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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

#91

Post by bradstewart »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #13

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.

It depends. On company culture, your manager, and your role, among other things.

If you're doing a huge career change, side projects may be your only way. But most companies (in my experience at least) recognize the value in having their application developers understand some Ops work, and vise versa.

Many (most?) companies won't entirely "firewall" you from other groups. Even if you're throwing an application over the wall to ops, there's usually opportunities to learn from them, help out on specific tasks, etc.

That said, learning at work is probably _better_, but I do think side projects with a specific goal (e.g. to learn a technology) are a valuable supplement.

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

#92

Post by tharne »

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?

My experience is identical to yours. Both my first programming gig as well as subsequent advancements has been a result of my side projects.

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

#93

Post by shortlived »

actuator wrote: post #70
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…

> No matter how we feel, the process still goes through recruiters.

That's right and they simply look for keywords on my various online profiles and send me the standard "I'm really impressed by your experience, I think you'll be a great fit" message, even though 50% of the time I'm clearly not a great fit. Why do they get this wrong? Because they are "are bottom-of-the-totem pole, lowest-common-denominator bottom-feeders" to quote the parent post...

PS - I wish it weren't so.

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

#94

Post by pantulis »

There's also another strategy: focus on the company you work for until you begin managing people, projects and may be never write a line of code again. And that would probably be good if that made you happy.

There is always something for everyone.

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

#95

Post by maverickJ »

jyu wrote: post #59

This is decent career advice, but it doesn't address the root of why. If you want FIRE, the best way is to optimize your career. How do you do that? It starts early before your first job, as you try out different school subjects, books, friends, hobbies. As you look out to the future, what do you see on the horizon? Thinking about the time I entered school, programmers were near the bottom of the totem pole. Mathemat…

It's also important that one understands the career game. Especially early on. See this https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/early-career-tactics... for example

In this dynamic world, one need to constantly assess their career.

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

#97

Post by polishdude20 »

megalomanu wrote: post #49

Hello HN! Author here. I wasn't expecting so much comments! I would have chosen a less provocative title if I had known :) Just to clarify: I founded a company a few years ago from a side project I had started three years before, and this year I released two projects, so I can say that I love side projects. I simply regret this tendency to start so many shallow side projects (which are little more than tutorials) jus…

I think the overly general title doesn't help as your article narrows down exactly who that advice applies to.

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

#98

Post by cableshaft »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #13

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.

Yep. I didn't learn C# or Objective-C or Swift or Python at whatever job I had at the time, I learned them on my own, and then made a side-project with them, and was able to show that to future jobs and get hired that way.

One job I got because my side project was a finalist in a contest and was shown off at a convention my employer attended, and they called me as a result and brought me in for an interview.

Another job interview, I kind of stumbled on their programming test, but I was able to show something I made on the side, and that convinced them I knew enough to give me a week and bring me back in, and I refreshed my knowledge during that week, and I aced the test the second time and got the job.

My current job is at least in part thanks to those side projects I worked on in the past. And my side projects I'm working on now are giving me skills that I am not gaining at my current job, and will hopefully help align me with my next shift in my career (and if not, at least I'll make a few bucks and some people will enjoy the product).

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

#99

Post by [deleted] »

jennyyang wrote: post #82

The creator of homebrew flunked a Google interview because he couldn't invert a binary tree. Everyone at Google that he interviewed said they used homebrew and loved it, but ultimately it didn't matter. He couldn't invert a binary tree. So side projects or even real projects that are used by millions are literally meaningless. Study LeetCode instead to get a job and focus on your job at work.

[deleted]
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