Should You Build Side Projects To Have Complex Things For Your Resume?

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Hey folks, I'm stuck in traffic, so I figured I'd start a video. Um, yeah, pretty stupid drive-in today. Um, but whatever. It's Wednesday, so we're we're halfway there. Um, I want to go to Reddit for this topic. Uh, I saw it before I left for work like 4 days ago, I guess, at this point. Um, and so I don't have the topic right in front of me. Uh, like the title, I mean, sorry. The the post was really about uh someone asking an experienced devs if anyone uh has experience like doing side projects just to be able to have something more I think they said like more complex to have on their resume. And I thought this was great. I wanted to talk about this because that's basically what I've been telling people to do. Uh and I think a lot of the time not just for résumés but for being able to skill up and and learn different things.

So, um, TLDDR, yes, do this. I think it's a great idea. Uh, but let's kind of dive into that more. So, in other videos when I've talked about this, uh, and I will keep kind of repeating this is that I get that it's kind of confusing for people when they hear you need side projects, side projects for your resume, and then you're like, okay, I keep hearing it, but like, what the hell am I supposed to do? Like, why am I doing this? And I think we miss the why a lot. And there's a few different reasons why u and you can have your own motivation for any of these but uh a lot of the time a couple things right a lot of the time you are looking for some way to stand out so I think automatically uh people want to jump to

okay well I need to have a cool app idea that's going to be the thing that makes me stand out right and that's why you'll hear like oh to-do apps calculator apps like well that's not going to make me stand out everyone else has that um So there's this stand out component. There is this idea of being able to list like some stuff on your resume. So it's not just like you know uh went to high school um maybe or maybe not went to college or university or like did a boot camp or something and then you're like but I don't have anything else. I haven't worked yet. How am I supposed to have a resume? Um, and then that kind of puts you in the same camp as like many, many, many other developers that are trying to break into the industry.

So, you know, um, ways to stand out and ways to kind of, I don't want to say pad your resume, but to like put some stuff on your resume so that you have some experience listed there. And this is all like all fair. I'm not saying that's the wrong motivation or anything. the um the thing that I think What's going on here? Sorry, you can't see, so it's not very helpful for you as the viewer or listener, but there's crazy traffic right now. Like, it says it's still going to take me like an hour to get to work. And I'm in the fast lane, not going very fast. And so, someone just pulled over and was like trying to stop traffic or something. Oh, it's like an Amazon driver. Not in an Amazon truck, but like anyway, whatever. Um, so again, not that there's anything wrong with that, but I think people get kind of hung up on, well, how do I have something that's like a cool app idea that's going to stand out?

And I I think that personally um and again others might have a different opinion on this. I think personally people miss the mark on this because I don't think it's about having the cool app idea that like makes you stand out because I think people go well oh man like do I have to make the next Facebook or like how do I get blockchain and AI working together synergistically in the cloud? Like uh like what am I going to do here? How do I get a million users? like and it's just like I think the wrong focus unless you love all of those things and want to learn about them then great then maybe that's not the you know the wrong focus but I think hyperfocusing on like how do I become the next Mark Zuckerberg so that I can just apply for my entry-level job I think that is the wrong framing.

So, I will keep making videos about this topic and keep talk talking about it until I see a shift. And maybe that never happens, but that means I still have more work to do. So, the the thing that I would recommend people do instead is think about the skills that you need for the job that you're trying to go to. Okay? And this is why this topic is not just applicable to like getting your first job. It's also applicable to people that want to move into other areas, right? Just to give you an example, right? Like say someone's been in the industry for 15 years, okay? They got lots of experience on their resume. Awesome. Great. And they go, you know what, but I've been building mobile apps for 15 years now, and like it's been good, but I think I'm ready for something else in my career, and I would really love to work in security.

I want to build software that helps like security teams. I wanna I want to just get into this space. And they might go okay but if I start applying like I have 15 years of experience building mobile apps but like security specific like I don't have 15 years of that. So there's this exercise you need to do of like where do I want to be? What ex what skills do I need to demonstrate? And then like where am I at now versus that skill gap? So you come up with the skill gap and you know no it's it's never going to be perfect. You could look at any job posting and it's going to list a million things and you're like how does anyone have all of that and they don't. Uh that's okay. Those are probably skills a bunch of them you will learn on the job too.

But ideally, you're looking at jobs and if you don't know, like maybe you have an idea of this skill set, but if you don't know, look at these job postings to see, and I'm going to use the security example, right? Maybe they're like, "We um we expect that you have experience, I'm just making this up, with like bug bounty programs or you have experience using um some type of tooling that's going to help looking for vulnerabilities or um they're listing stuff like, you know, have some background in pen testing and and things like that." And you might be like, "Okay, you know what? Um, when I was building mobile apps, we had to deal like we worked with the security team sometime and we had to go help with closing down vulnerabilities, right? There was there were bug bounties that were run. Uh, people found vulnerabilities, security team would tell us, we'd go work with them to close them down.

So now all of a sudden you're like, okay, I'm not at zero, not at zero experience related to that domain, right? So you might have that 15 years of building mobile apps, but I'm, you know, we want to find some stuff that's going to help with that specific domain. So now you could go to your resume and say, "Okay, uh, you know, I was calling out all these other impactful things for building mobile apps, but if I want to get into security, maybe I should tweak some of this language on here to say like worked with security teams to help close down vulnerabilities." Cool. Like that's one thing that you can add to your resume that's not just generic developer. That's like kind of tailoring it to uh the target, the domain that you want to get into. Okay.

But you keep going through this exercise and you're like, "Okay, I don't got that much that's specific to that domain and I really want to stand out." And you're like, "Okay, well, have I ever participated in a bug bounty? Maybe not. maybe go try that. You know, have I worked um have I built some of this software where they're trying to integrate traceability that they want like and that's something that you know, one of the security jobs was like asking for that. They want to build in traceability so that there's analytics for this kind of stuff. So security teams have an easier job tracing things. You're like, "Nope, I've never used that framework." Okay, well maybe that's a great opportunity for a side project, right? And it's not because um you know you're going to go invent the next best security framework, whatever. No, like you could go literally I'm going to make a to-do app.

I have a mobile development background. I'm going to make a to-do app. Okay, so that might sound like the most boring thing for someone with 15 years of experience, but you're going to go build that and integrate one of these frameworks and spend like all of the time on that app, not trying to perfect the to-do app with the most amazing to-do features, but you're like, I'm going to integrate this thing so I can learn how it works, so I can understand how it works, and I'm going to get the experience using this thing. Now, you can add something like that to your resume. And no, the to-do app itself is not the sexy part. But what is pretty cool is that you can demonstrate that you went to go learn some tech stack, some technology. I I don't have good examples to go along with the security one.

I'm just kind of riffing here, but you know, you can say, "I went to go build stuff and integrate these technologies because you are picking them up from uh from job descriptions and going, I don't know that, but it seems to be a common theme in the security space. I'm I should go do that." And you can redo this entire example that we just walked through. Pick any space you want to get into. look at the gap that you currently have from a skill set perspective and then go look at jobs, right? get an idea from those technologies or like the the skill gap like I was saying and then try to think about like how do I go get that experience when it's technology stacks that can just be like I'm going to go build something that uses it and no that's not going to be a replacement for like 10 years of experience using that technology professionally but like it's absolutely better than not listing anything related to it.

Think about it. If you and some other candidate were identical in every single other way somehow, your your evil clone and you said, "But I need a oneup on my evil clone." And so I'm going to go through this exercise and I'm going to be able to demonstrate one thing on my resume that is different because it stands out related to that domain. Now to if you're like okay well I don't even know what domain I want to get into like I don't like security I don't care I just want my first job cool like what jobs are you applying to like if you're applying to web development right and even you know if you if you want to be a front-end developer cool like again this is going to you have to think about your competition in this case because it's going to be about aligning your skill sets to what's in the job description and then you I'd say, "Okay, but I've already done that." And Nick, so has everyone else that's applying.

Okay, great. Now, like, let's go look for the differentiators, right? You're doing front-end development. Okay, cool. What's going to help you stand out even more? Go demonstrate that you can uh build stuff in the back end and interact with it well. Right now, you can try to approach things from like a full stack perspective because that will make you a more attractive hire. And for everyone else that was like, "No, I just want to be a front-end dev. Like I'm just going to get my React and JavaScript and TypeScript in there. My nextJS, we're good. We're good. Like I'm I'm just doing that cuz I only want to do the front end. Okay. But you and everyone else that took that mentality. So like you can use projects to try and build up these other experiences to help you stand out. So yes, there is a bit of a, you know, bit of effort that has to go into like what's going to make me stand out.

And I I don't mean to trivialize that because that could be challenging, especially if you don't have a specific domain and you're just like, I want to I just want my first job to be a developer. If you feel like you're already nailing some of the the core things and you're like, but everyone else has this stuff. Like what are some of the peripheral things that can make you look like you have an advantage because it's a new a new skill? It's an adjacent skill set, adjacent experience, right? If you if you can't make up for the years of experience, do you have other technologies that you can kind of bring to the table? Or maybe it is a matter of like cool like I want to work with React and like I don't have any working like professional working experience. Let me demonstrate that I've made a bunch of things in React successfully.

not just, you know, had chat GPT vomit the the code out, but like try to find ways that you can go build things and have something unique about that thing that you're building that you were also learning, right? So, it's not just like, yes, I made an app and then I, you know, I made another app and all you did was like recolor it or restyle it or something. Um, unless you were trying to get really into like a design kind of job, then maybe that's totally cool and you can talk about how you, you know, you redesign the user interface for like the same app like multiple times. But my point is going back to this Reddit thread, I think that it's a such an awesome opportunity to use side projects to go build they I think they said complex things, but the it's this is going to sound like a kind of backwards thing to say.

The goal is not necessarily complexity, right? Right? I don't think that's ever really a goal in software, but you can take a simple thing like a to-do app. And you add complexity. Again, the goal isn't to add complexity, but through complexity, you end up adding like something pretty advanced to it. I was giving you like the security example, right? So, like maybe that's completely overkill for just like a a little to-do app side project, but the point is that you went to go integrate something that happens to be complex into it. Goal is not complexity. Goal is exercising the tech stack. So, the complexity is the side effect, I think, is how I would frame that. So, um, that's why going back to that Reddit thread, I felt a little bit uneasy if the if they're, uh, I don't know if they're framing it like I need to add complexity.

Like, that's not the why. The why is to practice the technology. I got to shake this up. My caffeine's all at the bottom of this thing. Um, yeah, that might be it. Traffic's cleared up a little bit, at least on the fast lane. I'm still going below the speed limit. In the fast lane, the toll was capped at at 15 bucks per whatever distance. I don't even know how it works, but there's nothing more frustrating than sitting in the fast lane being like parked and you're paying but other people aren't. That's real dumb. Um, but hey, that's part of the commute, right? Everyone loves driving to the office. I don't. I I do enjoy my time at the office. I do not enjoy driving there. Okay, I think that's it. I'll probably end the video here. A friendly reminder for folks, if you want questions answered, please leave them below in the comments.

When you do that, they are public, so keep that in mind. If you'd like to be kept anonymous, you can go to codecommute.com. There is a submission form there. You can check the keep me anonymous button. Then I won't even know who you are. uh basically sends an email to me from me with the information that you provided. So uh go ahead and do that. I would love to try answering your question related to software development or career progression or both. Um and then yeah I think just a friendly reminder as well that my main channel is called Devleader. That's where I have all of my car and net programming tutorials and then I am splitting out other channels from that one. Uh, so my resume reviews from Dev Leader will move over to Dev Leader path to tech and I'll focus on resumeé reviews as well as interviewing sort of uh tips and examples.

And then the Dev Leader podcast will move out to its own YouTube channel as well. And that's where my weekly live streams will be at 700 p.m. Pacific on Mondays until some part of my life changes. But until then, I hope to see you in the next video and I hope to see you on the next live stream for the Dev Leader podcast. Until then, take care. Thanks, folks.