Side Projects Mean NOTHING For Senior Developers... Or Do They?

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Hey folks, I'm just leaving CrossFit. We're going to experience devs subreddit for a topic and um this one is about side projects, job applications, this kind of stuff. Um and I've talked about this many times before. I have a whole YouTube channel for resume reviews and uh this is just like my my personal opinion on this stuff. I don't have uh like statistical data from industry to like back up what I'm saying to be like you know literally it's a fact that you know x% improvement blah blah blah. Um, but this person on Reddit wrote that, you know, they're they got like 12 years of experience, so they've been a developer for a while and they have a a personal project. I don't even know what it is. I don't know if they mentioned it. They probably did, but um it's on GitHub. It's pretty popular apparently.

Apparently has like over 6,000 uh stars. Uh so great work, you know. Um and they're asking like should I include this? and they said that they've seen people saying that personal projects don't matter on resumes and I think there is a like when we make statements like this and I'm probably guilty of it too so I'm trying to be like transparent but like when we make generalized statements like this they can be quite misleading so just as an example right um we make this statement personal projects don't matter on rums uh don't influence anything so If you were a I'm just making up examples to exaggerate here, but if you were a developer with 30 years of experience and um 30 years of like professional working experience and you had side projects, will those side projects make a difference in in your hiring? I would say, you know, probably not.

Unless you have some side projects that are uh truly things where you're like, compared to my professional work experience, these things stand out, right? It's not that they have no value, but I would I would probably assume that your 30 years of work experience probably have more, I don't know, like material that's resume worthy to stand out for the jobs you're applying to. And perhaps not, but I would wager that that is the case. Okay. Um, now if you go to the exact opposite end of the spectrum, you are a new, you know, new grad or you're an aspiring developer trying to to get your first dev job. You have you have zero years of professional uh developer experience because you've literally never worked as a developer before, which is totally fine, right? We all have to start. So, if we take this same blanket statement, say side projects do not matter for résumés.

Well, okay. So, what do you put on your resume then? Right. I I think it's it's a little bit dangerous to not qualify things. I realize this post was made on experienced dev subreddit. Um maybe that automatically qualifi and this person is a senior developer. Maybe that automatically qualifies the context of this post. But again, I just want to make this statement that I I think that when we are communicating these things, it's important for us to try and explicitly qualify them as much as possible. And if you're someone watching this video and you know, you're thinking about when maybe you are someone who is more junior and you like to read experienced devs so you can learn or you do like reading and watching things online so you can, you know, learn about how parts of the industry work. Try to if you're hearing blanket statements like challenge yourself to be like how is this qualified?

It's not that automatically it's right or automatically wrong. Uh and you you must write off everything or believe everything you hear, but it's like how do we how do we qualify these things? This is like I think like a quality that's probably good as a as a software engineer is like you know being curious to understand like what does this actually mean something in my mouth uh what are what are you um so you know this person saying a statement like hey I've heard that projects don't matter for resume it's like I don't know like I as a general rule I I wouldn't I wouldn't make that statement. I would say the opposite as a as a general guideline is that personal projects can absolutely help on a resume but like how do we qualify this right? And that's why I tried to give you an example where two complete opposite ends of a spectrum for experience levels.

But perhaps like for this person like I think this is where we need to kind of get into some of the details of it. I don't know this person's work experience. I don't know what their their many starred GitHub project is. I don't know what job they're applying for. Someone's got to move over here though. The answer is me. I have to move over here. Um God. Okay. I had a had a truck in front of me and I had a pickup that uh was deciding it wasn't worth letting me merge onto the highway. So, um lane ends. I don't have much of a choice. Uh okay. So, I I don't have the details for for this this person, right?

Like, so this is how I would kind of investigate whether or not it's worth including something like a side project is like number one, if you're just trying to maybe depending on your experience level and stuff, maybe you have a very generic version of your resume and then you have um alternate versions that are more tailored for specific types of roles and stuff, right? Is that more work? Yeah, 100% it's more work. Um, but there might be different things that you're interested in. I'm just going to make this up as an example. Maybe you have over a decade of experience and you're like, "Cool, I uh might be interested in some mobile development roles. I might be interested in some web development roles." And you have flavors of your resume that call out uh different things, right? Right? So, when you're like, I'm applying to a mobile developer role, like you have it a little bit more tailored to like highlight some of that.

Um, you could do that, right? And I think most people just have a generic version of their resume. I say generic as in like you're just calling out across the spectrum of things that you have experience in, you know, your most impactful work across your career. That's the more, you know, common thing. So I think if you're trying to draw attention to your best experiences, your most impactful work, if you're looking at your work experience relative to what you're trying to apply to and then you're going, I have, you know, pro side project A, B, and C. They're not professional working experience, but if you're looking at those being like, they're so much more relevant or so much more impactful in this space that I'm trying to apply to, then I would absolutely find a way to include them with some real estate on your resume, right?

And just totally making this up as an example just to kind of like exaggerate the point, but like let's say I'm going to go back to this example of like mobile versus web development. Okay. Um, let's let's pretend that this person has this 6,000 star repo that's like a webdev framework or package that they use for web development and their professional work experience is like 80 80% mobile development, right? if they're trying to stand out in a web developer role, they might be like, okay, I got all this professional experience where I can demonstrate, you know, as a more senior developer, I've had this kind of impact, but they might be looking at sort of the technical call outs being like uh doesn't really speak to like my my capabilities as a web developer.

So they they might in that case try to truncate a little bit of their professional work experience as a mobile developer and then bring in some side project stuff from that repo that has a ton of attention that's clearly like demon and you know is it a rule that just because it has a lot of stars it's good like not necessarily but I think it's probably a pretty good indicator that they've delivered something high value right Uh, and I think they were calling out like they've had like 50 contributors. Like that's that's great. They've been able to get a community to kind of rally behind and see value and and make contributions. So, this might just be a great opportunity to highlight something like that. So, I I don't like the idea of saying like side projects don't matter. Um, I I just think that that's a misleading statement.

I think that side projects can absolutely be a way to highlight areas that you have um some experience in or that you're showing initiative learning things to to round out the areas of your resume that you otherwise feel are lacking. The other thing too, just to kind of call it out, because as I've been talking about this, I was saying like, oh, like trim out some stuff from your resume, but like I don't know, some people have the opinion like I don't I don't give a how long my resume is. I got, you know, 15 years of experience. I'm writing a three to four page resume. You deal with it. And like I I don't think that that's the best way to do it personally, but I don't make the rules. I've I've seen people posting online about stuff like this where they're like my resume is three or four pages and like I get interviews all the time.

So like you know there's no like um there's no rule carved in stone that says it must be no there's general guidelines like some people will even say a single page and I'm like I've always heard like you know one to two pages is a great spot beyond that there starts to be like diminishing returns where people might not even like read through. Um but I don't have this is why I said I don't have stats on this. This is my my lived experience from doing, you know, engineering management for 13 years and being a hiring manager like the entire time. So, I'm just sharing with you when I read through resumes like how I kind of navigate that. But, uh, certainly, um, I wouldn't write off side projects. They they touch on different things compared to work experience, right?

I think when we're thinking about what do we want to showcase as as developers like the reason the professional experience is really good to you know if you have professional experience that that covers these different pillars. The reason that's really helpful is because you're you're highlighting to a reader of your resume literally in a professional environment, which is where I would be working if I worked for you. I have been able to demonstrate this type of thing. Right? It's it conveys to, in my opinion, it conveys to the reader this is the closest resemblance of what you would be getting, right? When it's a side project. Um it's not that doesn't automatically disqualify it but it's like well you know was that done in a team because we build software in teams like you know there's there are differences uh you know in terms of

deadlines and stuff okay you had this side project but you've been building it for 10 years like okay like that that kind of changes some of the the constraints and the dimensions that we're playing with when we're trying to think about someone's experience and impact. Does it make it wrong? Like, no. It's just that when we can talk about it from professional experience, it is the most relatable. All right, that's how I would frame that is it's the most relatable to someone who's trying to interpret it. So, I I I just think that if you're the kind of person who has stuff going on outside of work because you do like to build things, like that's that's great. Um, does it automatically qualify that kind of stuff to go onto a resume? No. Like, I'll give you an example.

If I have my own resume right now, okay, um I if I apply for an engineering manager role, primarily I have a lot of experience as an engineering manager to put down on a resume, right? I can talk about, you know, different team compositions, things that I've been responsible for leading, but a lot of what I would call out on a resume, especially in more recent times, has nothing to do with things that I've coded. Okay? So the way that I would define my experience on a resume would start to have diminishing um coverage I guess is how I would call it on like Nick has coded things. Now for some places that is a they look at it like a big component still like is that actually what's happening in reality like I think the answer is no. Um but uh you know even from interviews I've been in where like even my just to give you an example like my Microsoft interview 5 years ago had like lead code style questions.

I've not I've not coded like features in my engineering manager role at Microsoft in 5 years at all. Like it is whatever I was being tested on in that interview is in my opinion the absolute least representative part of my role that possibly could have been tested. It is insane. But clearly to be go like to go through the process like I said I don't make the rules to go through the process. someone in the interview was like, "Well, we need to test for this." And then I would make the assumption that probably someone scanning resumes and how that's fed through was like, "Well, we want to see some like we expect our managers to be technical. Where is the evidence that this person's technical, right?

If I had only written like le led teams teams did this stuff they might go well we don't have any confidence from reading this that this person actually codes or can code or can read code ironically like does does that matter if I've been able to demonstrate success across like what managers are responsible for? I don't I don't know. seems like there's a bit of a I don't know like dichotomy there but um point is that like on a resume I would still want to make sure that I can call out technical contributions. Now fortunately in my first engineering manager role it was a like what we called a technical manager at that company. So my time like I was for the 8 years I was there I was coding uh you know almost every single day up until probably towards the last year there

was just like kind of like too much to jump between where I wasn't coding as much still coding just not as much and um that means I have like roughly 8 years of experience at that company where I can say you know worked on this like I literally built this thing or worked in teams like led the teams and coded in the teams. But if I didn't have that, right, and my most recent experience at Microsoft, that's why I'm saying the recency bias here is like that part is tapering off. I'm not highlighting that cuz I haven't been doing that at work, but I code literally every single day outside of work. I love building software. So I would want to find ways where I can show you know how do I make sure that I can call out some of the technical pieces at

Microsoft where it might not be oh I coded this but uh you know one example is like on architecture like I designed a system on my previous team to to do attribution for uh for workflows across partner teams right so like I came up with the basis for that time that is something that like from like an architectural perspective I can claim responsibility for that right but how do I find other technical things and I might get to the point where I'm kind of going through this experience on my resume going I don't think it's telling a good enough story in recent times that would convince an employer that I can code right so like what what other things do I have outside of Microsoft experience over the past 5 years that I could call out and like I have a bunch of things.

So like I write a techn I haven't in uh you know in the last year and a half to two years I have a technical blog right I have a bunch of technical articles that I've written you know for programming I literally have programming courses on one of the largest like C platforms for teaching people and I have a course where I've taught thousands and thousands of students how to program in C. So like I I didn't just get lucky and make a video and pretended I could code. Like I it's you know 11 hours between two uh two courses of me teaching basics of C. Now is that is that really that valuable? I don't know. Like that might be a a a brief note to call out on my resume to at least tell like I understand technical pieces like I can read and write code.

I can mentor people because that's all about like teaching so I can convey ideas like I think that's an important part. Is that really touching on the technical part like h a little bit um but you know sort of at my level like at a principal level engineering manager is that enough like I don't really think so. Okay. So, what else have I done? Well, I built like I built brand ghost outside of work. Like, well, what is that? Like, what I don't want to do on a resume is try to write it as a pitch because I'm not trying to sell brand ghost readers. But what I do want to sell on the resume is like I built this system. It scales this way. It uses these technologies. This is something I have built. I architected this. I designed this. I can call out that it was done in a team like I had to interface with these other sort of stakeholders.

Um it's a live service it has to be supported like there are things that I can call out for that as a side project that's like look this is literally a live running service that I support and I am the one responsible for building and architecting these things. So now I can select from that on as a side project. What things do I want to highlight to be like this is technical experience I have. So I like on a resume at this point would I add brand goes probably cuz I think that calls out technical experience. So, I'm just about to pull in at home here, but I, you know, just wanted to to round all this out by saying, don't write off side projects regardless of your level. Look at the experience that you're highlighting from your prof your professional career compared to like where you're trying to go.

And if you feel like there's a gap that your side projects fill, whether that's like um just to give you an example, most of the time I feel like it's like technical skills like different tech stacks and things like that. You might have a side project where you're like look like I I actually led a group of people building this thing and I I took a different kind of role and you're highlighting it's not even a technical thing. It's like this is something else on top of that and you're highlighting that experience like that might be great to call out, right? I I collaborated with people across like five different countries in different time zones and we built whatever and I was the one who brought people together, coordinated this stuff. Like maybe that's a thing you want to highlight. So I think there's there's many different angles that you could take with side projects.

I wouldn't write them off, but also like just think about what's on your resume and how you're rounding out your expertise. That's how I would frame that. So, thanks for watching. If you got questions, leave them below in the comments. Happy to try and answer. And of course, if you want to be kept anonymous, go to codemute.com. You can submit questions anonymously there. And like I mentioned, I do have other YouTube channels. Uh, Devleer Path to Tech is where I do resume reviews. Devleer Podcast is where I interview software engineers. and do a live stream every Monday at 700 p.m. Pacific. And then Dev Leader is my main YouTube channel. I have C tutorials and programming with AI. Thanks so much for watching. I will see you in the next one. Take care.