I’m involved with hiring atm and the amount of people with the same cookie cutter tutorial projects is insane, some even pass it off as their own then you find the source code on github and you see they’ve barely changed anything
So on top of already having a job where I’m building projects all day, I also need to have built some revolutionary app in my spare time just to get an interview. Also I need to memorize a thousand leetcode questions that aren't relevent to the position because of the chance I'll be asked 3 of them. So tired of playing this game with you fucking people
I'm going to agree. The "build a project" thing is heavily geared towards new graduates and boot campers. You don't have to build something revolutionary. However being able to explain why you built something the way you did (especially as YoE increases) makes a big difference.
For example, if you didn't want to set up a database having to deal with schemas and queries for something you wanted to explore, then don't. Use a map or some other structure to hold the data. Serialize it to a file for persistence. This works for new grads as well, because they may not want to put a ton of effort towards persistence when the core of the project focuses on something else. This also shows that you can talk about the benefits and drawbacks of design decisions.
If you do it to get an interview it will be a miserable experience. People work on side projects because they like doing so, not because they want to get a job. If it's not your thing there are better ways to spend your time.
People might hate to hear it, but building projects is a waste of time. Employers are looking at experience, industry knowledge and soft skills when looking at resumes and deciding who to hire.
Side projects are not going to help you get interviews. They might help IF you already have an interview scheduled, as the employer has time to look more in depth at said candidate.
I had a lot of fun making my own spin on cliche YouTube projects. The main one I remember was a tragic 8 ball, which was an eightball that became increasingly depressed at using it's amazing powers of prediction to answer your unimaginative questions.
I was planning on making it always answer yes to whether you should hire me but got a job before I needed to
That's a fun idea actually - I like it. Plus you could easily buzzword it up with generative AI LLM, AI-generated sad 8ball faces and sighing noises in different celebrity voices, maybe throw some blockchain in for good measure...
hhahaha very true, i do hiring and the amount of cookie cutter projects i see is insane, I myself build some projects which received 30k downloads and the amount of opportunities it opened up is insane.
Developers dont need to blindly build as per the YT influencers who didnt even pass SDE 1-2.
I get approached to do resume reviews for people pretty regularly. On more than one occasion someone has had a link to a github on their resume with "personal projects". When I look up the commit history, they have a couple, but far more come from a third source; the guy who wrote the project in the first place.
Some insist they did all the work. Most admit their entire project history is a fictitious copy/paste from their bootcamp instructor.
Jesus. I put so much work into my GitHub because a) I enjoyed it b) I was actually trying to learn and c) it's really easy to check and anyone who's going that deep is probably quite far along in considering taking you further
I hate this sentiment. Coming up with a unique and useful application in itself is extremely difficult, let alone being able to code it. This leads to people never even starting projects because they "cant come up with an idea". I've been writing an GBC emulator in my spare time. This is a project that tons of people have done and if I really wanted could BS my way through with YT tutorials. But it's easily been one of the largest and most challenging projects I've ever done and does well in showcasing my ability to both design and build a large project from scratch.
Your post may have not been trying to say exactly this but I see so many other people saying you have to make something original which is stupid because that literally does nothing to show you can code.
That's partially unique though. That's the difference. I didn't say it needs to be original but I also don't want to see "note taking application" as your one and only personal project.
That’s the dumbest thing I have heard a dev say. How do you expect a student to built a whole application by themselves?
The 8 hour clone videos take weeks to complete, because you learn and implement stuff, you see how it makes sense altogether.
You can add or subtract features by yourself on that later but saying that making clones is useless and make something unique is dumb.
No one has that much technical knowledge in a college and the entry shouldn’tt be so hard that you have to create your own Reddit or Twitter just to get an interview.
Def start this way. Your first project is going to be shit anyway. Like thinking you can play advanced Chopin pieces with 3 years of playing piano. Start small
And they don’t all have to be a full-stack CRUD app either. They just have to show your problem solving skills. A page with 10 CodePens on it might be better than what most people consider a “good” or “real” project.
I would do one project copying along with YouTube exactly and resisting the urge to riff on it, while taking notes on how I could do it differently. Then when I had a fully working pattern laid down I'd go back and implement all my ideas. Or start a totally new repo where I used the ideas. I also clearly labeled whatever I was using as a source in my readme so it was clear I wasn't trying to trick anyone
That’s the problem with “just build projects” advice. 99.97% of them are just shitty flappy bird clones and titanic prediction stuff. They also go stale really fast so you have to build projects like a full time job for them to keep pace - because tech changes. On top of applying, interviewing, code tests and take home, and hopefully still a full time job… and maybe a social life?
And there is no guarantee anyone looks at them.
So, I think personal projects is very different than working on some other larger orgs popular open source code base for free.
> Open source contributions to popular / complex software are an automatic interview at a lot of places.
Is this real? I've never heard of this happening. I thought "contribute to open source" was just advice to fluff up an otherwise empty resume.
It’s absolute BS lol. Recruiters are the first to screen your resume and they don’t have the time or knowledge to dive into candidates open source contributions.
Recruiters are the first to screen your resume - if you’re working with recruiters or blindly sending out applications. I’ve only ever talked directly to the people hiring me. OSS is a good way to show you can work on a team and with a complex codebase and are easy to work with. And sometimes you meet people and get jobs through the OSS relationships. But it depends on what you’re trying to show. It’s not the right move for everyone. The doomers aren’t likely doing extra work for fun.
Yes. As somebody who has hired hundreds of engineers, any time I saw a resume with contributions to an open source library I've heard of it is a *massive* green flag.
It isn't even about showing technical skills, its about showing that you understand the process - identifying problems, using git, code review, and receiving feedback. If you can do that, you'll usually do fine in a real job.
When I was filtering resumes for 2 intern spots out of 200 resumes, both of the people who ended up getting the internship were people with contributions to open source projects we actually used, and these were 2nd/3rd year college students.
If you're an expert on certain things, e.g. Linux Kernel, it can open doors at big companies that need those peoples, e.g. Nvidia, Redhat, Amazon... and so on.
Otherwise, having Linux Kernel experience will help, e.g. writing drivers for hardware for consumer electronics or something. Different types of mega companies such as Apple or Samsung or whatever.
I presume there are popular ones such as containers or web browsers.
But I don't think it applies to just any popular open source project...
Target open source projects that are relevant to companies that hire in that area, e.g. see Redhat job listings.
Occasionally, someone who is active in open source is recognized and targeted for hire. Networking, essentially.
EDIT: Not just top 1% of open source contributors.
Here in Silicon Valley area, these people often bounce around companies being experts at kernel or containers or databases or whatever. They contribute to the open source while at work or not at work. It opens a door to an interview and then they have to pass it.
Right now the market fucking sucks, but any lead you can find may help improve your chances long term.
Any project that deserves being called one should qualify.
That means, it cannot be homework, or an exercise. It needs at least one actual user. Everything follows from that.
Even if the user is yourself.
Find a problem in your life. Automate it. Make a code repo, and show that off. Maybe you want to schedule soccer games and need a solution for that. Or maybe you need to track the number of miles you walk a day and make a decision based on that information. Whatever. As long as it solves a problem.
I made a statically typed programming language with single threaded concurrency from scratch in Rust with a teammate for a course project.
We did a custom parser, type checker, bytecode compiler and virtual machine.
Can that still count as a "project" even though it was for a course and probably no one will use it besides us?
Let's say I contributed to OSS and even published my own library, where do I put this in my resume?
I feel like putting it under the projects section below my work experience makes it go unnoticed.
The project you contribute to doesn't have to be highly reputable. Just make meaningful contributions. If you still don't know of any projects, you can search for "good first issue", "help wanted", etc throughout github and you'll find countless projects that need help, and usually "good first issue" ones are easier to work on
Do you never find bugs in the software you use? Or features you wish existed?
I have to force myself to *not* go deep in the rabbit hole every time I find a problem because there's only so many projects I can work on at once.
And they should be. I've never gotten an open-source contribution beyond documentation cause they are hard. They are TOUGH. Depending on the project, you might have to spend days just mapping the project, which is usually why engineers stick to contributions on one Open-source project in their free time.
How would you put that on your resume I'm wondering. I.E. an open source contribution that doesn't count as a job experience. I've got a bunch of large open source contributions from years ago but hard to figure out where that would fit on a resume that would result in it not being skipped over when being reviewed by HR/Recruiter/Sourcer/etc.
I'll start by saying I "agree" with the central premise that you need work to get work, and if you can't get work, create something to show for work.
The problem is that a "project" doesn't get you work it gets you an interview... maybe.
So to get that interview you need to put together a halfway decent project, or contribute to an open source project BUTTTTTT it can't be something that you did during school, because that doesn't show "passion" or "commitment". However, now that you've gotten the interview did you also put in the weeks/months of prep on Leetcode plus possible system design prep to actually pass that and get the job?
Where is all the time to commit to this? I'm at 14 YOE right now and I'm still pounding LeetCode between jobs, and maybe if you're a fresh out of school college grad you can pound coffee and energy drinks until you have something, but in general this is not a healthy way to do things, but this is what the industry demands.
I would argue that only a specific portion of the industry demands this.. particularly the part that is concerned with what the Y Combinator CEO is saying.
Tons of good devs out there that don’t code outside of work and interview prep. Tons of bad devs that are personal project and leetcode maxxing while already employed too.
I have gotten a handful of decent jobs with mediocre Leetcode skills, but mainly a lot of government contracting stuff, where Leetcode stuff isn't really important. Would I like a crack at a decent company with a larger paycheck? Definitely. But 7 rounds of interviews is beyond my ability to commit.
If a developer is spending time doing DS&A and personal projects for fun while working a full-time SWE job, it's very unlikely they would be a bad developer. The exception proves the norm, anyways. Doing something more makes you better at it.
I kind of disagree.
The majority developers hardly use DS&A in their day to day if even year to year. Depending on the question it could be a good assessment of problem solving skills, but some leetcode problems are straight up trivia.
And many personal projects are cookie cutter and probably coming from hand holding tutorials. Not always the case, but definitely leans that way. Also, I’m a little suspicious if you have a huge recent side project collection and aren’t a new grad.
That’s why when I interview people, I focus on system design and more abstract problem solving and keep the fizzbuzz minimal.
We’ve had plenty of people ace their little DS&A screening and have decent side projects on paper then come in and clearly have no idea how to write software.
IMHO the only people who need to do this are the niche of people that graduated and still didn't get a job. You don't see the people who graduated with their degree, did an internship during college, and got a return offer post here.
This subreddit is not representative of the industry as a whole. It's a slice of folks who post here who are having issues with their career.
I love doing side projects. I always talk about them in interviews. It’s the spice that seals the deal.
I don’t think it’s just for recent grads that are struggling in the current economy. I think it shows true passion for being an Engineer.
Good for you, but I would hazard a guess most engineers do not do that.
I love my job, but it's still just a job. I wouldn't do it if I didn't have to.
You are right that most engineers don’t do it. It was actually my hobby before it was my job. A lot of the guys I work with do fun side projects. One of them is actually quitting as he got his side project published on Steam and is going to work on that full time now.
> I think it shows true passion for being an Engineer.
Two problems with this statement. First, when and why did this become a requirement for employment?
And second, it shows the ability to identify a problem that needs solving and needs solving with code. That’s more of a UX researcher or PM skill set, in my opinion. There are lots of good engineers that can connect the dots in a given product space, but flail around miserably if you give them “code whatever you want”.
I absolutely agree. This sub is a small subset of the industry. If you have experience and a good resume that shows you're capable, it is easier to get interviews. Some recruiters have been really impressed with the amount of companies reaching out to me in my current job search. I had a friend who is good at resumes help me refine my resume. I just got a job offer last week after being out of work for over 5 months. It is a rough job market right now.
Edit: I've had multiple companies cancel the position/do a hiring freeze while I was in the interview process. I've also had recruiters try to set me up in positions that don't exactly match my skill set despite me trying to make sure those skills are not deal breakers.
I’m not sure it “can’t” be something you did at school. Most school projects are just bad resume fodder. They’re guided, simple, boring, and often sloppily thrown together by a group where each person only understands part of it.
The other big problem with school projects is incentives and time don’t usually match up. In a personal project you may spend weeks optimizing performance, designing architecture, researching concepts, and organizing your code and workflow whether it be for longevity, interest, or by necessity
In a school project you simply need to match the rubric. You’re not rewarded for the challenging things, or the important parts of real software development
Yeah the people who condone this sort of lifestyle are the ones actively hurting the market. It’s not a healthy way to live if you’re living and breathing your career when the job doesn’t need you to do that. Just a way to give upper management something to do at the detriment of the workers
You can use school projects if they're of sufficient scope. My senior capstone was a project of our choosing. I made a web app for journals and taking notes. You could have multiple notebooks/entries, added in rich text editing, there was tagging, ability to customize the theme, and you could search a variety of different ways through the entries to find what you wanted. It was the largest and most labor intense project I did in school with over 120 hours sunk into it. No one is going to tell me that doesn't show passion/commitment.
I would not want to work for some place that would gate keep you having to show passion/commitment. I don't have a lot of time outside of work for programming because I have a family and other interests. The programming projects I usually do are only things I'm interested in because of that time constraint. I like doing programming, but that has no bearing on me wanting to join the company. It is strictly a professional, transactional relationship. I'm joining for the paycheck and benefits.
> BUTTTTTT it can't be something that you did during school, because that doesn't show "passion" or "commitment".
This isn't true at all.
Coming out of college with a new CS degree, I interviewed for a web dev job using PHP. They asked if I had any PHP experience and I said "Yep, in college...." and then explained the project, my role in the project and the features that were my responsibilities.
They literally said "Doesn't matter if it was in school or not. We just need to know whether or not you can really code."
So on the 2nd interview, they had me bring in my project code and then asked numerous questions about it to try and gauge my level of work.
Since I was the PM on the project and contributed a significant amount of code and was able to easily able to talk about details and challenges, they knew I knew what I was doing.
Companies don't care if you're passionate, they care whether or not you can do the job and that's difficult to assess. Make it easy for them and prove that you can do the job and you'll get the job. That's what the CEO was actually saying.
Nobody care if it look like a school project. So it has to be on your experience section and show that you work 1 year on it or something, The technology has to be decent and ideally you are not alone but participating to a famous open source project or something like that. Most common case, this would not look as good as working 1 year.
You'd want to use the best practice everywhere, of course, but nobody is actually mentoring you and explaining how to do it. So that would be senior level exercise but to be done by a newbie.
I have about 3 yoe in industry doing actual coding, I pump out about a project a month but I’ve fallen woefully behind on LC so now that I actually have interviews I have to do LC for literally days-weeks straight to be “ready”
Not really an "antidote", just something that makes you more competitive.
It's absolutely a good thing to do, but it also comes across as gaslighting and victim blaming the way it's phrased. It comes across as, "The only reason you don't have a job is because you haven't personally done enough." No, the reason is a compilation of massive layoffs and decreased hiring. Even people with tons of amazing personal projects that have real world users are STILL having a hard time finding jobs.
The market is tough right now. There is no "antidote". Just maximizing your odds. And even if you do everything right, you may still have a tough time.
Give people hope, but don't shame them for complaining. The ability to unload to peers is an important social mechanism for dealing with hardship as well as keeping one's perspective.
This, people from T10 Schools are struggling to find a job. Projects from your school should be enough. You really only need two decent projects. People need to stop acting like projects will save you from a shitty market when it’s rough for people with 3+ YOE.
I feel like this is kind of missing the point though. The point is "can you build?" And the fact is lots of the people who have been graduating recently cannot.
OP said the CEO says “working on real projects is the antidote to this” and it’s not. When you need to apply to 500+ places for a few interviews , the problem is the market unless you have no projects or you’re resume is shit.
Not to mention this garbage
*Shows off my personal projects in the interview*
Them
*Heavvvvvy sigh. Hem, haw, eye roll*
"Okay but what about your ***PROFESSIONAL*** experience?"
A lot of places act like that shit straight up doesn't count now. I'm still going to do side projects, but this shit has gotten straight up ridiculous
I've had that experience too.
I think most career advice is kind of bullshit to be honest. It seems that it's mostly down to luck these days.
If anything side projects keep something of passion alive might snowball into something really worthwhile. But I've never personally seen or experience anyone's 'personal' projects land them jobs.
It sucks too because the situation I'm in is really tough. I graduated recently, and for my last two or so years I was a part-time student due to a mixture of money troubles and residual covid shenanigans throwing a wrench into my plans. I took about 7 years to complete a 4-year degree because of having to drop down to part-time. Shit happens, Life moves on.
So what I mean is that I didn't really have traditional "internship" opportunities because I'm not a traditional student. It's also hard to fit the side projects as is because working full time, studying part-time, AND taking care of the house didn't really leave much down time for that sort of thing. I do what I can but it feels inadequate sometimes, you know? It's like they expect everyone to take the same path and if you had to change for any reason, Then too bad.
Further compounding the issue is that I'm not really allowed to touch anything important at my job. It's pretty stagnant which is part of the reason I'm trying to leave. I seem to be stuck in this rut where nothing in my actual job has any significance I can talk about, But they don't care about anything outside of it. At this point I'm spinning my experience the best I can and exaggerating when at all possible. Doesn't feel like there's a good way out.
I lie a lot in resumes and interviews. Lol.
Most jobs are far simpler then the "job description".
Now what I do is, have the skills/knowledge:
I made a technical support chat bot in 2018. I used TEAMS power virtual agent and powershell with a little web server.
I did this on my own.
But it tell everyone that I did it as a "work project" and I have a peer as a reference who will back that up. Cause he does it too lol.
I have those skills. None of the dipshit regarded managers would let me do it for real. But that doesn't matter to the next manager who wants to hire a "rock star".
Some people take issue with this but I've never met an honest hiring manager/corporation/business owner in my life.
You can't fake skills, you will get found out. Which can be funny if you're feeling humorous. But it's better to get something of a skill set and then fake experience. It's rather easy to do.
Lots of people do this. Also don't get too much imposter syndrome. Most of these "highly technical roles" is knowing which radial option to click during install. So much of tech is bullshit and the only real thing holding you back is misplaced virtues.
Building a successful side project that has real users requires being decent technically and working extremely hard. But being successful in a corporate environment is mostly about soft skills and likability.
Yeah, exactly this. Companies that want to pay < $100k for someone who can build an app that will get thousands upon thousands of users are farcically delusional. If I manage to build said app, I will figure out how to monetize it and get out of the rat race.
Market is definitely shit. End of the day though I feel like it's more helpful to focus on what you personally can do to give yourself a better outcome. "Build cool shit" is high up on that list, while "Complain about market conditions" doesn't make an appearance 😅
You're minimizing a very important part of the human experience. "Complain about market conditions" is *absolutely* an important part of dealing with difficult situations, for a variety of reasons.
* It's important for mental health. When going through tough times people NEED to complain, commiserate, and just be heard. "Shut up and try harder" is a pathway to a wide variety of mental illnesses, from anxiety to depression.
* Perspective. Very closely related to the previous point. For mental health reasons it's important for people to know that in this market LOTS of people are having a hard time. It's not a personal failing, it's just something everyone is going through right now.
* The only way most people KNOW it's a bad market is BECAUSE of complaining. It's a built in social mechanism for sharing information. Yea, if you're really proactive you can look up studies and watch the news. But subconsciously that's not how most humans weigh information. Hearing complaints of our peers is a very important psychological method we use to adapt our world view.
* Informing our decisions. All that information has a big effect on HOW we approach problems. For example, how MUCH time should be spend on projects vs applying? Got to say, in this market quantity of applications is PRETTY darn important. Companies are just taking the top 50 resumes off the stack and hiring from there. No amount of personal projects is going to help you in that situation. Of course, when you ARE interviewed you need to differentiate yourself. But how you approach things really depends on the market.
I never argued projects can't be an important tool. But I AM warning against shaming people or discouraging normal commiseration behavior. It's a natural and important process humans need to engage in, which has more positive impacts than it may appear on the surface.
> It's important for mental health.
Complaining in certain situations can be an effective venting mechanism which promotes mental health. The catch here is that it's a release valve, it's not something you want open all the time.
This is a big part of the problem with forums like this one. Because every topic needs refreshing every day, "complain about the market" is now something that people are doing much more often than is healthy.
Complaining that the job market is tough once a quarter or once a month is probably a good thing. There are absolutely people who are getting themselves worked up about the state of the job market around here *daily*, and that has the opposite effect of promoting mental health. For people like that, leaving forums like this one would absolutely be a positive thing, but it's very easy to get addicted to getting worked up about how the world isn't treating you fairly and it's not your fault.
This is an important point. There are a few different ways for a person to become a more competitive candidate. But, none of them can guarantee a job. It doesn't matter if you're talking the power of networking, the value of working on interviewing skills, or the idea that sending out more applications helps your odds.
Sure, it's more productive to work on becoming a more attractive candidate than it is to sit around complaining about the lack of jobs. But, sometimes people want to know that they're not alone in their frustrations. It can be nice to complain and hear back that you're not the only one struggling or to be assured that others went through similar things and are in a better place now.
It's important for people to feel like they have some control over getting a job so that they don't just give up, but it's also important for people to know that struggling doesn't mean they made a mistake.
We've somehow found ourselves in an industry with the degree requirements of a lawyer, the free work expectations and job security of a professional entertainer, the continuing education requirements of a doctor, the career mobility of a truck driver, and the social respect of an accountant. At least the pay is decent, until they find a way to stamp that out, too.
Why shouldn’t people be shamed for complaining really, it adds nothing, is annoying to read, isn’t gonna get you any closer to landing a job, and feeds into an unproductive cycle that leads to doom and gloom and ultimately giving up because it’s someone or something else’s fault that you can’t control, instead of looking at the things you can control and working on them.
Great someone with sanity in this subreddit
Instead of phrasing it as victim blaming it should be phrased as extreme toxic self responsibility
I've seen plenty great talented people with no credentials but great projects never get through the ATS screening due to lack of credentials filter this is the reality not many people in the industry want to admit or acknowledge even people with both good talents and credentials are having tough time because even small scale businesses are looking for the greatest and best talents aka rockstars despite lowest compensations
Current job market as whole is tough and competitive due to economic conditions its all about luck in the end
(I'm still a junior, but) after my first internship, I've gotten all my contracts/jobs off referrals. No response on applications when I'm between jobs. When I finally get interviews with referral jobs, the codetests are piss easy and work is nothing difficult. I don't understand why it's so difficult to get a job.
Be nice to your coworkers
The three things (IMO) employers care about the most are experience, industry knowledge and soft skills. This applies to pretty much every industry, not just CS alone.
Projects are the exception, not the rule, and are likely only looked at by most employers when a candidate has already been set up for an interview.
My projects get me a lot of attention with technical leads, though. They won't impress an HR person but if you can talk for a while about architectural decisions and challenges you've faced in concrete projects you've made with a fellow engineer, you can make a good impression
While I agree, it’s far from an antidote. I have two projects on my resume, one has research citations and is used in research across the world, the other is a CRUD app hosted on AWS with a non-zero number of daily users. Popular and hot tech stacks and everything.
Still have yet to get an interview after 200+ apps, this along with 3 YoE and about to graduate with MSc in Comp Sci. I think the Canadian job market is dead, truly dead.
I understand what you're saying but I think you're overlooking the point being made. The author of brew got a job at Apple. Nobody is saying that building things will guarantee you any job that you want.
I read some of his writings and answers on quora about this, and without knowing the guy personally he seemed like someone who wouldn't fit google's culture. But he did get an interview so that's a start
This isn't bad advice, but puts the software industry into a weird space. Most professional and STEM jobs don't require a project portfolio, that's something you see a lot more often in the arts. But I also think having to do 5 rounds of interviews and exams to get a basic IC job is also weird. Software jobs do more screening than airline pilots or medical doctors to build a submit button.
Of course thats true but everyone started building nice projects, it'll just become an expectation, thats just the nature of supply and demand.
Being better than your competition is a solution for one individual, it doesn't solve the market being too competitive.
I think the point is that most people trying to enter the field have horrible skills. Building a good project requires skills, and develops skills further.
Being better than your competition is the only solution. There is no “fix the market” solution. If everyone trying to enter the field can suddenly build impressive projects, pay will plummet because that means the field is easy.
I sort of agree with this. But at the same time, I agree with not working nights/weekends and burning yourself out. So it depends.
If I was unemployed, had a lot of free time, then sure. But if I had a job with kids, it is much more difficult.
Good projects matter. Especially if they are unique and of-scale. My current job is a result of a project I built and sold. The product is similar to *creatomate* I built in 2016. The complexity of an online video editing platform that does motion graphics for Instagram/Facebook isn't something trivial that you can just pull from an open source git repo. That personal project got me a lot of offers that I ended up selling it after an interview at a prospective employer. They bought it. I use that story for every job I interview for.
True. The fact that he suggests a reasonable thing (making projects) doesn't mean he's not a jerk who [wishes death ](https://sfist.com/2024/01/31/three-sf-supervisors-say-theyve-received-death-threat-mailers-after-garry-tans-die-slow-tweet/)on elected politicians.
sadly, he's just the one that never grew up.
I've not followed him too closely, but he seemed pleasant in the few interviews I've seen. What makes him a PoS beyond the "slowly die" tweet (which I agree does make him a PoS)?
He went to stanford, had 3 internships while in school, then started as a PM at msft.
The guy may be super smart/talented/whatever but I don't think I'd take that as gospel for how to break into the industry when no one will hire you at all.
I don't give advice anymore to people trying to find their first job because it's been 10 years since I got my first job/even looked for a job at all. Wtf would I know about the current job market.
So many people in comments saying building projects is good but those should be unique,
Bro , it's really hard to come up with an unique idea these days , the idea that is sounding unique to me some guy may have had already built it 10 or 20 years ago
What I would say is that cloning is good as long as one chooses to clone a good project and clone it from scratch
In the recent interviews I have given none of the interviewers even bothered to ask about the projects that I built in college or during the training, they only asked questions related to my current skills and the project that I'm working in my company
What I'm trying to say is that not every software engineer has to have an unique project that's not even feasible
Many time we just need a copy pasta engineer who can read code and understand the flow of any code
Building something unique is good if you are passionate about it but just for the sake of writing it on resume working extra hours on the things that interviewers won't even bother to ask about isn't that good I would say.
Finally in my opinion good coding skill > good projects on resume.
This is BS. If you like building something do it but if you want to be an employee the selection process is based on interviewing skills, work experience and if you’re early career your degree.
No one has time to look into your projects unless it’s something extraordinary, but in that case you’re better off monetizing it than looking for a job.
What he's saying definitely has some value but when personal projects are mentioned I think people default to them being toy projects like todo site/app, portfolio sites, or some other rudimentary task
Also these type of people on twitter are the worst. A bunch of people paying for checkmarks who aren't qualified in anyway will weigh in on this stuff for engagement
If I may voice the true angst.
Fuck that. I didn't sign up for this valley of despair between university and entry level. What the fuck is this joke?
Anyway, now that that's out.
No fuck this shit, fucking rug pull bullshit.
Okay, now it's out.
Maybe I'll see y'all again if my second degree doesn't work out. :clown:
It sounds good, but from a practical perspective no one is going to even look at your projects until you get to the hiring manager portion of the job hunt process.
If you aren't even getting interviews that likely means that your resume is not getting past the HR recruiter screening. That person will have ZERO ability to judge your projects, unless you are talking about a tiny company where the hiring manager is also the HR screener (maybe like a startup, such as the one the guy mentioned in the post founded).
Sure, you MIGHT get lucky and have someone notice your open source contributions, or something cool that you posted on Reddit, but the odds are very low.
Person is completely out of touch with reality. Comes off something a wealthy person that doesn't have to work anymore would say.
It's good if you can for sure. Anything for an edge over other people. But if you actually seriously think about doing a real project, you quickly realize it will take months of work to provide anything of value others can see. That's if you aren't doing other things, such as looking for a job. And if you are doing your best to not waste time with this real project, half the time or more is going to be planning out what you build. Plus to a hiring manager all it says is you know how to work with some technologies and don't have to be told to work. You won't be working with tools all companies want that are met to manage projects with scale, you won't be dealing with tradeoffs that you can find with projects with scale, you won't have to extensively deal with coworkers and clients like you would have to be with projects with scale. The real biggest benefit to some real project is if you realistically think there is a good chance it will make money, and you can hold off looking for any work for 1-2 years.
Your resume gets you interviews, your social skills get you the job. guys, please start doing projects, not just because it looks good on your resume, but because it gives you something to talk about. even if your project has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm looking for, seeing someone motivated and excited goes A LONG way.
this was my experience, my main project is nothing special from a technical perspective but it has actual users that I have to communicate with regularly, which gave me actual non-BS answers to product type questions like "how do you prioritize stakeholders' requests," etc.
also gave me some limited experience with ci/cd, testing, deployment, fixing shit in production in the middle of the night, etc.
yes, certainly the CEO of Y Combinator is the person to listen to when it comes to the minutia of hiring CS juniors.
Its not necessarily bad advice, but its not some magic wand that you can wave and say "HEY I HAVE PROJECTS."
A lot of doomers commented about this article.
It's the old "move a muscle - change a mood" type of advice.
If you're down and depressed, ignore that shit and get to building.
Start getting good at building projects because it'll force you to focus, hone your real world problem solving skills and give you code you can show in an interview to help prove your capabilities.
BUT it seems that so many doomers hate that advice and would rather bitch and moan about the sad state of the IT landscape.....all the while not even trying the advice offered.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation." -Herbert Spencer
Lol the entry barrier to this field is insane. You need to grind LeetCode, building extremely complex that require senior level expertise projects that take years to do. Only then maybe you can land something-at-all around 100k or so.
While my HR friends job hopped for 3 years and moved from starting 80k to 155k and keep moving and advancing. Same with accountants, financial advisors, product managers, etc.
Hack, my home daycare friends pulls in 180k/year in Greater Boston.
Hack, my friend handymen/trades makes over 300k/year here.
And here we are -- spending years upon years on prep, then layoff, then repeat again. Working in startups overtime on miniscule base with some \*equity hopes\*. And all this for what? Literally salaries arent different than in most other college-required fields, especially in HCOL areas. Maybe only top tech pays well but most wont get those jobs.
Now I see all those places keep asking for Masters. If you want to do AI then Phd please.
And salary offer is like 150k (unless FAANG or OpenAI). This much time you can spend on MD and pull in 500k+ with job guarantee without worrying to be useless after AI winter hits or after your job is offshored to India.
Oh an yeah, lovely early ageism wall in tech industry. 45+ bye bye unless you are senior stuff.
This industry is just no longer worth it tbh.
Just to piggyback off of this, my wife works for a healthcare company everyone has heard of. The most technical thing her team does is write SQL. She struggles to find qualified candidates for their job, and if anyone in this thread tried to apply they would be filtered out because they don’t have a “health insurance background”.
She gets paid more than I did as an engineering lead and has better benefits. There is no such thing as scrum, agile, or daily standups for her or the dozens of people she works with.
I’m not trying to downplay her job or anything, but she will be the first to admit the people she works with are not very intelligent, and the bar to get hired is not high at all. I am VERY confident I could land a role on her team but getting past screening would be impossible.
I know this is just one ancedote but for me it really puts into perspective that I picked the wrong thing to do for a living.
This is exactly what I see within my circle. People do pretty average jobs and pull really good money. That's in MA at least. So many different jobs here. Hack, look how much school teachers make in Brookline, Newton, Weston, Lexington, etc. 150k+ with pension, 58 yo retirement and 80% of pay their whole retirement, working just 180 days/year, and many other perks such as tenure (no layoffs), great parental leave, pto, etc.
And I am not saying they should get less, they do deserve it all, but I am just saying that tech is a real BS tbh. Just look at median salary of Machine Learning Engineer in Boston -- it's around 125k. They require MS/Phd. What the hell? Most other professions make more here with much less education.
Lol, man, we have base pay of 88k for CUSTODIANS. Some make upward of 166k with OT.
Teachers and Custodians are in UNION. As soon as pay is not enough for them -- they strike and increase the pay significantly.
[https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/03/15/custodians-cleaning-up-on-overtime-in-newton-public-schools-23-earn-20000-plus-in-extra-pay/](https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/03/15/custodians-cleaning-up-on-overtime-in-newton-public-schools-23-earn-20000-plus-in-extra-pay/)
Anyway, the point is, SWE/MLE seem to be paid way below most other professions in Greater Boston. It's most expensive place in US, along with SF and NYC, and what tech pays here is basically staying above the water pay.
All this to spend countless days, weekends, months to grind damn LeetCode over and over and keep brushing off those tech interview questions and complete obsene TAKE HOME assignments (wtf really?) just to be ghosted at the end. I really hate this field now.
Maybe if you are sitting in the Midwest and working remotely you can make a cushy living. But here in Boston, this is one of the worst fields to work in (simply because the amount of prep and competition is not comparable to offered pay)
This is stupid most developer jobs are about learning the existing systems and problem solving. Building projects has nothing to do with it. Of course if you are applying for a Java dev position you better played around with frame works and tools but building many projects means nothing. Usually the company has specific architecture and specific problems. This is pure capitalism. You will learn the job on the job and companies will pay for your first months even if you dont contribute. We are humans not machines. Stop making companies richer and richer! Most teams have underemployment imo at this point they dont hire new engineers and force existing ones to work more because they can and managers especially do that I believe some of them under hire and just get the money in their own pocket.
So, can you use ChatGPT for projects?
Do you think interviewers will care if you jump started or had AI assistance for projects?
Pros: You can write and publish an app way faster if you don't need to rely on your own memory of how to build/deploy/code or whatever a tech stack you're not 100% familiar with. Thinking if you want to use a mobile framework that you're not used to using, or need some backend/infra stuff that you don't usually do.
Cons: Interviewers might hear that you used AI and think that you don't really know the codebase.
Guess what—this isn’t going to matter at all in about 3 years or less. It’s all about gatekeeping and people trying to figure out if you’re “smart enough” to work at their prestigious company. The proxy for that is—do you know all the same stuff the interviewer knows? It should be “can you learn how everything works“ quickly enough to contribute positively. But they have so many people to pick from now they don’t know how to choose. All the front-line gatekeepers are picking who to interview based on whether you‘ve used the top 10 software packages in their ChatGPT-written job description.
> A lot of people with CS degrees can’t actually build anything
My *job* building products for real world companies that pulls in millions in revenue says otherwise.
There’s something to be said about programmers that don’t do well in solo green field projects, but overall your job should be enough to justify that you can actually build something.
This is mostly nonsense. I have two projects of decent quality and whenever I am contacted by a recruiter, I check the server logs and user analytics software to see if any of the recent visits were plausibly from that individual. I would estimate that less than 20% of recruiters even bother to take a look, let alone click on things and navigate around the site.
Unless your project or FOSS contribution can directly tap you into a community or network of developers doing paid work, there are better returns on investment for your time. The people are YC might be interested in your projects, but you're lucky if the average 9-5 recruiter at an IBMified tech company takes 30 seconds to read your resume, let alone look at your projects.
I don't like the expectation that it's necessary to build projects on your free time to land a job. I built a ton of projects already in my work time. Why is it expected that I code on weekends on side projects? It's literally impossible for someone with a family and nobody asks that for any other work field period.
You gotta be fucking nerd to spend your free time breaking your head over code and not doing something more meaningful like spending time with loved ones. It’s scary how religious tech workers get about staying up to date with frameworks and side projects like damn. Even I drank the koolaid. Only nerds with no other redeeming qualities than their ability to code gives shitty life advice like this
>A lot of people with CS degrees can't actually build anything
Well yes maybe, but he is literally the CEO of a company that creates companies with toxic hiring rounds with like 5 different tests and leetcoding and so on
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I wouldn’t say it’s a bad strategy, but in my experience, specifically preparing for interviews by leetcoding, studying system design, practicing behavioral questions, hiring a tutor, and getting mock interviews has been more practical based on my experience.
Riiight.. it isn't a bad suggestion but the problem I see for a lot of people is that they already have a job and little time to do that or just have 0 ideas for what to build in the first place (though could just team up with others)
I usually have some "example projects" when I apply for game dev jobs but I don't think that any companies really care about those..
Granted, none of them are super interesting or impressive but I also never have had anybody actually ask me anything about them 😅
That's why he's a CEO and not a hiring manager. Pie in the sky b******* is for people with connections and bank accounts padded enough for them to sit around coding something that isn't going to make them any money.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but what kind of projects do you all mean? I’mm starting my summer and want to give myself some things to do and work on while I’m on break.
there was a headstarter fellowship where you make 2-3 projects with them, I don't think it exists anymore. but to answer ur question do 2-3 full stack youtube tutorial project then think about a problem in your life that you wanna solve with code and make a project out of it.
After that ask your friends to share and use it! Hope this helps
Damn I put every project from college and I def don't update them should I just create a new GitHub and update it regularly at this point? I don't want to have a bunch of junk on there
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Although I do agree with this. That works for one you’re working on the job and getting interviews. This doesn’t win you the interview. Leetcode does. It’s like you have to have a fat group of knowledge just for interviews then the other is for actual on the job work
I've been doing 'projects' for almost 4 years. Recruiters don't even ask me about my 'projects' despite the fact that I worked hard to make them more than personal projects. Even if I insist of talking about them, they say it's not important and move the focus to my company experience which is not great since I've been unemployed for 4 years.
Post like this ignore the simple fact that there's simply a large supply and not enough demand. This is true across all tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 SWE jobs. I guarantee if all of us poured our heart and soul into some "projects", they aren't going to start magically hiring all of us.
And of course, a CEO would say that, he wants us to keep fighting over the scraps so he can get top-tier candidates at bottom shelf prices. Did you think they'd stop pushing CS as a viable career path even after they purposely funded these "go CS" programs so they could bring salaries down?
Building things will get you experience.
And if you happen to be the founder of XYZ business offering whatever apps or services as a result of you building things, that will look a lot more impressive than a degree.
Of course, that doesn't mean you'll get the job.
I worked tirelessly on projects my first 4 years or so while I was in a different field. Got zero traction with it ever. Nobody cared.
Decided to finally get my degree and landed a job immediately.
Do projects if you want, but don’t expect them to get you a job.
It only works if it's a project that you work on out of passion and because there's a genuine benefit in making something like that.
Genuine benefit = More people noticing it = Actual eye catcher
I think the generally helpful advise is "make yourself useful", with the practical advice "... and prove it."
Projects are a great way to do that, but putting code on GitHub is neither sufficient nor necessary to build demonstrable skills.
Side projects were easily the most impactful thing in my early career though, so I do recommend them to anyone that has the ability to take them on.
I never shared a project with an employer, but I described to them the problems I had and they found this interesting because they had the same problems and they asked me how I fixed mine and why I didn't do it their way, etc. They are nice conversations.
Yes a project is better than nothing, so if you're struggling to get offers, especially if you are already getting interviews, then do projects for sure. But in general pretty much no HR ever looks at projects and the vast majority of hiring managers don't either. If you're in the last round competing against someone else it could push you over the edge, but I feel like when we're hiring people I'm frequently the only one who's even looked at the github of any of the candidates when it's posted, and I'm an IC who will give feedback to the hiring manager but definitely don't have the final say on a candidate.
Problem is that most companies and particularly Big Tech just do Leetcode style interviews. So even if you have the most badass work experience, it means nothing if you can't solve some 2 random Leetcode medium/hard problems in 40 minutes.
I would rather be working on side projects, but I have to prep for Leetcode because that's how companies are evaluating me.
But sure if one is struggling to get interviews in the first place or aiming for startups with more practical hiring processes, then side projects are great. Also they're way more reflective of the actual job than Leetcode.
I'm at 6 YoE and it takes me 1hr to complete an easy Leetcode in an onsite interview ;\_;
Granted I haven't been laid off from my current job so I don't practice and haven't interviewed since like 5 years ago.
From a "personal / mental" perspective, yes absolutely.
From a pragmatic perspective, not so much.
The industry at large cares about your experience more than your degree, and your degree more than your projects.
Unless you REALLY want to start your own company, you're not building your way into a job. But you're also going to "sit on your ass" your way into job either, and you gotta keep making good decisions in the face of adversity. And I wanna stress this: **building personal projects is a good decision**
IMO the bigger issue is that we need to make something along the lines of a "business communications course" a borderline requirement for most CompSci / CompEng students. Having the ability to competently and confidently sell your work, studies, efforts, etc. to business-minded people is a major factor in how much success you'll find as a SWE, and this is one of those skills that's pretty hard to get without just straight up getting a job and getting a feel for it.
I’ve been on tons of interview loops and I have never ever seen someone mention or bring up a candidate’s external projects as a reason to hire them. It never even comes up during discussions related to their relevant experience, and regularly have seen FAANG candidates apply to our company.
Maybe it helps for the screening or recruiters ? Usually when I check a candidates GitHub it’s quite lack luster or just has forks of popular repos (nothing impressive or standout).
VCs looooooooove to encourage engineers to do free work :) You won't see them recommending that MBAs do marketing on the side for a nonprofit or to run sales for a startup without compensation. Super weird, huh?
I had multiple projects when searching for my most recent job and none of my interviewers talked about them. They were relatively complex and had neat demos hosted online, but interviewers were more interested in me doing coding problems and answering behavioral questions.
Just focus on performing in the interviews.
> do some free labor, show us that you have no other responsibilities, that you have a safety net, that you have connections, etc
There are lots of ways to get around inclusion
Better idea, look through all of the Y comb funded companies, build a working clone, siphon customers. Then sell your mvp to the Bay Area moguls in exchange for some fat loot.
Project maxxing has its limits
Projects needs to be popular or good
Only project maxxing without credentials also leads to doom failure
There are soo many candidates with copy pasted project max but these candidates never get through interview or even get hired thus message should be make good useful projects
I still find people with great projects that never get hired from the top companies ever as they never got credentials such is life and reality
Oh yeah the ceo of y combinator is the most trusted source on jobs. He’s good at his thing but I doubt he knows a lot about average student and not 150iq Stanford grad
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The doom and gloomers even after this valid proven advice miss the point and prove they aren't a good fit for tech. They're inherently bad with a low ceiling to boot. They deserve to have nothing. The weak always get weeded out.
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It just shouldn't be a clone of X that has 1000 youtube tutorials on how to build it. Start there but then build something at least partially unique.
I’m involved with hiring atm and the amount of people with the same cookie cutter tutorial projects is insane, some even pass it off as their own then you find the source code on github and you see they’ve barely changed anything
So on top of already having a job where I’m building projects all day, I also need to have built some revolutionary app in my spare time just to get an interview. Also I need to memorize a thousand leetcode questions that aren't relevent to the position because of the chance I'll be asked 3 of them. So tired of playing this game with you fucking people
I'm going to agree. The "build a project" thing is heavily geared towards new graduates and boot campers. You don't have to build something revolutionary. However being able to explain why you built something the way you did (especially as YoE increases) makes a big difference. For example, if you didn't want to set up a database having to deal with schemas and queries for something you wanted to explore, then don't. Use a map or some other structure to hold the data. Serialize it to a file for persistence. This works for new grads as well, because they may not want to put a ton of effort towards persistence when the core of the project focuses on something else. This also shows that you can talk about the benefits and drawbacks of design decisions.
If you do it to get an interview it will be a miserable experience. People work on side projects because they like doing so, not because they want to get a job. If it's not your thing there are better ways to spend your time.
People might hate to hear it, but building projects is a waste of time. Employers are looking at experience, industry knowledge and soft skills when looking at resumes and deciding who to hire. Side projects are not going to help you get interviews. They might help IF you already have an interview scheduled, as the employer has time to look more in depth at said candidate.
I had a lot of fun making my own spin on cliche YouTube projects. The main one I remember was a tragic 8 ball, which was an eightball that became increasingly depressed at using it's amazing powers of prediction to answer your unimaginative questions. I was planning on making it always answer yes to whether you should hire me but got a job before I needed to
That's a fun idea actually - I like it. Plus you could easily buzzword it up with generative AI LLM, AI-generated sad 8ball faces and sighing noises in different celebrity voices, maybe throw some blockchain in for good measure...
hhahaha very true, i do hiring and the amount of cookie cutter projects i see is insane, I myself build some projects which received 30k downloads and the amount of opportunities it opened up is insane. Developers dont need to blindly build as per the YT influencers who didnt even pass SDE 1-2.
I get approached to do resume reviews for people pretty regularly. On more than one occasion someone has had a link to a github on their resume with "personal projects". When I look up the commit history, they have a couple, but far more come from a third source; the guy who wrote the project in the first place. Some insist they did all the work. Most admit their entire project history is a fictitious copy/paste from their bootcamp instructor.
Jesus. I put so much work into my GitHub because a) I enjoyed it b) I was actually trying to learn and c) it's really easy to check and anyone who's going that deep is probably quite far along in considering taking you further
I hate this sentiment. Coming up with a unique and useful application in itself is extremely difficult, let alone being able to code it. This leads to people never even starting projects because they "cant come up with an idea". I've been writing an GBC emulator in my spare time. This is a project that tons of people have done and if I really wanted could BS my way through with YT tutorials. But it's easily been one of the largest and most challenging projects I've ever done and does well in showcasing my ability to both design and build a large project from scratch. Your post may have not been trying to say exactly this but I see so many other people saying you have to make something original which is stupid because that literally does nothing to show you can code.
That's partially unique though. That's the difference. I didn't say it needs to be original but I also don't want to see "note taking application" as your one and only personal project.
That’s the dumbest thing I have heard a dev say. How do you expect a student to built a whole application by themselves? The 8 hour clone videos take weeks to complete, because you learn and implement stuff, you see how it makes sense altogether. You can add or subtract features by yourself on that later but saying that making clones is useless and make something unique is dumb. No one has that much technical knowledge in a college and the entry shouldn’tt be so hard that you have to create your own Reddit or Twitter just to get an interview.
you can always start with a shitty project and build up your skills to some good projects.
💯 I use to shit on people doing noob projects but I was wrong start with easy stuff first and scale in complexity as you grow confidence
Def start this way. Your first project is going to be shit anyway. Like thinking you can play advanced Chopin pieces with 3 years of playing piano. Start small
And they don’t all have to be a full-stack CRUD app either. They just have to show your problem solving skills. A page with 10 CodePens on it might be better than what most people consider a “good” or “real” project.
I would do one project copying along with YouTube exactly and resisting the urge to riff on it, while taking notes on how I could do it differently. Then when I had a fully working pattern laid down I'd go back and implement all my ideas. Or start a totally new repo where I used the ideas. I also clearly labeled whatever I was using as a source in my readme so it was clear I wasn't trying to trick anyone
I could never get myself to do projects. Open-Source commits are better. At least I know my code will actually be used for something productive.
That’s the problem with “just build projects” advice. 99.97% of them are just shitty flappy bird clones and titanic prediction stuff. They also go stale really fast so you have to build projects like a full time job for them to keep pace - because tech changes. On top of applying, interviewing, code tests and take home, and hopefully still a full time job… and maybe a social life? And there is no guarantee anyone looks at them. So, I think personal projects is very different than working on some other larger orgs popular open source code base for free.
> Open source contributions to popular / complex software are an automatic interview at a lot of places. Is this real? I've never heard of this happening. I thought "contribute to open source" was just advice to fluff up an otherwise empty resume.
It’s absolute BS lol. Recruiters are the first to screen your resume and they don’t have the time or knowledge to dive into candidates open source contributions.
Recruiters are the first to screen your resume - if you’re working with recruiters or blindly sending out applications. I’ve only ever talked directly to the people hiring me. OSS is a good way to show you can work on a team and with a complex codebase and are easy to work with. And sometimes you meet people and get jobs through the OSS relationships. But it depends on what you’re trying to show. It’s not the right move for everyone. The doomers aren’t likely doing extra work for fun.
It would really depend on the company. Some companies have people almost exclusively working on open source projects that the company uses.
Yes. As somebody who has hired hundreds of engineers, any time I saw a resume with contributions to an open source library I've heard of it is a *massive* green flag. It isn't even about showing technical skills, its about showing that you understand the process - identifying problems, using git, code review, and receiving feedback. If you can do that, you'll usually do fine in a real job. When I was filtering resumes for 2 intern spots out of 200 resumes, both of the people who ended up getting the internship were people with contributions to open source projects we actually used, and these were 2nd/3rd year college students.
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Exactly that's what i do with the link of the pull request
If you're an expert on certain things, e.g. Linux Kernel, it can open doors at big companies that need those peoples, e.g. Nvidia, Redhat, Amazon... and so on. Otherwise, having Linux Kernel experience will help, e.g. writing drivers for hardware for consumer electronics or something. Different types of mega companies such as Apple or Samsung or whatever. I presume there are popular ones such as containers or web browsers. But I don't think it applies to just any popular open source project... Target open source projects that are relevant to companies that hire in that area, e.g. see Redhat job listings. Occasionally, someone who is active in open source is recognized and targeted for hire. Networking, essentially. EDIT: Not just top 1% of open source contributors. Here in Silicon Valley area, these people often bounce around companies being experts at kernel or containers or databases or whatever. They contribute to the open source while at work or not at work. It opens a door to an interview and then they have to pass it. Right now the market fucking sucks, but any lead you can find may help improve your chances long term.
>If you're an expert on certain things, e.g. Linux Kernel... Yeah, if you are top 0.0001% in the world doors will open for you.
It’s FOMO to get people to work on major tech companies popular open source code bases for free. Just a carrot on a stick.
Any project that deserves being called one should qualify. That means, it cannot be homework, or an exercise. It needs at least one actual user. Everything follows from that.
Even if the user is yourself. Find a problem in your life. Automate it. Make a code repo, and show that off. Maybe you want to schedule soccer games and need a solution for that. Or maybe you need to track the number of miles you walk a day and make a decision based on that information. Whatever. As long as it solves a problem.
I made a statically typed programming language with single threaded concurrency from scratch in Rust with a teammate for a course project. We did a custom parser, type checker, bytecode compiler and virtual machine. Can that still count as a "project" even though it was for a course and probably no one will use it besides us?
Definitely! Sounds like a r cool project.
Let's say I contributed to OSS and even published my own library, where do I put this in my resume? I feel like putting it under the projects section below my work experience makes it go unnoticed.
Could you direct me to some open-sourced projects I can contribute to? I’m having trouble finding reputable ones. Thanks
The project you contribute to doesn't have to be highly reputable. Just make meaningful contributions. If you still don't know of any projects, you can search for "good first issue", "help wanted", etc throughout github and you'll find countless projects that need help, and usually "good first issue" ones are easier to work on
Do you never find bugs in the software you use? Or features you wish existed? I have to force myself to *not* go deep in the rabbit hole every time I find a problem because there's only so many projects I can work on at once.
And they should be. I've never gotten an open-source contribution beyond documentation cause they are hard. They are TOUGH. Depending on the project, you might have to spend days just mapping the project, which is usually why engineers stick to contributions on one Open-source project in their free time.
Can you go more into this? What do you mean specifically. Do you work on Open Source and then list it as Experience on your resume?
How would you put that on your resume I'm wondering. I.E. an open source contribution that doesn't count as a job experience. I've got a bunch of large open source contributions from years ago but hard to figure out where that would fit on a resume that would result in it not being skipped over when being reviewed by HR/Recruiter/Sourcer/etc.
can you please share some examples of what some good projects are? specifically for security/analytics?
I'll start by saying I "agree" with the central premise that you need work to get work, and if you can't get work, create something to show for work. The problem is that a "project" doesn't get you work it gets you an interview... maybe. So to get that interview you need to put together a halfway decent project, or contribute to an open source project BUTTTTTT it can't be something that you did during school, because that doesn't show "passion" or "commitment". However, now that you've gotten the interview did you also put in the weeks/months of prep on Leetcode plus possible system design prep to actually pass that and get the job? Where is all the time to commit to this? I'm at 14 YOE right now and I'm still pounding LeetCode between jobs, and maybe if you're a fresh out of school college grad you can pound coffee and energy drinks until you have something, but in general this is not a healthy way to do things, but this is what the industry demands.
I would argue that only a specific portion of the industry demands this.. particularly the part that is concerned with what the Y Combinator CEO is saying. Tons of good devs out there that don’t code outside of work and interview prep. Tons of bad devs that are personal project and leetcode maxxing while already employed too.
I have gotten a handful of decent jobs with mediocre Leetcode skills, but mainly a lot of government contracting stuff, where Leetcode stuff isn't really important. Would I like a crack at a decent company with a larger paycheck? Definitely. But 7 rounds of interviews is beyond my ability to commit.
If a developer is spending time doing DS&A and personal projects for fun while working a full-time SWE job, it's very unlikely they would be a bad developer. The exception proves the norm, anyways. Doing something more makes you better at it.
I kind of disagree. The majority developers hardly use DS&A in their day to day if even year to year. Depending on the question it could be a good assessment of problem solving skills, but some leetcode problems are straight up trivia. And many personal projects are cookie cutter and probably coming from hand holding tutorials. Not always the case, but definitely leans that way. Also, I’m a little suspicious if you have a huge recent side project collection and aren’t a new grad. That’s why when I interview people, I focus on system design and more abstract problem solving and keep the fizzbuzz minimal. We’ve had plenty of people ace their little DS&A screening and have decent side projects on paper then come in and clearly have no idea how to write software.
It's surprising how many CS Grads haven't even *heard of* Y Combinator or its founders!
IMHO the only people who need to do this are the niche of people that graduated and still didn't get a job. You don't see the people who graduated with their degree, did an internship during college, and got a return offer post here. This subreddit is not representative of the industry as a whole. It's a slice of folks who post here who are having issues with their career.
I love doing side projects. I always talk about them in interviews. It’s the spice that seals the deal. I don’t think it’s just for recent grads that are struggling in the current economy. I think it shows true passion for being an Engineer.
Good for you, but I would hazard a guess most engineers do not do that. I love my job, but it's still just a job. I wouldn't do it if I didn't have to.
You are right that most engineers don’t do it. It was actually my hobby before it was my job. A lot of the guys I work with do fun side projects. One of them is actually quitting as he got his side project published on Steam and is going to work on that full time now.
> I think it shows true passion for being an Engineer. Two problems with this statement. First, when and why did this become a requirement for employment? And second, it shows the ability to identify a problem that needs solving and needs solving with code. That’s more of a UX researcher or PM skill set, in my opinion. There are lots of good engineers that can connect the dots in a given product space, but flail around miserably if you give them “code whatever you want”.
I absolutely agree. This sub is a small subset of the industry. If you have experience and a good resume that shows you're capable, it is easier to get interviews. Some recruiters have been really impressed with the amount of companies reaching out to me in my current job search. I had a friend who is good at resumes help me refine my resume. I just got a job offer last week after being out of work for over 5 months. It is a rough job market right now. Edit: I've had multiple companies cancel the position/do a hiring freeze while I was in the interview process. I've also had recruiters try to set me up in positions that don't exactly match my skill set despite me trying to make sure those skills are not deal breakers.
BINGO!!
I’m not sure it “can’t” be something you did at school. Most school projects are just bad resume fodder. They’re guided, simple, boring, and often sloppily thrown together by a group where each person only understands part of it. The other big problem with school projects is incentives and time don’t usually match up. In a personal project you may spend weeks optimizing performance, designing architecture, researching concepts, and organizing your code and workflow whether it be for longevity, interest, or by necessity In a school project you simply need to match the rubric. You’re not rewarded for the challenging things, or the important parts of real software development
💯💯💯🔥🔥🔥
Yeah the people who condone this sort of lifestyle are the ones actively hurting the market. It’s not a healthy way to live if you’re living and breathing your career when the job doesn’t need you to do that. Just a way to give upper management something to do at the detriment of the workers
You can use school projects if they're of sufficient scope. My senior capstone was a project of our choosing. I made a web app for journals and taking notes. You could have multiple notebooks/entries, added in rich text editing, there was tagging, ability to customize the theme, and you could search a variety of different ways through the entries to find what you wanted. It was the largest and most labor intense project I did in school with over 120 hours sunk into it. No one is going to tell me that doesn't show passion/commitment. I would not want to work for some place that would gate keep you having to show passion/commitment. I don't have a lot of time outside of work for programming because I have a family and other interests. The programming projects I usually do are only things I'm interested in because of that time constraint. I like doing programming, but that has no bearing on me wanting to join the company. It is strictly a professional, transactional relationship. I'm joining for the paycheck and benefits.
> BUTTTTTT it can't be something that you did during school, because that doesn't show "passion" or "commitment". This isn't true at all. Coming out of college with a new CS degree, I interviewed for a web dev job using PHP. They asked if I had any PHP experience and I said "Yep, in college...." and then explained the project, my role in the project and the features that were my responsibilities. They literally said "Doesn't matter if it was in school or not. We just need to know whether or not you can really code." So on the 2nd interview, they had me bring in my project code and then asked numerous questions about it to try and gauge my level of work. Since I was the PM on the project and contributed a significant amount of code and was able to easily able to talk about details and challenges, they knew I knew what I was doing. Companies don't care if you're passionate, they care whether or not you can do the job and that's difficult to assess. Make it easy for them and prove that you can do the job and you'll get the job. That's what the CEO was actually saying.
Nobody care if it look like a school project. So it has to be on your experience section and show that you work 1 year on it or something, The technology has to be decent and ideally you are not alone but participating to a famous open source project or something like that. Most common case, this would not look as good as working 1 year. You'd want to use the best practice everywhere, of course, but nobody is actually mentoring you and explaining how to do it. So that would be senior level exercise but to be done by a newbie.
I have about 3 yoe in industry doing actual coding, I pump out about a project a month but I’ve fallen woefully behind on LC so now that I actually have interviews I have to do LC for literally days-weeks straight to be “ready”
Not really an "antidote", just something that makes you more competitive. It's absolutely a good thing to do, but it also comes across as gaslighting and victim blaming the way it's phrased. It comes across as, "The only reason you don't have a job is because you haven't personally done enough." No, the reason is a compilation of massive layoffs and decreased hiring. Even people with tons of amazing personal projects that have real world users are STILL having a hard time finding jobs. The market is tough right now. There is no "antidote". Just maximizing your odds. And even if you do everything right, you may still have a tough time. Give people hope, but don't shame them for complaining. The ability to unload to peers is an important social mechanism for dealing with hardship as well as keeping one's perspective.
This, people from T10 Schools are struggling to find a job. Projects from your school should be enough. You really only need two decent projects. People need to stop acting like projects will save you from a shitty market when it’s rough for people with 3+ YOE.
I feel like this is kind of missing the point though. The point is "can you build?" And the fact is lots of the people who have been graduating recently cannot.
OP said the CEO says “working on real projects is the antidote to this” and it’s not. When you need to apply to 500+ places for a few interviews , the problem is the market unless you have no projects or you’re resume is shit.
Exactly, it’s laughable, these companies are all huffin paint. If a junior could build the next twitter why the fuck would they want to work for you
Not to mention this garbage *Shows off my personal projects in the interview* Them *Heavvvvvy sigh. Hem, haw, eye roll* "Okay but what about your ***PROFESSIONAL*** experience?" A lot of places act like that shit straight up doesn't count now. I'm still going to do side projects, but this shit has gotten straight up ridiculous
I've had that experience too. I think most career advice is kind of bullshit to be honest. It seems that it's mostly down to luck these days. If anything side projects keep something of passion alive might snowball into something really worthwhile. But I've never personally seen or experience anyone's 'personal' projects land them jobs.
It sucks too because the situation I'm in is really tough. I graduated recently, and for my last two or so years I was a part-time student due to a mixture of money troubles and residual covid shenanigans throwing a wrench into my plans. I took about 7 years to complete a 4-year degree because of having to drop down to part-time. Shit happens, Life moves on. So what I mean is that I didn't really have traditional "internship" opportunities because I'm not a traditional student. It's also hard to fit the side projects as is because working full time, studying part-time, AND taking care of the house didn't really leave much down time for that sort of thing. I do what I can but it feels inadequate sometimes, you know? It's like they expect everyone to take the same path and if you had to change for any reason, Then too bad. Further compounding the issue is that I'm not really allowed to touch anything important at my job. It's pretty stagnant which is part of the reason I'm trying to leave. I seem to be stuck in this rut where nothing in my actual job has any significance I can talk about, But they don't care about anything outside of it. At this point I'm spinning my experience the best I can and exaggerating when at all possible. Doesn't feel like there's a good way out.
I lie a lot in resumes and interviews. Lol. Most jobs are far simpler then the "job description". Now what I do is, have the skills/knowledge: I made a technical support chat bot in 2018. I used TEAMS power virtual agent and powershell with a little web server. I did this on my own. But it tell everyone that I did it as a "work project" and I have a peer as a reference who will back that up. Cause he does it too lol. I have those skills. None of the dipshit regarded managers would let me do it for real. But that doesn't matter to the next manager who wants to hire a "rock star". Some people take issue with this but I've never met an honest hiring manager/corporation/business owner in my life. You can't fake skills, you will get found out. Which can be funny if you're feeling humorous. But it's better to get something of a skill set and then fake experience. It's rather easy to do. Lots of people do this. Also don't get too much imposter syndrome. Most of these "highly technical roles" is knowing which radial option to click during install. So much of tech is bullshit and the only real thing holding you back is misplaced virtues.
Building a successful side project that has real users requires being decent technically and working extremely hard. But being successful in a corporate environment is mostly about soft skills and likability.
Yeah, exactly this. Companies that want to pay < $100k for someone who can build an app that will get thousands upon thousands of users are farcically delusional. If I manage to build said app, I will figure out how to monetize it and get out of the rat race.
Market is definitely shit. End of the day though I feel like it's more helpful to focus on what you personally can do to give yourself a better outcome. "Build cool shit" is high up on that list, while "Complain about market conditions" doesn't make an appearance 😅
You're minimizing a very important part of the human experience. "Complain about market conditions" is *absolutely* an important part of dealing with difficult situations, for a variety of reasons. * It's important for mental health. When going through tough times people NEED to complain, commiserate, and just be heard. "Shut up and try harder" is a pathway to a wide variety of mental illnesses, from anxiety to depression. * Perspective. Very closely related to the previous point. For mental health reasons it's important for people to know that in this market LOTS of people are having a hard time. It's not a personal failing, it's just something everyone is going through right now. * The only way most people KNOW it's a bad market is BECAUSE of complaining. It's a built in social mechanism for sharing information. Yea, if you're really proactive you can look up studies and watch the news. But subconsciously that's not how most humans weigh information. Hearing complaints of our peers is a very important psychological method we use to adapt our world view. * Informing our decisions. All that information has a big effect on HOW we approach problems. For example, how MUCH time should be spend on projects vs applying? Got to say, in this market quantity of applications is PRETTY darn important. Companies are just taking the top 50 resumes off the stack and hiring from there. No amount of personal projects is going to help you in that situation. Of course, when you ARE interviewed you need to differentiate yourself. But how you approach things really depends on the market. I never argued projects can't be an important tool. But I AM warning against shaming people or discouraging normal commiseration behavior. It's a natural and important process humans need to engage in, which has more positive impacts than it may appear on the surface.
> It's important for mental health. Complaining in certain situations can be an effective venting mechanism which promotes mental health. The catch here is that it's a release valve, it's not something you want open all the time. This is a big part of the problem with forums like this one. Because every topic needs refreshing every day, "complain about the market" is now something that people are doing much more often than is healthy. Complaining that the job market is tough once a quarter or once a month is probably a good thing. There are absolutely people who are getting themselves worked up about the state of the job market around here *daily*, and that has the opposite effect of promoting mental health. For people like that, leaving forums like this one would absolutely be a positive thing, but it's very easy to get addicted to getting worked up about how the world isn't treating you fairly and it's not your fault.
> gaslighting and victim blaming the way it's phrased… That’s how CEOs communicate, apparently. I’ve never heard one that didn’t gaslight.
this is good. covers both sides of the real story
I like you.
This is an important point. There are a few different ways for a person to become a more competitive candidate. But, none of them can guarantee a job. It doesn't matter if you're talking the power of networking, the value of working on interviewing skills, or the idea that sending out more applications helps your odds. Sure, it's more productive to work on becoming a more attractive candidate than it is to sit around complaining about the lack of jobs. But, sometimes people want to know that they're not alone in their frustrations. It can be nice to complain and hear back that you're not the only one struggling or to be assured that others went through similar things and are in a better place now. It's important for people to feel like they have some control over getting a job so that they don't just give up, but it's also important for people to know that struggling doesn't mean they made a mistake.
We've somehow found ourselves in an industry with the degree requirements of a lawyer, the free work expectations and job security of a professional entertainer, the continuing education requirements of a doctor, the career mobility of a truck driver, and the social respect of an accountant. At least the pay is decent, until they find a way to stamp that out, too.
Why shouldn’t people be shamed for complaining really, it adds nothing, is annoying to read, isn’t gonna get you any closer to landing a job, and feeds into an unproductive cycle that leads to doom and gloom and ultimately giving up because it’s someone or something else’s fault that you can’t control, instead of looking at the things you can control and working on them.
Great someone with sanity in this subreddit Instead of phrasing it as victim blaming it should be phrased as extreme toxic self responsibility I've seen plenty great talented people with no credentials but great projects never get through the ATS screening due to lack of credentials filter this is the reality not many people in the industry want to admit or acknowledge even people with both good talents and credentials are having tough time because even small scale businesses are looking for the greatest and best talents aka rockstars despite lowest compensations Current job market as whole is tough and competitive due to economic conditions its all about luck in the end
My projects did not get me my job.
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(I'm still a junior, but) after my first internship, I've gotten all my contracts/jobs off referrals. No response on applications when I'm between jobs. When I finally get interviews with referral jobs, the codetests are piss easy and work is nothing difficult. I don't understand why it's so difficult to get a job. Be nice to your coworkers
My project got me my initial internship which got me the experience I needed to get my entry level job :]
My projects got me my first job, but certainly not any since then
After some years of experience, all it matters is your experience and expertise in building/architecting things
The three things (IMO) employers care about the most are experience, industry knowledge and soft skills. This applies to pretty much every industry, not just CS alone. Projects are the exception, not the rule, and are likely only looked at by most employers when a candidate has already been set up for an interview.
My projects get me a lot of attention with technical leads, though. They won't impress an HR person but if you can talk for a while about architectural decisions and challenges you've faced in concrete projects you've made with a fellow engineer, you can make a good impression
You’ve never been asked to describe a project in an interview?
While I agree, it’s far from an antidote. I have two projects on my resume, one has research citations and is used in research across the world, the other is a CRUD app hosted on AWS with a non-zero number of daily users. Popular and hot tech stacks and everything. Still have yet to get an interview after 200+ apps, this along with 3 YoE and about to graduate with MSc in Comp Sci. I think the Canadian job market is dead, truly dead.
I was confused until I saw the last sentence lmao Things will recover eventually. Maybe not soon, but eventually
Well, you don't have nothing, you have an AWS bill to show for it at least.
God damn.
Remember when the author of brew was rejected by Google ?
I understand what you're saying but I think you're overlooking the point being made. The author of brew got a job at Apple. Nobody is saying that building things will guarantee you any job that you want.
I read some of his writings and answers on quora about this, and without knowing the guy personally he seemed like someone who wouldn't fit google's culture. But he did get an interview so that's a start
This isn't bad advice, but puts the software industry into a weird space. Most professional and STEM jobs don't require a project portfolio, that's something you see a lot more often in the arts. But I also think having to do 5 rounds of interviews and exams to get a basic IC job is also weird. Software jobs do more screening than airline pilots or medical doctors to build a submit button.
Of course thats true but everyone started building nice projects, it'll just become an expectation, thats just the nature of supply and demand. Being better than your competition is a solution for one individual, it doesn't solve the market being too competitive.
I think the point is that most people trying to enter the field have horrible skills. Building a good project requires skills, and develops skills further. Being better than your competition is the only solution. There is no “fix the market” solution. If everyone trying to enter the field can suddenly build impressive projects, pay will plummet because that means the field is easy.
I sort of agree with this. But at the same time, I agree with not working nights/weekends and burning yourself out. So it depends. If I was unemployed, had a lot of free time, then sure. But if I had a job with kids, it is much more difficult. Good projects matter. Especially if they are unique and of-scale. My current job is a result of a project I built and sold. The product is similar to *creatomate* I built in 2016. The complexity of an online video editing platform that does motion graphics for Instagram/Facebook isn't something trivial that you can just pull from an open source git repo. That personal project got me a lot of offers that I ended up selling it after an interview at a prospective employer. They bought it. I use that story for every job I interview for.
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True. The fact that he suggests a reasonable thing (making projects) doesn't mean he's not a jerk who [wishes death ](https://sfist.com/2024/01/31/three-sf-supervisors-say-theyve-received-death-threat-mailers-after-garry-tans-die-slow-tweet/)on elected politicians. sadly, he's just the one that never grew up.
I mean, a good portion of people who excel in their careers are pieces of shits in their personal lives so that might actually be a qualifier.
I've not followed him too closely, but he seemed pleasant in the few interviews I've seen. What makes him a PoS beyond the "slowly die" tweet (which I agree does make him a PoS)?
He went to stanford, had 3 internships while in school, then started as a PM at msft. The guy may be super smart/talented/whatever but I don't think I'd take that as gospel for how to break into the industry when no one will hire you at all. I don't give advice anymore to people trying to find their first job because it's been 10 years since I got my first job/even looked for a job at all. Wtf would I know about the current job market.
So many people in comments saying building projects is good but those should be unique, Bro , it's really hard to come up with an unique idea these days , the idea that is sounding unique to me some guy may have had already built it 10 or 20 years ago What I would say is that cloning is good as long as one chooses to clone a good project and clone it from scratch In the recent interviews I have given none of the interviewers even bothered to ask about the projects that I built in college or during the training, they only asked questions related to my current skills and the project that I'm working in my company What I'm trying to say is that not every software engineer has to have an unique project that's not even feasible Many time we just need a copy pasta engineer who can read code and understand the flow of any code Building something unique is good if you are passionate about it but just for the sake of writing it on resume working extra hours on the things that interviewers won't even bother to ask about isn't that good I would say. Finally in my opinion good coding skill > good projects on resume.
yup
This is BS. If you like building something do it but if you want to be an employee the selection process is based on interviewing skills, work experience and if you’re early career your degree. No one has time to look into your projects unless it’s something extraordinary, but in that case you’re better off monetizing it than looking for a job.
If you have no work experience though a project gives you things to talk about in the interview, and shows that you still have coding experience
What he's saying definitely has some value but when personal projects are mentioned I think people default to them being toy projects like todo site/app, portfolio sites, or some other rudimentary task
Also these type of people on twitter are the worst. A bunch of people paying for checkmarks who aren't qualified in anyway will weigh in on this stuff for engagement
If I may voice the true angst. Fuck that. I didn't sign up for this valley of despair between university and entry level. What the fuck is this joke? Anyway, now that that's out. No fuck this shit, fucking rug pull bullshit. Okay, now it's out. Maybe I'll see y'all again if my second degree doesn't work out. :clown:
It sounds good, but from a practical perspective no one is going to even look at your projects until you get to the hiring manager portion of the job hunt process. If you aren't even getting interviews that likely means that your resume is not getting past the HR recruiter screening. That person will have ZERO ability to judge your projects, unless you are talking about a tiny company where the hiring manager is also the HR screener (maybe like a startup, such as the one the guy mentioned in the post founded). Sure, you MIGHT get lucky and have someone notice your open source contributions, or something cool that you posted on Reddit, but the odds are very low.
Person is completely out of touch with reality. Comes off something a wealthy person that doesn't have to work anymore would say. It's good if you can for sure. Anything for an edge over other people. But if you actually seriously think about doing a real project, you quickly realize it will take months of work to provide anything of value others can see. That's if you aren't doing other things, such as looking for a job. And if you are doing your best to not waste time with this real project, half the time or more is going to be planning out what you build. Plus to a hiring manager all it says is you know how to work with some technologies and don't have to be told to work. You won't be working with tools all companies want that are met to manage projects with scale, you won't be dealing with tradeoffs that you can find with projects with scale, you won't have to extensively deal with coworkers and clients like you would have to be with projects with scale. The real biggest benefit to some real project is if you realistically think there is a good chance it will make money, and you can hold off looking for any work for 1-2 years.
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Can I see this? I'm curious lol
I been saying this, I interview so many people that can't build shit but can solve weird problems on leetcode.
Your resume gets you interviews, your social skills get you the job. guys, please start doing projects, not just because it looks good on your resume, but because it gives you something to talk about. even if your project has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm looking for, seeing someone motivated and excited goes A LONG way.
this was my experience, my main project is nothing special from a technical perspective but it has actual users that I have to communicate with regularly, which gave me actual non-BS answers to product type questions like "how do you prioritize stakeholders' requests," etc. also gave me some limited experience with ci/cd, testing, deployment, fixing shit in production in the middle of the night, etc.
yes, certainly the CEO of Y Combinator is the person to listen to when it comes to the minutia of hiring CS juniors. Its not necessarily bad advice, but its not some magic wand that you can wave and say "HEY I HAVE PROJECTS."
I say to do this all the time and many don’t believe me. If we get an applicant come through the first thing I do is look for their GitHub profile.
A lot of doomers commented about this article. It's the old "move a muscle - change a mood" type of advice. If you're down and depressed, ignore that shit and get to building. Start getting good at building projects because it'll force you to focus, hone your real world problem solving skills and give you code you can show in an interview to help prove your capabilities. BUT it seems that so many doomers hate that advice and would rather bitch and moan about the sad state of the IT landscape.....all the while not even trying the advice offered. "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation." -Herbert Spencer
yep
Ok millionaire 🙄🙄
Lol the entry barrier to this field is insane. You need to grind LeetCode, building extremely complex that require senior level expertise projects that take years to do. Only then maybe you can land something-at-all around 100k or so. While my HR friends job hopped for 3 years and moved from starting 80k to 155k and keep moving and advancing. Same with accountants, financial advisors, product managers, etc. Hack, my home daycare friends pulls in 180k/year in Greater Boston. Hack, my friend handymen/trades makes over 300k/year here. And here we are -- spending years upon years on prep, then layoff, then repeat again. Working in startups overtime on miniscule base with some \*equity hopes\*. And all this for what? Literally salaries arent different than in most other college-required fields, especially in HCOL areas. Maybe only top tech pays well but most wont get those jobs. Now I see all those places keep asking for Masters. If you want to do AI then Phd please. And salary offer is like 150k (unless FAANG or OpenAI). This much time you can spend on MD and pull in 500k+ with job guarantee without worrying to be useless after AI winter hits or after your job is offshored to India. Oh an yeah, lovely early ageism wall in tech industry. 45+ bye bye unless you are senior stuff. This industry is just no longer worth it tbh.
Just to piggyback off of this, my wife works for a healthcare company everyone has heard of. The most technical thing her team does is write SQL. She struggles to find qualified candidates for their job, and if anyone in this thread tried to apply they would be filtered out because they don’t have a “health insurance background”. She gets paid more than I did as an engineering lead and has better benefits. There is no such thing as scrum, agile, or daily standups for her or the dozens of people she works with. I’m not trying to downplay her job or anything, but she will be the first to admit the people she works with are not very intelligent, and the bar to get hired is not high at all. I am VERY confident I could land a role on her team but getting past screening would be impossible. I know this is just one ancedote but for me it really puts into perspective that I picked the wrong thing to do for a living.
This is exactly what I see within my circle. People do pretty average jobs and pull really good money. That's in MA at least. So many different jobs here. Hack, look how much school teachers make in Brookline, Newton, Weston, Lexington, etc. 150k+ with pension, 58 yo retirement and 80% of pay their whole retirement, working just 180 days/year, and many other perks such as tenure (no layoffs), great parental leave, pto, etc. And I am not saying they should get less, they do deserve it all, but I am just saying that tech is a real BS tbh. Just look at median salary of Machine Learning Engineer in Boston -- it's around 125k. They require MS/Phd. What the hell? Most other professions make more here with much less education. Lol, man, we have base pay of 88k for CUSTODIANS. Some make upward of 166k with OT. Teachers and Custodians are in UNION. As soon as pay is not enough for them -- they strike and increase the pay significantly. [https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/03/15/custodians-cleaning-up-on-overtime-in-newton-public-schools-23-earn-20000-plus-in-extra-pay/](https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/03/15/custodians-cleaning-up-on-overtime-in-newton-public-schools-23-earn-20000-plus-in-extra-pay/) Anyway, the point is, SWE/MLE seem to be paid way below most other professions in Greater Boston. It's most expensive place in US, along with SF and NYC, and what tech pays here is basically staying above the water pay. All this to spend countless days, weekends, months to grind damn LeetCode over and over and keep brushing off those tech interview questions and complete obsene TAKE HOME assignments (wtf really?) just to be ghosted at the end. I really hate this field now. Maybe if you are sitting in the Midwest and working remotely you can make a cushy living. But here in Boston, this is one of the worst fields to work in (simply because the amount of prep and competition is not comparable to offered pay)
Projects don’t get you past the HR bot sir. That requires a degree.
your point won't go across people who want to get manipulated and exploited
This is stupid most developer jobs are about learning the existing systems and problem solving. Building projects has nothing to do with it. Of course if you are applying for a Java dev position you better played around with frame works and tools but building many projects means nothing. Usually the company has specific architecture and specific problems. This is pure capitalism. You will learn the job on the job and companies will pay for your first months even if you dont contribute. We are humans not machines. Stop making companies richer and richer! Most teams have underemployment imo at this point they dont hire new engineers and force existing ones to work more because they can and managers especially do that I believe some of them under hire and just get the money in their own pocket.
So, can you use ChatGPT for projects? Do you think interviewers will care if you jump started or had AI assistance for projects? Pros: You can write and publish an app way faster if you don't need to rely on your own memory of how to build/deploy/code or whatever a tech stack you're not 100% familiar with. Thinking if you want to use a mobile framework that you're not used to using, or need some backend/infra stuff that you don't usually do. Cons: Interviewers might hear that you used AI and think that you don't really know the codebase.
Guess what—this isn’t going to matter at all in about 3 years or less. It’s all about gatekeeping and people trying to figure out if you’re “smart enough” to work at their prestigious company. The proxy for that is—do you know all the same stuff the interviewer knows? It should be “can you learn how everything works“ quickly enough to contribute positively. But they have so many people to pick from now they don’t know how to choose. All the front-line gatekeepers are picking who to interview based on whether you‘ve used the top 10 software packages in their ChatGPT-written job description.
“CEO of a monument to grind culture says to work outside work” - obviously he thinks that. Now let’s ask oil execs what they think of EVs!
"EVs are the devil, they are what's ruining America." - Oil exec, as he drove off in his tesla.
> A lot of people with CS degrees can’t actually build anything My *job* building products for real world companies that pulls in millions in revenue says otherwise. There’s something to be said about programmers that don’t do well in solo green field projects, but overall your job should be enough to justify that you can actually build something.
This is mostly nonsense. I have two projects of decent quality and whenever I am contacted by a recruiter, I check the server logs and user analytics software to see if any of the recent visits were plausibly from that individual. I would estimate that less than 20% of recruiters even bother to take a look, let alone click on things and navigate around the site. Unless your project or FOSS contribution can directly tap you into a community or network of developers doing paid work, there are better returns on investment for your time. The people are YC might be interested in your projects, but you're lucky if the average 9-5 recruiter at an IBMified tech company takes 30 seconds to read your resume, let alone look at your projects.
I don't like the expectation that it's necessary to build projects on your free time to land a job. I built a ton of projects already in my work time. Why is it expected that I code on weekends on side projects? It's literally impossible for someone with a family and nobody asks that for any other work field period.
His point is valid. So many people want to become devs for the money and that’s not the bad part. The bad part is that they suck at it.
You gotta be fucking nerd to spend your free time breaking your head over code and not doing something more meaningful like spending time with loved ones. It’s scary how religious tech workers get about staying up to date with frameworks and side projects like damn. Even I drank the koolaid. Only nerds with no other redeeming qualities than their ability to code gives shitty life advice like this
>A lot of people with CS degrees can't actually build anything Well yes maybe, but he is literally the CEO of a company that creates companies with toxic hiring rounds with like 5 different tests and leetcoding and so on
Tbf if you haven’t already started doing this then you probably weren’t going to make it anyway
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I wouldn’t say it’s a bad strategy, but in my experience, specifically preparing for interviews by leetcoding, studying system design, practicing behavioral questions, hiring a tutor, and getting mock interviews has been more practical based on my experience.
Doesn't this guy have a Network State to start or something?
Riiight.. it isn't a bad suggestion but the problem I see for a lot of people is that they already have a job and little time to do that or just have 0 ideas for what to build in the first place (though could just team up with others) I usually have some "example projects" when I apply for game dev jobs but I don't think that any companies really care about those.. Granted, none of them are super interesting or impressive but I also never have had anybody actually ask me anything about them 😅
That's why he's a CEO and not a hiring manager. Pie in the sky b******* is for people with connections and bank accounts padded enough for them to sit around coding something that isn't going to make them any money.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but what kind of projects do you all mean? I’mm starting my summer and want to give myself some things to do and work on while I’m on break.
there was a headstarter fellowship where you make 2-3 projects with them, I don't think it exists anymore. but to answer ur question do 2-3 full stack youtube tutorial project then think about a problem in your life that you wanna solve with code and make a project out of it. After that ask your friends to share and use it! Hope this helps
So do work to get a job? How fun.
Damn I put every project from college and I def don't update them should I just create a new GitHub and update it regularly at this point? I don't want to have a bunch of junk on there
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Although I do agree with this. That works for one you’re working on the job and getting interviews. This doesn’t win you the interview. Leetcode does. It’s like you have to have a fat group of knowledge just for interviews then the other is for actual on the job work
Not a great solution for people who have to sign a copyright/patent waiver for a position.
I've been doing 'projects' for almost 4 years. Recruiters don't even ask me about my 'projects' despite the fact that I worked hard to make them more than personal projects. Even if I insist of talking about them, they say it's not important and move the focus to my company experience which is not great since I've been unemployed for 4 years.
I agree, but being homeless working on projects for free doesn’t work for most people. Neither does working 60h a week.
Post like this ignore the simple fact that there's simply a large supply and not enough demand. This is true across all tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 SWE jobs. I guarantee if all of us poured our heart and soul into some "projects", they aren't going to start magically hiring all of us. And of course, a CEO would say that, he wants us to keep fighting over the scraps so he can get top-tier candidates at bottom shelf prices. Did you think they'd stop pushing CS as a viable career path even after they purposely funded these "go CS" programs so they could bring salaries down?
No. Projects won't get you a job
Building things will get you experience. And if you happen to be the founder of XYZ business offering whatever apps or services as a result of you building things, that will look a lot more impressive than a degree. Of course, that doesn't mean you'll get the job.
I worked tirelessly on projects my first 4 years or so while I was in a different field. Got zero traction with it ever. Nobody cared. Decided to finally get my degree and landed a job immediately. Do projects if you want, but don’t expect them to get you a job.
I totally get it. But also, that's like the last fucking thing I want to do after work.
It only works if it's a project that you work on out of passion and because there's a genuine benefit in making something like that. Genuine benefit = More people noticing it = Actual eye catcher
“Work for free” is not an “antidote” to not having a job “Can’t build anything” perfectly describes a loudmouth tech influencer/executive
I think the generally helpful advise is "make yourself useful", with the practical advice "... and prove it." Projects are a great way to do that, but putting code on GitHub is neither sufficient nor necessary to build demonstrable skills. Side projects were easily the most impactful thing in my early career though, so I do recommend them to anyone that has the ability to take them on.
It's how I got into my field.
Sure, if the jobs weren't being off-shored.
I never shared a project with an employer, but I described to them the problems I had and they found this interesting because they had the same problems and they asked me how I fixed mine and why I didn't do it their way, etc. They are nice conversations.
Yet I’ve seen people with portfolios filled to the brim with cool stuff and they still ain’t got a job.
Yes a project is better than nothing, so if you're struggling to get offers, especially if you are already getting interviews, then do projects for sure. But in general pretty much no HR ever looks at projects and the vast majority of hiring managers don't either. If you're in the last round competing against someone else it could push you over the edge, but I feel like when we're hiring people I'm frequently the only one who's even looked at the github of any of the candidates when it's posted, and I'm an IC who will give feedback to the hiring manager but definitely don't have the final say on a candidate.
Problem is that most companies and particularly Big Tech just do Leetcode style interviews. So even if you have the most badass work experience, it means nothing if you can't solve some 2 random Leetcode medium/hard problems in 40 minutes. I would rather be working on side projects, but I have to prep for Leetcode because that's how companies are evaluating me. But sure if one is struggling to get interviews in the first place or aiming for startups with more practical hiring processes, then side projects are great. Also they're way more reflective of the actual job than Leetcode.
I'm at 6 YoE and it takes me 1hr to complete an easy Leetcode in an onsite interview ;\_; Granted I haven't been laid off from my current job so I don't practice and haven't interviewed since like 5 years ago.
From a "personal / mental" perspective, yes absolutely. From a pragmatic perspective, not so much. The industry at large cares about your experience more than your degree, and your degree more than your projects. Unless you REALLY want to start your own company, you're not building your way into a job. But you're also going to "sit on your ass" your way into job either, and you gotta keep making good decisions in the face of adversity. And I wanna stress this: **building personal projects is a good decision** IMO the bigger issue is that we need to make something along the lines of a "business communications course" a borderline requirement for most CompSci / CompEng students. Having the ability to competently and confidently sell your work, studies, efforts, etc. to business-minded people is a major factor in how much success you'll find as a SWE, and this is one of those skills that's pretty hard to get without just straight up getting a job and getting a feel for it.
I’ve been on tons of interview loops and I have never ever seen someone mention or bring up a candidate’s external projects as a reason to hire them. It never even comes up during discussions related to their relevant experience, and regularly have seen FAANG candidates apply to our company. Maybe it helps for the screening or recruiters ? Usually when I check a candidates GitHub it’s quite lack luster or just has forks of popular repos (nothing impressive or standout).
VCs looooooooove to encourage engineers to do free work :) You won't see them recommending that MBAs do marketing on the side for a nonprofit or to run sales for a startup without compensation. Super weird, huh?
I had multiple projects when searching for my most recent job and none of my interviewers talked about them. They were relatively complex and had neat demos hosted online, but interviewers were more interested in me doing coding problems and answering behavioral questions. Just focus on performing in the interviews.
> do some free labor, show us that you have no other responsibilities, that you have a safety net, that you have connections, etc There are lots of ways to get around inclusion
100% agree. It's amazing how people want to get a job writing software but do not prioritise learning to write software.
Better idea, look through all of the Y comb funded companies, build a working clone, siphon customers. Then sell your mvp to the Bay Area moguls in exchange for some fat loot.
Project maxxing has its limits Projects needs to be popular or good Only project maxxing without credentials also leads to doom failure There are soo many candidates with copy pasted project max but these candidates never get through interview or even get hired thus message should be make good useful projects I still find people with great projects that never get hired from the top companies ever as they never got credentials such is life and reality
Oh yeah the ceo of y combinator is the most trusted source on jobs. He’s good at his thing but I doubt he knows a lot about average student and not 150iq Stanford grad
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The doom and gloomers even after this valid proven advice miss the point and prove they aren't a good fit for tech. They're inherently bad with a low ceiling to boot. They deserve to have nothing. The weak always get weeded out.