This is a really stunning representation of how someone started out with the right idea, shifted to the wrong idea due to outside pressures, and then wrote a blog post about it.
Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
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Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where did you get 100 ideas worthy of implementation? My imagination is so terrible, I can only imagine stupid ideas like Reddit clones.
Generally I find that trying to solve problems begets more problems (i.e. side projects beget side projects). Choose a tech stack and start building a Reddit clone, and you'll quickly hit roadblocks and get ideas. Started a new side-project on the weekend (after a long long hiatus of just focusing on day job). Phase 1 was simply getting the stack up and running (PostgreSQL-backed, Python gRPC service taking gRPC-web…
Why'd you go for gRPC in particular for your Reddit clone?
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#243What if you are Albert Einstein?
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#244Its super important to focus on your career based on your interests, rather than recruiters priorities.
The author has some point in there, however, focussing on side projects does help you expand and broaden your experiences. Its supremely helpful when switching between slightly different industries.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#245Advice to my young self: put MORE effort into one of your 100 side projects, and stop messing around with other stuff.
Where did you get 100 ideas worthy of implementation? My imagination is so terrible, I can only imagine stupid ideas like Reddit clones.
What's the typical advice here? Something about writing down 100 ideas, diving into detail on your favorite 20, actually build a working prototype for 10 of them, and 2 or 3 will stand out, so pick one of those?
I read that somewhere, possibly here. Maybe someone can link the source, if they have it.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
If you earned it, then it isn't privilege, by defintion. Unless you consider being born a hard worker as being privileged, in which case the word is meaningless.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Your last para is my exact point. The recruiters are acting in self interest. Expecting that they do otherwise is a doomed hope. It is up to owners, and transitively up to society at large, to make and if need be enforce policies that encourage the desired behavior.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#248Earlier 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.
I've found jobs through my network, but my most lucrative one to date was though a cold linkedin message from a recruiter. YMMV.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#249Is 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…
Personally, my goal is to amass a boatload of money so that I can spend the rest of my days doing nothing but side projects without any care as to whether or not they make me any money.
More of a dream, really. I doubt it will happen anytime soon. I think I can swing it by 401k/IRA withdrawal age, though.
Re: Advice to my young self: forget side projects and focus on your job
#250What a weird perspective. While I agree that side projects ultimately matter less than your previous working experience, I am highly sceptical that they don’t teach you anything.
Anecdotally my side projects are of a consistently higher standard than the projects I work on at the company.
I also get way more chance to experiment with new things than I get at my job.