until I got a full time job. Right.

If you earned your privilege, how does that not make you privileged nonetheless?

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

#229

Post by 01100011 »

So many times on HN I feel we disagree because we each touch different parts of the elephant(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant).

Systems programmers have different experiences than web developers who have different experiences from ML researchers. Things that benefit junior Ruby devs may make no sense for a middle aged, embedded dev working for the defense industry.

There are people who benefit greatly from side projects, and others who should never bring them up in an interview. I don't think anyone should be significantly swayed by the arguments I've seen here so far. Know your situation and react accordingly. Don't lose sight of the complex world of software and how many times the experiences of others only apply loosely, if at all, to your situation.

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

#230

Post by gonehome »

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…

Not only this, but the premise that working on your job will impress recruiters is just wrong.

There's a pretty simple flow chart for getting hired at a bay area company:

1. Go to MIT, Stanford, Cal, an Ivy, or CalTech and make sure you have linked in.

2. If 1 isn't possible then make a friend who works where you want to work and get a referral.

3. Cram leetcode

That's basically it.

Don't give up doing side projects and things you actually enjoy because that's how you learn.

I think you're also overly harsh on recruiters (they're not 'bottom-feeders'), they're friendly and can help you out - but they're just looking in a very narrow subset. Basically the graduates from those schools and people already employed at FAANGs.

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