Ask HN: What are your personal projects that helped in landing a job? - bootcat
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milkytron
An app I made in college most certainly (but indirectly) led to my current
position.

In college I made an app that did some simple calculations to determine the
availability of parking spots at my overcrowded commuter school. It was not
very advanced at all; it had a label and traffic light for each parking lot
and was based on the timing of classes to change the color of the light.

When I showed it to a recruiter, I got an internship that lasted 8 months at a
well known software company where I gained enough experience to move on to a
better and more organized company.

I didn't receive the best education, and certainly am not the brightest
amongst my colleagues, but I have no doubt that developing and publishing that
specific app in school led to my current position.

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mod
I had a (programming) blog that was mentioned as almost the direct reason I
got my first job. I believe at the time I was going through a lot of the Euler
problems, and my boss hired me because he could see my thought process etc.

The blog is not up anymore.

It had no readers or visitors, but I mentioned it on my resume.

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cdvonstinkpot
After learning you could swap out chips in CB radios for extra features my
senior year of HS, I discovered Free Radio Berkeley [1]. Spent a summer
building their kits & had a great time figuring out how to do it all.

Eventually I brought some of my work to a repair facility as part of my
interview & got the first job I ever liked!

[1] [http://www.freeradio.org/](http://www.freeradio.org/)

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tranvu
My most popular one has to be an Alfred alternative I made back when I had to
use both Windows/Mac for work. It was actually my first full Electron/React
application so it may have been over-engineered like most side projects.

[https://github.com/vutran/dext/](https://github.com/vutran/dext/)

In general, just being active in the open source community makes landing a job
much easier.

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meagher
Don't know for sure, but definitely think having some high-quality projects
helped out:

\+ Notational ([https://notational.co/](https://notational.co/))
([https://github.com/tmm/notational](https://github.com/tmm/notational))

\+ Gifsearch
([https://github.com/tmm/gifsearch](https://github.com/tmm/gifsearch))

\+ Some others on GitHub ([https://github.com/tmm](https://github.com/tmm))

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richardknop
My biggest project which led to some networking:
[https://github.com/RichardKnop/machinery](https://github.com/RichardKnop/machinery)

More projects here:
[https://github.com/RichardKnop](https://github.com/RichardKnop)

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bootcat
Machinery looks great !

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psyc
Games and 3D engines.

