How will side projects enhance my skills as a software engineer on the job?

• Side projects mainly help with code velocity, especially if you work on the product side where you can build something very tangible and similar to what you build at work. As a junior engineer, coding velocity is extremely important, making it one of the best times in your career to build side projects.
• Side projects are a sort of "life hack" as it allows you to build up job muscles without just working extra hours and ruining your work-life balance.
• I never had problems with coding velocity in my performance reviews as an Android engineer. This is largely because I wrote so much Android code outside of work for fun, building side project apps.
• At a deeper level, building side projects will allow you to develop a deeper overall product sense as you get to wear many hats building a side project. You get to be a designer, customer experience representative, product manager, and more all at the same time! This will help you have a more meaningful voice as a product engineer at work.

Related resources:

• [Masterclass] How To Come Up With 100k+ Users App Ideas You Can Build For Free
• [Masterclass] How To Build And Grow Tech Products To 500k+ Users For Free
• "How can I write great code faster?"
• "How do I get better at building large scale systems without working directly on such projects?"