

Ask HN: How to get around “please link to a side project you're proud of” - ZeroFries

It seems that 90% of job postings require or highly value completed side projects. I understand why an employer would value these activities. They show a dedication and love of the craft, and are a potentially good way to demonstrate ability.<p>The problem is I don&#x27;t have any completed side projects. Between 40-50 hours at work, 5-10 hours commuting there, 3-5 hours exercising, 3-5 hours cooking, 5-10 hours reading and keeping up with the latest, having a relationship, family, and a social life, etc, it doesn&#x27;t leave a lot of room to work on hobby projects. I&#x27;m also fairly new to the game (just over 1.5 years), and I have trouble committing to any one project and seeing to it&#x27;s completion.<p>Anyone have experience getting around this hurdle?<p>Should I take a couple weeks off work and just get something done, regardless of how much I enjoy the process or the profit&#x2F;value potential of the project?<p>Would you recommend out-sourcing the slow&#x2F;painful bits (which for me is CSS and design)?
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smt88
> I'm also fairly new to the game (just over 1.5 years)

I've never been asked to show a side project (or even sample code). By the
time those practices became common, I had more than 5 years of experience at
real companies, where I'd done real things.

If you can get along enough in your career, people will stop needing to use
technical validation. For better or worse, they'll use social validation
instead.

"Surely someone couldn't have been a Senior Developer at [whatever company]
for 2 years if he sucks at coding," they'll think. They'll be wrong some of
the time, but that's beside the point.

> having a relationship, family, and a social life, etc

Unfortunately, some companies still think the best workers are the ones that
are absolutely obsessed with work and are compelled to be on the clock all the
time.

There truly are companies that value work-life balance, though. Be honest with
your interviewer and say, "I work 50 hours a week, and my family,
girlfriend/boyfriend, and health are important to me. I have lots of ideas for
side projects, but they haven't taken priority over my loved ones and health."

If that interviewer rejects you, their values aren't well-aligned with yours.
They might have wanted you to work 100 hours a week, even if it meant low
productivity and burning out.

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petervandijck
Just do something small. A tiny .js library for something. Whatever. Open
source something tiny and useful, put it on Github, done. It probably won't
take you more than 8 hours total.

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rajacombinator
"I have trouble committing to any one project and seeing to it's completion"

this is exactly why I, as an employer, would be curious to see if you had done
any side projects. it shows you have a track record of going out on your own,
building something, and getting stuff done. which is an amazing trait in any
potential employee, especially at a startup.

so I don't see a way to "get around" it. How about some project from school?

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davidw
Maybe you could describe something you actually built for... well, work, which
is what they want you for anyway, right? You'd want to be kind of careful not
to violate any confidentiality agreements, but in the end I think if you "have
a life" you shouldn't be ashamed of it.

~~~
mbarrett
From the OP comments about work/value proposition of side projects, the
current work you are doing at your job should be the focus as the above
mentioned.

How I take it, side projects give a candidate an opportunity to present a
passion project and discuss the why, how, what of it and they did so because
they _wanted_ to, rather than someone asking them to. Ultimately, I think the
_why_ is a very important piece.

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eddie_31003
I would get really frustrated at that question as well. Due to those same
circumstances. Family, Work, etc. Especially, when I was trying to get into an
entry level programming gig. I think what ultimately got me over this hurdle
was getting on GitHub. GitHub allowed me to have this public place that I
could point to. At first, it was very sparse. But as time moved forward and I
forced myself to upload even the most trivial things, I began to collect a lot
of my coding samples. Whenever I wanted to learn a new technology like RoR or
whatever, I committed it to GitHub. It became my playground. Now, I actually
have something I can point people to. Overtime, you can clean it up and point
people to your better stuff.

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thejteam
I'm going to focus on your last line...

"out-sourcing the slow/painful bits"

Which is exactly why I don't get the obsession with side projects or work
samples. There is no guarantee that the person showing the work actually did
the work. At best, it means they have access to people that can do the work,
which I suppose is something.

Not that I am accusing you of cheating or lying or anything, just pointing out
that in a world where outsourcing is easy and common that you can't take these
things at face value.

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ptslutman
In my experience, it takes a while (more than 1.5 years) to start accumulating
completed side projects. Some easy ways that helped me get the ball rolling:
1) doing a hackathon, 2) making an interesting personal website, 3) building
CLIs/APIs to avoid the design/css part. But, it does get easier to complete
side projects as you become more comfortable with your tools and your
interests as a programmer.

~~~
jhildings
But one could also argue that a good programmer shouldn't do a lot of side
projects to be able to focus on the "real" work. The best code is often
written away from the computer.

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spacemanmatt
"My work product is proprietary"

I've had to do exactly one FizzBuzz, and some light SQL. Mostly social
validation and sometimes reference checking seems to be the norm. I haven't
gotten any pushback on lack of a public code repository.

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AznHisoka
I have the opposite problem. All my side projects have the appearance of money
making businesses, and I can't show them either the site or the code (it's
private in Github too)

~~~
lugg
Give them samples of code from the project.

