Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

manuel.darcemont.fr

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 396 posts

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

#261

Post by NoOneNew »

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…

When I first started in dev in my early 20s, I got super lucky to have a landlady who was also a VP of Tech for an insurance company. I got to know her decently. When I was emailed by my first recruiter (it was just a blanket message, but I took it seriously since I was young and dumb), I asked her for some advice since she was already in tech for longer than I was alive at the time. I asked what exactly the recruiter's goal and point was to all of this and how to best utilize the opportunity.

"A recruiter is your pimp and you're a prostitute. Work with them so they get you better dates." Was all she really told me on the matter.

From there, I reached out to recruiters and worked with them. I ended up choosing to just take contract jobs for the 1099 pay and flexibility. Plus, the guy I ended up working with was able to pimp me out more often and made more money. I got more and better work. Plus, they're stellar on re-writing your resume for you.

7+ years after leaving that, I still have a few emailing me with jobs. No one forgot me because I didn't let them. Recruiters are only shitty bottom feeders to folks with shitty, privileged attitudes. They like working with partners, not self-centered assholes.

Also, I call bullshit on your pivoting/jump ship comment. They jump ON folks that they can pad their resume and pimp them out for more money. The more roles you "could" fill, they can translate to a vertical and horizontal experience spectrum that crushes the competition, which they then sell you for double even though you're still only doing one job. They're the salesmen. Let them sell you.

That and my parents came with $15 bucks and a kid to the USA with the state funded sponsor disappeared with their grant the day before they landed. But hey, just like you, I didn't mention that to podium in the Victim Olympics. One thing I learned about all of us first-gens, we're all equally angry cunts.

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

#262

Post by winrid »

Aeolun wrote: post #254
winrid wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My entire direct family is on welfare and was half my life. My parents spent a significant amount of time in mental hospitals while I lived with various aunts and grandparents (sometimes trailers, sometimes in a farm house. I liked the farm house though). Yeah. Lots of privilege.

Living in a farm house sounds like privilege compared to trailers :) Anyway, no need to defend yourself against random internet people. In the end it’s all down to hard work and a bit of luck (the people not doing the hard work part will never be in a position to make use of the luck).

Yeah I did let myself get worked up.

We actually ended up loosing the farm house to the bank. I say farm house because that's an easy way to describe it, but it was really just a house on the edge of another farm in the middle of nowhere. Lots of peace and quiet. :)

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

#263

Post by jonathankoren »

jokab wrote: post #192
jonathankoren wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My first question is what does migrating to a new system get you that the current system doesn’t? Is the new system even compatible with existing system? I ask, because you sound like you want to rewrite a stable system. Stop whining and make a business case.

The idea that you need hobbies that match your work is as dumb as expecting a funeral director to embalm cats on the weekend.

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

#264

Post by NoOneNew »

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…

Not OP, but my parents came with little too. It depends on the situations. "Choosing" to come to the US for shits and giggles, you are absolutely correct on meeting substantial requirements.

Refugees/Asylum-Seekers don't follow the same requirements. It's super hard to nail down as there are different types and most (that I've been aware of) are case-by-case situations. You have war, religious, political, stateless, there's many types and yea... I wouldn't discount what your parents told you. There might be more to the story they don't want to share.

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

#265

Post by manigandham »

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…

There's a massive gap between terrible spammy recruiters and impressing a hot startup's CEO directly.

Also the higher your position the less side projects matter because it's your main job responsibilities and performance that's in focus, not what you do on your own time.

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

#266

Post by jrumbut »

westoncb wrote: post #221
jrumbut wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 direct…

Something I had some success with was grouping things together on the resume. Having lived through it it can feel like different chapters but often that isn't legible to others. So you had a lot of success freelancing for a year and then spent 3 years on product research and development that went nowhere or looks doomed in hindsight. Why did you give up a good business to dither around?

Really what happened was you spent 4 years on an entrepreneurial journey that involved products, services, and R&D. That the services side provided the revenue to support the other segments is exactly how that business is supposed to work. It's how IBM works.

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

#267

Post by umaar »

rektide wrote: post #189
umaar wrote: post #128

I've been putting more and more effort into my side projects recently (all on GitHub). It's kept me sharp, passionate, always gives me something to optionally think about (e.g. when exercising), provides conversation pieces (with the right crowd of course), has taught me a whole bunch of new techniques and has kept me relevant in this fast moving industry. My side projects include: - An Air Quality Monitoring Dashboa…

How do you feel about the author's conclusion? > I don’t want to make this blog post a rant against side projects. In fact, I’m advocating the exact opposite. Continue to do as many side projects as ever, code on nights and weekends if you want too, but don’t think about how they could be useful to you to get a new job. IMHO, that's over-doing it, but fairly on target. Like dating, one wants to be an interesting pers…

Thanks for the compliment :)

A long time ago I would've agreed. But now I think we live in a world where you can land a job with the right sort of Instagram post which goes viral. Side projects can broaden your horizons, increase your network size, put you in touch with that random CEO who wants to interview you because you used their API in your side project.

I agree with you, most hirees still don't care. However the people I've enjoyed working with most in my career had fascinating quirks to them, maybe they do carpentry or maybe they're building a compiler for fun.

Work can drain people, so having a bit of naive optimism that your side projects could help people/make money/land you a job/or whatever, is not a bad idea IMO. Like with anything, one should manage their own expectations though!

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

#268

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

dvt wrote: post #54
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 guess I'm a fan of the old adage: "Dress for the job you want."

Wearing a suit on an assemly line doesn't seem like a good idea to me...

I do like that phrase a lot, though it does have its limits

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

#269

Post by sims18 »

keithnz wrote: post #89

heh, this seems common with devs who get to around the 10 year mark, they try and distil wisdom from their experience, but all too often it is quite rigid advice...I did it too, I would have plenty of advice for my "younger" self when I hit the 10 year mark. I'm at 40 years coding now, and I'd be hard pressed to make any definitive advice or claims about anything. Maybe my advice now would be don't buy into any stron…

Best response so far imo. There are so many opinions and advice about how to get ahead in this field that it is literally debilitating. Should I work on side projects? Should I grind leetcode? Shoukd I study algs? Should I build mobile apps...the list goes on and on. Seems like the only thig to do is chase down what's most interesting and hope the time spent will benefit the career as well? Would your 40 years agree with that?

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

#270

Post by rconti »

titanomachy wrote: post #152
rconti wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why people cared so much about company "name" until a handful of years ago. It's not about "status" in terms of what kind of fancy clothes you wear, but it absolutely signals an ability to clear a certain kind of bar, produce a certain kind of work, and experience things on a scale that you wouldn't at a smaller shop. It doesn't mean one path is right or wrong for a job (I know many people who swit…

I suspect "clear a certain kind of bar" is the biggest part of this. Imagine you're a recruiter at Facebook. You reach out to thousands of candidates, convince hundreds to come in for interviews, and almost all of them fail because the interviews are hard and test skills that need to be specifically trained. If you convince a Googler to come in for an interview, they probably have a nearly 50% chance of passing since…

My favorite econ professor at my (private) university often pointed out that our eventual diploma was far more about signaling qualifications rather than education; that you won't necessarily get a better education than at the state school down the road, but it proves you can play the game; get the good grades in secondary school, do the things you need to do to get into the university, get the grades, do the work. It's far less about what you actually learn or the 'quality' of the education, whatever that means.
Post reply on HN