Why are projects with users better than projects without?

User count and software quality are almost always closely connected, especially when it comes to retention. It's true that you can sort of "pay to win" raw user count by running millions of $$$ worth of ads, but those users aren't sticking around to continue using your app if it's bad. This is why when I show my side projects on my resume, I always mention both install count and the average rating (almost all my big side project apps have 4.5+ stars out of 5 after 1,000+ reviews).

For me, the mobile ecosystem rewards quality and punishes the lack of it, particularly for ASO (app store optimization). If your app actually sucks, it will get low reviews and high uninstall rates. Google/Apple then use this data to downrank your app in search results, preventing it from getting more users.

Conversely, if you regularly update your app, target the latest SDKs, and have good reviews, your app will get bumped up in search results because it's legitimately a good app. This is how I got 5 million+ side project users without spending a single penny on advertising. These apps have gotten me interviews at Google, Meta, Uber, Square, Instacart, and far more Tier 1 companies (Uber offered to jump me to the onsite twice).

Another thing that's important is that it's not just about getting the users, it's about what happens after you get them.

When users come in, they will, of course, use your product. When you have a meaningful amount of users like 10k+, 100k+, 1M+, those users are going to explore every nook and cranny of your app. They will find bugs. They will find performance problems. They will suggest features. As a (hopefully) good steward of your product, you will need to process all of this and learn from it. You will have to develop product sense, write better code, and communicate with non-technical people (i.e. your users). These are all super valuable skills for an engineer at a tech company.

This is in contrast to some flashy side project which uses all the modern, "cutting edge" technologies but has 0 users. When a recruiter or hiring managers sees this on your resume, they will (rightfully) assume that you stitched together some rough POC where only the happy flow works. In other words, it's not much more than some toy project you can stitch together from YouTube tutorials and ChatGPT. This is not valuable to tech companies.

In extremely simple terms, hiring companies want to know if you have the skills to do what they do. The entire point of a tech company is to build a good software product that gets a lot of users. So if you're making a side project, try to make it a good software product that gets a lot of users. Without users, there is no point and there is no personal growth.

I break down the personal learning aspect even more in-depth here: "How to Learn/Practice Clean Code, particularly by oneself?"