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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

#61

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

actuator wrote: post #33
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can speak to the processes involved and have demonstrable knowledge about how to implement things learned from side-projects, what's the difference between having done it at work versus personal time? None in my opinion.

> If you can speak to the processes involved and have demonstrable knowledge about how to implement things learned from side-projects As I mentioned in my comment, no difference if the person is starting out or if the project gets traction. But for experienced positions like the post author was talking about. You don't get additional signals on the developer, like did the product scale well, how was the uptime, the p…

The counterpoint to this is the amount of resumes I've had to read and subsequent interviews I've had to sit on from "seniors" or "principals" that they themselves haven't gone fully into the weeds on whatever technology they've been practicing for 10+ years. The amount is staggering.

You know my hypothesis why, because they don't have side projects. They have silo'd themselves into whatever niche project or have been on maintenance mode on a piece of software for years and never evolve. Sometimes it's not their fault, their company has pigeon-holed them into whatever software and they can't escape for whatever reason.

They should have side projects (if they care to keep learning) or lest be left behind those in more dynamic companies or those that have side projects to evolve.

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

#62

Post by dvt »

jonathankoren wrote: post #48
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…

As a hiring manager, I never cared about side projects, or Stack Overflow or Kaggle scores. The most a side project github link would tell me if it was big or not. That’s it. I’m not going to go through and read a bunch of random code by myself, when I can just ask a couple of questions, and get the same information quicker. They are just too many resumes to read. Seriously, all side projects tell me is that you spen…

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.

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

#63

Post by RIMR »

vbezhenar wrote: post #51
binarymax wrote: post #6

Advice 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.

100 side projects isn't "100 ideas worthy of implementation".

100 side projects is the chance at one idea worthy of implementation. If you have even one good idea, all of your bad ideas weren't only worth it, but amount to how you got there.

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

#64

Post by davidivadavid »

vbezhenar wrote: post #51
binarymax wrote: post #6

Advice 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.

Think about things around you that could be better. You'll get 100 ideas per day.

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

#66

Post by borroka »

marketingPro wrote: post #7

This _opinion_ can be countered with a single ancedote- I got a job because of my side projects and would be unemployed if I didn't work on side projects. Now, who's opinion is correct?

If you think in terms of probability, there is no conflict. And that is also why "never do this if you want to get that" is often a necessary, but tautologically inaccurate, simplification.

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

#67

Post by arcticbull »

vbezhenar wrote: post #44
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…

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

Indeed, I always recommend finding someone you know who works at the company and getting an in from the inside. Even if they just throw you to the recruiters, you'll be at the top of the pile and that's often the hardest part.

This is also true, fwiw, of how I recommend switching teams within a company. Go sit with them, see what they're up to, establish a mutual fit, then ask their manager to sort out the transfer with your manager.

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

#68

Post by throwaways885 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #51
binarymax wrote: post #6

Advice 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.

Reddit clones can still be novel.

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

#70

Post by actuator »

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…

> 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 use it and trust us because they considered that a very important signal. The decision is not upto just developers.

> I heard a fun anecdote of Evan Spiegel attending an LA hackathon maybe 6 or 7 years ago. Some nerdy engineer showed him that he figured out how to get around Snapchat's spam filter. Spiegel offered him a job on the spot.

I am sure we will all have our anecdotal examples like this and I am not against side projects. I agree with the post author that side projects are great, but don't expect them to count towards your next job. If they do, then great.

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