Side Projects Q&A and Videos

None of my team mates have filed patents. Some Engineers working on ML, Computer Vision have filed lot of patents. I don't have experience in ML and its difficult to get into these teams as a beginner in ML. I am working in Insights team and building recommendation systems(Its in primitive stage, hardcoded rules). I have been trying to read lots of articles, what other companies are doing, recent ML work on recommendation systems but I am failing to come up with an idea that I can apply to our use case as I don't see similar use case outside. I don't have research engineers/scientists to talk to in my org. Filing a patent is not a requirement for my job role. I just want to do it out of interest. I am stuck. Could someone please provide insights on how I can move forward to think bigger?

age: 55

experience: 30 year of on/off programming. 7 years of managing SWEs

After joining Taro, I am motivated to reset my career and not live in depression any more. Also, I think, due to side effects of Taro, my sleep has improved a lot and I am not consuming cheap dopamine any more.

My next tasks are

1. fix my resume and get it to near-perfect.
2. apply at Microsoft
3. while I wait for interview from MS, start programming in Angular / Typescript, .net services c# etc. This will at least help in healthy dopamine and mind set. and help me for future non-FAANG-interviews.
4. if I get interview call from MS, start studying DSA, else continue to do side project in Angular / C# / .net

But I was thinking, at this stage, given AI popularity, should I pivot and start learning AI because even if I get real good at side projects and programming, is it a better career move to be good at programming at this stage of my life? AI is going to get better and better and just being a good programmer is not going to cut it even in near-future?

Thanks for reading.

I spend a lot of my free time working on personal projects, typically sourced from kodeko, the android developer site, and other & mobile developer blogs.

I often find that these projects are good experience, but not in depth enough to deploy. Are there any resources (or advice for creating ideas & development plans) anyone would recommend for building intermediate and advanced applications?

I am currently seeking to transition into a career as a compiler engineer, a field I find deeply fascinating. The interdisciplinary nature of compiler engineering, bridging areas such as computer architecture and graph theory, intrigues me greatly. Additionally, the sector offers promising financial rewards, especially with companies like Meta, Nvidia, and AMD that are at the forefront of hardware accelerators experiencing significant growth. I am convinced this growth trajectory will continue, making this career path an ideal blend of intellectual fulfillment, professional growth, and competitive compensation.

Due to recent layoffs, I find myself unemployed, and I am seizing this moment to pivot towards compiler engineering. However, I acknowledge that there is a steep learning curve to becoming an ideal candidate for such positions. The required skill set typically includes:

• Proficiency in C++
• Experience with GPUs
• Knowledge of an Intermediate Representation Language (e.g., LLVM)
• Understanding of computer architecture

Previously, I worked as a senior backend engineer, specializing in tool development using functional programming languages such as Scala and Ocaml. My experience spans across FAANG companies and two startups.

To bridge the gap in my skill set, I have been actively contributing to open-source projects similar to LLVM and honing my C++ skills through consistent practice on Leetcode. Despite securing a few interviews for compiler engineering positions, I have not been successful, primarily due to difficulties with compiler-specific questions.

I seek advice on the following:

1. How can I enhance my chances of entering the compiler engineering field, especially without being part of a compiler project community or holding a position of authority within such a project?
2. What strategies can I employ to prepare for and succeed in domain-specific interviews, considering my lack of prior experience in this area?

Any guidance or insights from those who have navigated a similar path would be immensely appreciated.

What's the right way to think about spending time on your job vs. spending time on side-projects? Once I finish enough work to meet expectations, should I then work on side-projects? Should I think of it more time-bound, and think of my job as the coding I do during the day, and then on my own time I only work on side-projects?

My thoughts are scattered here, but I know that side-projects are key to learning new tech, keeping yourself sharp, and enjoying coding more. On the other hand, linear thinking would say throw yourself entirely at your job, and ride that as high as you can.

Appreciate any insights on the matter.

Sometimes we can’t make progress on our tasks due to situations outside our control. For example: waiting someone to review our code, waiting for a permission approval, a meeting that got pushed back, etc.

Are there ways I can continue to make progress and impact while waiting for these?

I considered having a side project and work on it when I can’t progress in my main task, or getting started on a future task to address it more quickly when I officially start it.

I was inspired by the gamification on Duolingo, which is a language learning app with a "daily streak" mechanic. The incentive to do something in the app every day has been very powerful for me - I have a streak of 200+ days!

I want to bring this idea over to an engineering context, creating an app called "Leetfriends". The purpose of the app is to have friends share with one another their Leetcode streaks, using social pressure to encourage consistency for everyone. I’m hoping that the app does well, so I could include it in my portfolio and boost my job prospects. How do I best go about this app?

I'm looking for ideas for a side project that I would want to do to solidify / showcase my skills in python and specifically ML.

Tech stack I'd like to use / show is FastAPI, Pydantic, Pytest, and some ML stuff (depends on the project but could be numpy, pandas, or TF/Keras/PyTorch).

I have also some great experience with Elasticsearch, so if search is relevant that might be nice to include, or a newer vector DB with knn / ann search could be interesting.

I have no idea what to do though. Areas of interest are finance, investing, health, anything related to women... Also open to other ideas.

It doesn't need to make money, but it would be nice if it would be beneficial for some people.

I work for a consultancy company. The client I was assigned to recently changed to another service provider and all my team (7 contractors including 2 project managers) were put on the bench.

The staffing team is looking for another project where I might be a good fit and they say there's no deadline to assign me to another project, but I'm not sure of that and every day it feels like I will be fired in any moment.

My motivation went from 100% to literally zero. I don't know what to focus on now and I feel lost. It is an odd feeling.

What can I do now?

Things I've done so far:

• Created a side project for helping people manage their finances using Django + PostgreSQL.
• I've been practicing in leetcode and hackerrank. Now I'm reading Elements of programming interviews in python.

Hi I was wondering whether you know where I could find just entrepreneurial people that try to solve a problem with AI and maybe make a business out of it? I would be interested in working on a project from some entrepreneurial person that tries to solve a problem with AI. I would like to do my own project, since now is the time to build stuff with AI maybe using ChatGPT API. However, I am very extroverted so I can't do my own project - I don't have the motivation, so it's hard to build that way.

Or are these folks mostly in Silicon Valley?

I am working on a side project. I may use GCP or AWS for it.

tldr of the system : Create a web ui to process input files and generate a tabular output giving the link to the dashboard .

I have a bunch of files generated , about 2GB in size in total , Account ID is the high level directory and inside each account there 50 log files each having specific content .

I want to create a UI using Angular framework . Using the UI I will upload the files to GCS /AWS S3 . Then the backend should trigger complex backend scripts, written will be written in Python or Java and then output file is generated. Using the output file a dashboard with few images embedded is generated.

In the end the UI should have a table which should indicate status of processing to COMPLETE and in another column show point to url of the dashboard.

I want to deal with least amount of security work as I want to avoid studying Oauth 2.0 authentication .

Few additional questions , non-system design questions =>

1. What are the things I should learn in Angular to cover most bases in this project, I am a backend engineer and going over youtube videos . I want to stick with Angular as I have few work projects going to come in coming months so it will help me to learn it .
2. I am unfamiliar with typescript . How much effort will it need to learn in order to code for this project. I am most familiar with Python only.

I currently have 2-3 side projects that are OK. They had some usage, shows my skills in building non trivial software.

But it feels like if a project doesn't have 10k users then its pointless in this market and I feel hesitant to do a project because I have this go big or go home mentality

Also 10k users feels like such a massive goal and if im not able to hit it then all the hours spent is wasted. There's also no gaurantee that the project will ever hit 10k users. Plus getting to 10k users is not just a function of building good software its also basically going to need you to be a part time salesperson/marketer which feels annoying/I dont enjoy it

My main motivation to build a project is to get more interviews

I'm a Data Engineer. Within the data engineering realm, there are a lot of tools, just like in the software engineering realm. The modern data stack is pretty popular these days. It includes things like Spark for ETL at scale, Docker for virtualized environments, Airflow for orchestration, dbt (data build tool) for transformations in SQL, Fivetran for automated data connectors, Snowflake for data warehousing, and more.

I'm far from knowing all of these tools well, primarily because I use very few of them in my day job. The main reason I want to change jobs is because of this.

I'm worried I'm caught in a catch-22 situation where I don't know the tools so I can't get jobs that have them, which I guess is similar to the new-grad cold start problem.

My question is, how should I think about learning new tools for job interviews? My current instinct is to learn via failure. That is, I have almost all of the above tools on my resume. If someone asks me about them and I'm not able to give a good answer, I will learn that part about the tool so if I'm in the same situation I can answer properly.

Another approach I can think of is to do Udemy courses of them so I have a deeper understanding of how they work. I've learned to be wary of course not tied to projects, though, so I'm hesitant.

I guess I could do projects to learn more about them, but those take time and right now I'm focused on applying to jobs.

I imagine some answers might focus on what my current problem is: can I get interviews or am I failing interviews? I don't think my issue is with failing interviews right now, and certainly not because of specific knowledge people have called me out for for not knowing these tools. I think my issue is more with sourcing interviews currently.

If there's general advice regarding how to think about prepping for an interview when you only have some of the requirements on the Job Description, would love to hear that too.

Thanks!

I want to be able to work at FAANGMULA and am considered an industry leader publishing work in my domain, however I am told the culture of Apple, Meta, Google (all of whom which called to hire me) is not open to this (this is all lower level employees whereas most of my friends who are directors of engineering all say I can negotiate this for my next big work and that I can just disclose this an interview and should be fine). Full disclosure: I've never worked at a larger FAANGMULA company (have either founded startups and worked on small teams, consulting etc.).

I am wondering if it is better to place my autonomy over a bigger salary and stability at a larger tech company vs an earlier stage AI startup (maybe not all the perks in the world), but is friendlier to my contributions outside of work (it is directly related) where they don't care and probably encourage that I do publish. How should I think about this in terms of long-term career growth?

I think that there is a chance the startup fails to productionize faster than I would prefer (they're a market leader already at the very top of FAANGMULA developing new foundation models are some of the OG AI people best in class), I wonder if the path I take is better at a FAANGMULA company who can likely compensate for further graduate studies or cover other benefits/perks and higher salary than at the startup, however, it would mean giving up being able to publish and feeling a sense of autonomy.

This question relates to (an excellent session by the way which really inspired me!). It made a lot of sense to pick something super simple and do it. However, what do you do once you've implemented your simple idea? Specifically in terms of tracking and marketing:

1. Tracking: I've heard Alex/Rahul mention the number of users is important (moreso than monetizing etc). Maybe Android/iOS apps have in built tracking (I'm not sure), but I'm doing a web app - do you recommend proactively integrating tracking tools to ensure you can show how many users you have if asked about it? Any specific ones? Esp since having logins and account maintenance adds complexity and wanted to keep my app simple.
2. Marketing: How did you get to 100,000 installs? Was it just early days and the app stores were less saturated? Did you do any marketing or did people just happen to search your app? I can't imagine that many people just stumbling onto my website!

Hey folks, need some advice on a good side project idea, not sure if this has been answered before!

I’ve been trying to figure out a good side project to do, one that has impact and can get users as well as allow me to showcase my skills. I want to do one that involves the use of real time streaming technologies like messenger queues/kafka which are commonly sought after in the backend SWEs roles that I’m seeing. Also hope that this could me with some system design prep (eg event driven architecture etc).

I have some basic experience of real time technologies in my day job, but i feel this is insufficient as much of the heavy lifting is done by the data engineers in my team (so I basically don’t get sufficient opportunity to work on it).

I primarily develop web apps, so have no experience in mobile development.

Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Today during office hours Rahul talked about this a tiny bit (sans the legal), but I'm curious as I've had many friends who worked at Google previously that discouraged me from applying to Google (like 10 years ago) if I still wanted to do a startup (this was long before Area 120 was a practiced thing). Recently, a friend (VC whose girlfriend works at Google) said many people still build venture/angel funds on the side while still working full time for Google. But of course, don't create your startup company using company property (a la Silicon Valley HBO lessons).

Questions

(1) What companies are flex about having things on the side - a side hustle (but you can't advertise it), examples being two different companies on both ends of the spectrum: Google, Apple etc.)? I've heard some FAANGMULA companies are more stringent than others (Apple being very much against this and super private and only sorta kind supporting open source, vs. others which are all for it and have accelerator/internal incubator programs at the company (Area 120), or even sponsoring ex-employees (a cohort of my class at Verizon Ventures one year was all MIT alumni, ex-Googlers that were sponsored by Google, paid their incorporation fees, I was one of the two weird VR founder people).

(2) I've also heard that from friends if you work at Google, you are not allowed to get paid for speaking gigs on your technical expertise or whatever your functional role is at that company (this differs from from Meta I've heard from other friends). Is this true?

(3) If you go into a FAANGMULA company, what info (legally) what information do you need to provide the the employer? What docs from the state/federal/govt or whatever) that says you have a a DBA, LLC, S/C-Corp etc. What do you need to disclose more specifically and what documentation and legal paperwork do you have to provide?

For example, I currently take consultations and speaking gig money and have revenue (royalties from my book I published years ago) and plan on having an existing app that generates money in the app store that is runs auto-pilot prior to coming into the company. Also note, that I'm aware that this product should not compete with the company's main product lines.**

(4) If you are going to start all this AFTER being hired into FAANGMULA, how do you inform your company employer formally (HR, direct report boss), and that your side hustle does and will not interfere with your primary role at the FAANGMULA company hour wise and that you will still meet all of your core duties/goals/tasks/deadlines for the company and this is sort of 'hack on the weekends thing?'

As I watch , I see the slide where it mentioned MVP and just 1 Thing. And also, in the slide, the example of the app is . I have couple questions about this.

1. To come up with the idea of Just 1 Thing application, I believe most of the ideas are already executed before. Is that something I do have to afraid of or not? When I search on app store now, I see similar apps to Random Name Picker. And I'm afraid for how we grow the number of users as most of users choose to use something existing with top rated.
2. If we take number 1 question as a factor (most of users choose to use something existing), how to come up with the idea about something that someone has not executed before?

I want to build on side projects by myself but to come up with something specific with quality. I'm thinking about to do system design doc (define specific requirement, breaking the big task to small task (make it granular, etc)). Try to make a plan before make any execution.

Please let me know if this plan works for me or not. I want to execute on how I can serve something to users that we all think it's useful.

Hi there, everybody. I was aiming to build a few applications to present in interviews. Last week, I was building a small-scale Spring Boot application with the help of a tutorial. The project I was working on was meant to retrieve data from a database using PostgreSQL to provide multiple choice DSA questions. I was creating an automated study buddy for technical interviews. Unfortunately, I've been trying to figure out some technical issues and database connectivity mishaps for some days, unfortunately to no avail. Currently, I'm working through a Node.Js tutorial to build an application geared to help me keep track of the things I'd like to do during my job search, so I can always stay on task. I don't know if I'm going to run into some more issues that plague me.

The thing is, I'm learning a LOT from both experiences. Now I feel I can have an educated conversation on the trade-offs of monolithic and microservice architectures... and I LOVE what I'm learning. I'd really like to have at least 3 small-scale projects handy that I'm using to automate my own life and make this job search easier for me.

Of course I'm going to continue to try to plow through these issues, and I'm not here to necessarily ask for help with my applications (although I won't say no if someone wants to help). It'd be great if I can explain how I solved these problems, because I know the challenging problems I've solved are what I'd want to highlight to people in an interview.

But let's say if the day comes where I have an interview and DON'T have a "finished" product, yet I still have these code samples that I can defend and show that I've gained a great deal of experience from... would it be a good idea to present these in an interview?

Thanks for the help,

Evan

I am watching "Build Side Projects With 500k+ Users" by Alex and am still in the first section and it's a great course (kudos to Alex). What I felt it's very hard to create a side project for a backend dev or someone with only web dev experience. Because the mobile app is the only way to get users. Normally users don't want the hassle of using a Web platform to test things out.

Maybe the course may deliver scenarios for backend and web developers as well later, but for now, it seems that mobile is the only way.

I have one more question: Is it a good idea to learn mobile app development (for Backend or Web FE dev) if you have an idea that leads you good user count?

I'm a backend engineer and I've been working weekends/after work on my side project for the last 3 months because my actual work experience is really awful due to bad team matching, I barely even code in my day job. On reddit I got about 100k views and 500 upvotes total with 60 comments. I now have 1000 people who have done a core action on my app/meaningfully used my app

But now I feel like to get to 10k users I pretty much just need to spend 95% of my time just marketing/content creation and 5% actually building software.

My goal is to use this to get more interviews at companies im interested in (which are unicorns/late stage startups) and then start job searching early next year. (not interested rn since its holidays and I want to take it easy/have fun)

Is it worth investing time working on this project and spending my free time after work creating a tiktok and marketing this app and posting on reddit for the next few months? I certainly wont be learning anything, but users do look good on the resume.

If it wasnt that I would be spending time practicing leetcode. Not anything aggressive but just 1hr a day which really adds up over 60 days. Not sure which is higher ROI

TL;DR: side project has 1000 users. should I leetcode in free time or market my side project?

Fixed a tricky bug, got promoted, or landed an interview? Let us know in the comments below!

Stuck in code review hell, got ghosted by recruiters, or rejected for promo? We want to hear about that too!

I've been loving watch Alex's new project course - this is stellar and I recommend everyone watch it!

There was one slide however that troubled me and caused me to question whether or not if my project from a company that I founded was considered good enough. My projects were actually in the spaces of what was seen as "trendy," AR VR, AI and web3/blockchain/crypto (it was with an actual company and had users).

Would this still be equally weighted as significant as a mobile app since we were also building accounting software (this was for Hollywood executives)? I think from the video, I felt like I was being put down for working in this industry when I've been in it for about 10 years, so I was taken aback with this as an example.

Was the point he was trying to make that any application regardless of tech stack matters less because it doesn't hit 10K users, vs. something more technically complicated that has less users (but nonetheless makes money and has users)? Even if an app has 10K users, but has no one paying (like an open source project), is that also considered worthy or the same as a side project that has paid users on mobile/web/other platforms?