What kind of side projects can we build in the cloud-infra space?

Question

Hi Taro community,

I have gone through the in-depth explainers on Side projects and totally understand the importance of having good side projects on your resume. However, I have been working in the cloud-infra space in my recent company (Tech stack is heavily based on Python, SQL, JS and ElasticSearch) and was wondering how I could explain impact of any side projects in this space (like for apps we have downloads, for websites we have how many times visited, no. of signups, etc.), what kind of side projects could I target in the cloud infra space that can have some quantifiable impact as well?

Rahul Pandey · Accepted Answer

Two directions here:

Use cloud infra tech to build something useful for "normal" users
Build a utility tool for other cloud-infra developers, making their life easier

Given this is a side project, I strongly suggest option 2. You'll have much less competition, and you'll be much more familiar with the problem space. Some ideas:

A cost analysis tool for questions around how much certain storage, bandwidth, etc would cost. Could be cool to make this accessible to a lay-person: "Cost of serving a <2 hour> movie to <1000> users per day in 4K."
A visualization tool to let cloud infra engineers easily create diagrams
A comparison tool to contrast cloud environments between AWS, GCP, and Azure. In terms of cost, features, security, etc.

What kind of side projects can we build in the cloud-infra space?

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