June 11, 2025 • 42 mins
One of the more difficult things junior developers seem to struggle with is knowing what portfolio projects to build to be marketable and competitive in the job search. I went over a variety of types of projects and how much they help you stand out among your competition.
Not only that, but I went over the pros and cons of each, misconceptions of what is common but ineffective advice given around these projects, and how to be effective at making the more marketable options even more impressive.
If you're wondering what types of projects to build for your portfolio to stand out, this one's for you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Don Hansen (00:00):
All right.
So let's talk about what typesof portfolio projects you should
be building to stand out as anaspiring developer in 2025.
Now I'm going to go overseveral low-value projects that
I see on many portfolios, andI'm also going to go over
high-value projects as well, ashow many of you are screwing up
(00:26):
those projects and turning theminto lower value projects.
So I'm going to be very bluntwith this, but we're going to go
into code along tutorialprojects.
Right, they hit, hold your handa little bit.
They kind of give you steps.
Maybe you do a few steps, buildsomething, you build a feature,
you check it.
Is it working?
Cool?
No, okay, I need to figure outwhat I did wrong.
(00:48):
These are really usefulprojects in reinforcing your
skills and getting you to applythese.
Currently, what seem asarbitrary concepts.
You're like how do I apply it?
Okay, I'm learning this.
I'm learning a loop.
What do I do with it?
How is it applied?
So you're using thesefundamental concepts in
something practical.
(01:08):
That's fantastic.
High value learning project.
Extremely low value portfolioproject.
You're not really showcasingwhat you can do, you're just
learning.
These are okay, and you canstill have these on your GitHub,
for sure, but these are not theones that you're going to be
highlighting.
Okay, and you can still havethese on your GitHub for sure,
(01:30):
but these are not the ones thatyou're going to be highlighting
Clone projects.
So clone projects are a reallyeffective tool at getting you to
kind of shut off the part ofyour brain that requires you to
come up like, think like aproject manager a bit and like
kind of a user, a developer whocares about user experience.
You get to turn, turn that off.
You don't have to think aboutthe design, how things look or
whatever like that.
You just find a tool, you finda website, you find something
(01:57):
and you just rebuild it andsometimes, especially like css,
if you're trying to get betterwith HTML and CSS you can take a
Photoshop document or a JPEG orwhatever else that just shows a
layout and then you code itwith HTML and CSS.
That's a really good way toreinforce your CSS skills.
(02:22):
You don't own the rights toclaim that you own that project.
You don't own the rights toclaim that you own that project.
You don't own the rights tomake that project public.
You don't, unless it's likeopen source or something else
that gives you a license to dothat and it explicitly states
that.
But a lot of your clone projectsshould not be on your portfolio
.
Stop it.
(02:44):
They don't belong there.
You don't own them.
They're really good forreinforcing your skills.
You just do it locally, right.
You rebuild it locally.
It's good practice.
It's really good practice, butnone of those should be on your
portfolio.
That's crazy that some of youare putting like Spotify clones
and stuff like that.
They're not even high valueprojects.
You're just what building?
(03:04):
You're turning half like halfyour brain off to just be a code
monkey and apply concepts, andwhich is good.
When you're learning, you wantto reinforce these concepts, but
they look you're not reallyproblem solving.
You don't have to think abouthow you're going to separate
these features and organize thisstuff.
A lot of this just based on itbeing created already and how
you've used it and how you knowhow everything works Like a lot
(03:27):
of this has been solved for youalready.
There are just certain parts ofyour brain that you're not
activating.
There are certain parts ofbeing a developer that you're
not really showcasing thatyou're strong in certain areas.
You're just able to look at,essentially, design and
replicate it.
So it's really good atreinforcing concepts, but again,
(03:51):
this is just tutorial projectessentially.
Look at it like that.
It's high value with thelearning, low value with the
portfolio.
And then the third one isopen-ended projects.
We don't know by now.
I mean, I've kind of fought forboth bootdev and scrimpa.
Bootdev is really good atpreparing backend developers,
(04:11):
scrimpa is really good atpreparing front end developers.
They're an affiliate partner ofmine and I still, to this day,
tell people like these openended projects, like scrimpa
will give you an open endedproject where they give you like
high level requirements And'rejust like yeah, build this,
here's the design I'm gonna beat this point.
(04:32):
Low code solutions can do that.
Ai can do that.
Right, I don't think ai is thatimpressive, but I could do that
um, like just kind of taking adesign with some open-ended
requirements and then justbuilding it yourself.
It does require you to breakthose higher level requirements
(04:56):
down into more specificrequirements, which is a skill
in itself breaking kind of a bigconcept down into smaller
concepts and making it moretechnical so that you
essentially have like aguideline that you've created
for yourself to be able to gothrough these steps and build
this thing.
It's really good at helping youbreak those concepts down, but,
(05:17):
again, like you're not reallyshowcasing what you want to
build, the kind of problems youwant to solve.
This problem has already beensolved for you.
You're essentially just beingstill a code monkey and building
what you're told to buildwithout much thought into it.
(05:37):
It's a really low-valueportfolio project, but it's
still a very high-value learningproject.
All these, you get this like.
You get this.
You always get this like advicethat lacks nuance on places
like Twitter and Reddit andLinkedIn and it just it lacks
(06:02):
context.
These projects are really goodto build.
They're not bad projects tobuild.
They're just horrible portfolioprojects.
And if you are shoving theseprojects on your portfolio,
you're essentially tellingemployers you don't really have
anything impressive to show.
It's just a self-report.
It's a horrible idea, and sowhat needs to happen is you got
(06:27):
to dive a little bit deeper.
So we talked about someessential projects for your
learning, low value portfolioprojects.
Now we're going to talk abouthireable projects and we're
going to start with open sourcecontributions.
So a lot of people do opensource contributions the wrong
(06:48):
way.
Here's the wrong way.
I've heard that I'm supposed tomake open source contributions
because it looks likeprofessional experience and
employers will now pay attentionto me and pay attention to my
portfolio, because now I'mworking on professional projects
.
So I can tell you veryconfidently, if you are just
(07:12):
using open source as a checkmark and then moving on, you're
just wasting everyone's time.
If you want to get some exposureto a larger code base, that's
what open source is really goodfor you can download the code
base, play around with it, breakstuff, discover how it works.
In doing that, like that'sessentially what you're doing
when you get hired as adeveloper.
(07:33):
You're going to download itlocally, get it working, maybe
solve a couple of bugs.
I got to figure out, like,where in the code base is
relevant to even look for thesebugs.
And as I dig deeper, I startlearning more about the code
base and how it works and howthings are organized and the
conventions right.
Open source is really good forthat.
But if you are just making acouple of contributions to a
(07:54):
popular open source project orsomething like that, you're
probably going to start off withreally minor stuff.
You're not really doing anyintensive problem solving,
solving minor bugs who gives ashit?
You're not really showcasingwhat you can do, not showcasing
your depth of skill as adeveloper.
Just because you can eventuallynavigate a code base to make a
couple of minor contributions isworthless.
(08:15):
Who cares Like every juniordeveloper is eventually going to
be able to do that?
Who cares Like no one caresabout that?
If you are putting, if you arecreating a public repo on GitHub
and adding an open sourcelicense and calling that open
source, you're just full of shit.
(08:36):
People who actually care aboutopen source projects know you're
full of shit as well.
It's going to have really noactivity.
Full of shit as well.
It's gonna have really noactivity.
Um, and a lot of hiringmanagers at this point are very
aware of like coding boot camps,encouraging some students in a
very dishonest manner, um, tojust like label their projects
(08:57):
as open source and just stareach other's repos.
Like.
Hiring managers are a lot moreaware of stuff like this.
You're just making up a projectsaying it's open source and
you're a contributor.
You're full of shit.
You're going to get found out.
A really good use case of opensource for making yourself stand
(09:19):
out to employers is spendingthree to six months diving deep
into an open source project youbelieve in.
Open source is about developersas they gain skills and get
better, and they've been helpedthemselves.
They now want to give back tothe developers that are now
walking their path.
(09:40):
It's a beautiful thing aboutopen source and there's more
mission.
There's more values and missionamong open source developers.
But in terms of what youprobably will want to focus on,
open source with it's, you wantto get more comfortable with a
(10:01):
larger code base, but it's aboutlike contributing to a tool
that you've used in the past.
You like it, you like thecommunity and you want to give
back.
That's a really, reallypowerful story to bring into an
interview.
Um, that speaks way more thanjust making a couple of minor
contributions.
Um, that's a story that's partof your story.
(10:22):
That's part of your story.
That's part of your learningand the why of why you decided
to spend a lot of time in that.
Open source software matters,and it can appeal to certain
hiring managers and certainteams that care about what
you're doing.
Sometimes they'll care aboutthe project you're working on.
(10:42):
Sometimes they just love opensource right, and you can just
spark up a conversation andconnect with someone on the team
in the interview.
Because of that right, you getexcited, developers get excited,
they talk to each other, youmake friendships, you vibe your
story can help you do that inthe interview process.
It can help you get noticed.
So open source is reallypowerful when you take it
(11:05):
seriously, when you respect theopen source community and when
you don't just use it as acheckmark for your own selfish
needs.
That's when it becomes valuable.
Most aspiring developers are notgoing into depth with that.
Now be careful.
Are not going into depth withthat Now be careful.
I had someone come to my meetupabout like seven years ago and
(11:30):
she contributed to somethingwith Mozilla for like three to
six months and that belonged onher resume 100%.
But she was still due and whatshe should have done was pair it
with a personal project so shecan kind of like really
reinforce the technology shewants to reinforce and apply for
(11:52):
and she could have likeshowcased to employers.
I have depth of knowledge whenI have control over this and I
have ownership over what I canbuild.
Here are my conventions,because you have to adhere to
whatever the open source projecthas.
But with my personal project,here are my conventions.
Here's what I believe, here'show I would organize my code
(12:12):
right and that tells theemployer more about you.
It's about painting that storyand it's really hard to do that
when you're contributing toothers' projects.
So, again, contributing to opensource can be great as an
(12:33):
aspiring developer if done inthe right way, but it's not
needed.
It's another thing.
There's no nuance and advicegoing around.
It's like you don't have tocontribute to open source.
It's like if you want to,that's great.
There are different paths to godown as a developer, and this
is one where you could goheavily into open source
contributions.
Okay, so hackathon projects arefantastic.
(12:54):
You got to use probably somesource control, not step on each
other's toes.
You have a time limit.
You have a group.
Maybe you have a fun story of adeveloper that you just clashed
with, but you still got it tothe finish line.
That's fantastic, right, and alot of hackathon projects where
(13:15):
they're hosted like largerhackathon projects, where
they're hosted by companies.
Maybe you're solving realproblems.
Maybe you get paid a certainamount or get interviews with
the company or whatever.
Um, if they like your idea.
Uh, that like working onsomething practical, solving
real problems, is great.
It's really valuable.
(13:36):
Companies want to hiredevelopers that can solve real
problems and you can showcasethat with a hackathon project.
Um, now, even if you, if youdon't think you can build
something practical or anythinglike that, you could still
participate in hackathons andbeginner-focused hackathons.
I think it's still a really goodexperience to meet people.
Sometimes you get recruiterseven at smaller hackathons, but
(13:58):
hackathon projects make reallygood friendships.
You got to realize when you goout to meetups and you meet
people with hackathons and stufflike that, if you form
friendships they get hired.
Even though they can't hire you, then they're trying to get a
job just like you.
They're your competition.
But when they get hired, ifthey vibe with you, you made a
friendship and that company asksthat developer as well as the
(14:19):
rest of the team hey, who shouldwe interview before we put this
job posting out publicly?
They're usually going to takepersonal recommendations first,
because it kind of like weedsout a good culture fit too, like
if they're willing to putthemselves out to recommend you.
That's a big deal.
Companies like personalrecommendations like that.
(14:39):
That's how you can kind ofstart building up your network
just by working with otherdevelopers and talking with them
and building friendships.
You never know what can happenwith that.
So hackathon projects are reallyreally good and I think group
projects in general kind ofalmost force you to well,
hopefully, you guys do this butit forces you to get a little
bit more comfortable with thescrum process and even just bare
(15:01):
minimum writing outrequirements and communicating
those requirements effectivelyand what you're working on and
checking in with people.
And what's cool is some ofthese hackathon projects can go
public and really get somesocial proof behind them with
that.
But hackathon projects arereally good, just like group
projects are really good.
(15:22):
You can build more impressivetools when you have a team
behind you and just being ableto work with other developers
and source control.
It's like how many mergeconflicts are you dealing with
when you're just working solo?
I can tell you right now I workon solo projects.
I have not dealt with a mergeconflict in years.
You should get comfortabledealing with merge conflicts and
(15:44):
group projects and hackathonprojects can help you do that.
But also larger hackathons haverecruiters, have eyes paying
attention and when you do buildsomething impressive, um, that
can get you a little bit of anin right Um, you're not just a
resume.
At that point You've showcasedwhat you can do and you build
(16:05):
something real.
You'd be surprised.
Hackathon projects are reallypowerful for making you stand
out.
So now we're going to talk aboutfreelance projects.
Some of the worst advice I hearis a blank prescription that
(16:26):
you should build freelanceprojects because that gives you
professional experience and willmake you stand out Horrible
advice, just absolutely trash,garbage, horrible advice.
And let me tell you why advice.
(16:50):
And let me tell you why.
Most people that are going tobe working on freelance projects
are going to start with reallysmall challenges maybe a landing
page.
The features are going to bevery unimpressive.
There's not going to be anycomplexity, no depth to it.
It takes a lot like you're as afreelancer if you're trying to
actually make money.
That's entrepreneurship.
You're learning way more thancoding way more.
(17:13):
You better expand your timesignificantly if you want to
make any meaningful progress atgetting progressively more
lucrative clients and morecomplex projects to be able to
put on your portfolio.
That takes time.
(17:33):
Most people are going to failat that and that's kind of the
route that starts to make youlook impressive.
But a lot of freelance projectsagain, a lot of companies just
want you to build a solution.
They don't care about yourstack.
They don't care that it takesyou longer to work with your
stack to build what they want.
(17:53):
A lot of clients also just liketo not be tied into the
developer making a bunch ofupdates and they want a content
management system.
So if you want to do freelance,I highly recommend you get more
comfortable with PHP andWordPress and you can go the
Shopify route.
You're going to start movingaway from kind of that
(18:14):
traditional software engineeringposition that you might have
been aiming for previously.
Now, if you want to get intothat and you want to work with
content management systems,there's nothing wrong with that.
There could be a lot of workfor you down the road.
That is a path.
That is a career path.
Nothing wrong with that.
There could be a lot of workfor you down the road.
That is a path.
That is a career path.
(18:34):
But it's actually kind ofseparate from going for your
typical product role or buildinginternal tools or whatever.
Take you away from divingdeeper into building very
(19:00):
complex products with a ton offeatures.
It's really good if you want todo agency work, where you get
hired at a company and you canget paid a salary.
But you get hired at a companyto then, which then partners you
with companies that they findand you build an application,
you build a website for them.
So there are full-timepositions available at the end
of that freelancing route ifthat's what you're using it for,
(19:23):
um, but a lot of the work thatyou're going to be doing to kind
of prepare you for that, it's alot of surface level work that
you're going to be doing.
A lot of freelance developers,you know with like under two
(19:45):
years of professional freelanceexperience where they're getting
clients all the time, a lot ofpeople that maybe have gotten a
client or two or something likethat.
Their skills are just solackluster and surface level
they're not competitive with alot of other people that have
deepened their skills.
It can show initiative.
(20:07):
I've even given the advice.
One thing that you can try isgo to local businesses and build
their websites.
It's a little bit of socialproof, but I've warned them it's
still kind of surface levelstuff.
You want to try to get morecomplex projects, build trust
with them.
So maybe you can build internaltooling, you can build features
.
Maybe it's not just thismarketing page.
Now you're building kind oflike a crud application that now
(20:29):
you've got to deal withauthorization, you've got to
deal with whatever else thatthey need, and it becomes more
of a complex project and youcould showcase moving it off
from social media, where maybethey were marketing a little bit
.
Maybe you were able to optimizeit for search engines to be
able to bring them much moretraffic.
You can highlight that on yourresume.
You hear this kind of stuff,with the freelance route being a
(20:54):
more marketable route.
Almost no one does thiseffectively.
A lot of people that try topick up a few freelance projects
most of them are just peoplewho build some surface level
apps and that's all they reallyachieve with it.
(21:15):
It almost makes it notworthwhile.
If you're not going the agencyroute, if you're going the
traditional software engineeringroute, it's a detour For most
people and I think that's thebest description for it.
For most people the freelanceroute is a detour.
(21:41):
It doesn't help build you up.
It doesn't provide the socialproof that people claim it does.
For most people it's just adetour and your skills wither
away because you're not reallyapplying them in a very hard
problem.
So you're reinforcing someskills to be able to do that
kind of work, but it's verysurface level and I see it
hurting people quite a bit.
(22:03):
I think freelance is just one ofthose things.
It's like open sourcecontributions, huge
misconception about it and justlike build freelance stuff,
professional experience and likeagain, it depends on how you go
about these things and what Iwould even start considering as
I'm going through.
This is what sounds appealingto me.
Do I kind of like have thesalesman?
(22:23):
Do I wouldn't even say salesmanattitude, but do I have this
initiative, this resourcefulnessand this charisma to go to
local businesses and sell myservices?
Do I have that in me?
Hell, if you're like a carsalesman and you are getting
into development work, you mighthave that.
This is ingrained in you atthis point.
(22:44):
You might be really good with afreelance route.
You can make that veryeffective and even with a
freelance background, you canget into product work.
I just think it's moremarketable for agency type work,
especially before that.
Two years of professionalexperience as a freelance
developer.
So start thinking about whatappeals to you, because what,
(23:05):
ultimately, is going to make youstand out and deepen your
knowledge is you diving into apath that gets you incredibly
excited to continue justgrinding this out, and that's
what it is.
It's a grind, and so you got todeepen your knowledge at some
point, but you got to find apath that appeals to you, so you
(23:27):
really build up an impressiveportfolio.
So I have been talking about umprojects that almost like don't
really sound that marketable,right.
I've kind of been squashing thevalue of a lot of these
projects.
(23:48):
So I'm going to squash thevalue of one more project I'm
just going to make a note of it,actually and then we're going
to talk about two projects thatI think are extremely effective.
And so there we go.
So we have personal projects.
(24:08):
Personal projects are what youshould be building most of the
time, and you're able to focuson the technologies you want to
grow.
You're able to build cool stufffor yourself.
If you can build cool stuff foryourself, it can be valuable to
other people, but you can buildstuff that just sounds fun to
build.
I always wanted to try buildingthis Now.
(24:29):
I have the skills now.
Now let's reinforce thoseskills and let's try building
this thing.
There are a lot of personalprojects that end up being
pretty impressive, and there area lot of personal projects that
make me think that you are likeyears away from getting a dev
(24:53):
job.
No one gives a shit about yourcat gallery.
No one gives a shit about yourSpotify like clone.
I'm building like a differentversion of it and I'm building
it with the most basic featureever and, um, it looks like shit
.
I don't like didn't really puta lot of time into the user
experience of it, or I'm not.
(25:15):
I have no idea what to build,so I'm just building a bunch of
random shit for no reason at all.
Now we're just getting back intothe realm of tutorial based
projects where it's like you'rekind of just reinforcing your
concepts at this point a littlebit.
Hopefully, and hopefully youfind a project where you can
deepen that with features.
But a lot of personal projectsare just incredibly unimpressive
(25:43):
, boring, provide no value andjust end up as graveyard
projects where you didn't evenfinish it.
You got bored of it.
Listen, I've gotten bored ofprojects.
I have a lot of graveyardprojects and at this time of
recording this they are still upon my GitHub.
I don't think I've deletedanything.
(26:04):
A lot of really bad projects.
A lot of really bad projects.
These projects make you feellike you are making progress.
These projects where you'rekind of just building something
because you don't know what tobuild and you haven't taken the
(26:28):
time out to figure out what kindof problems you want to solve
these projects are just they'rereinforcing your skills a little
bit, but they're dopamine hits,like so many aspiring
developers are just buildinglackluster projects that know
that just don't make youcompetitive.
It's not that you're notgetting a little bit of value
(26:48):
out of them or that they're notvaluable at all, it's just you
have very high competition atthe entry level of everyone else
doing the same damn thing,building the most unimpressive
personal projects ever.
So I'll give a little bit morecontrast towards a personal
project and compare it with apersonal project.
(27:10):
That is really impressive.
But before I do that, I want totalk about one really useful
thing that you can do right now.
A really useful project.
If you are in a differentindustry let's say you're not
even in a tech industry but youuse software, especially if it's
web-based software and you'retrying to become a web developer
, or if you're trying to getinto Java, can you build
something with Java?
(27:30):
Think about what you can build,the tools, the application that
you could build that your teamwould actually use, that your
company would actually use Ifyou spent time outside of work
doing this thing for you tobuild even an internal tool that
optimizes things for your team,for your manager and you had
(27:51):
regular users that would giveyou feedback and then you would
iterate, you would get, youwould apply that agile process
and you would iterate and pushout your updates and get
feedback and assist this cycle.
Right now we're gettinginvolved with the agile process,
going to assist this cycle.
Right Now we're gettinginvolved with the agile process.
(28:16):
Those projects where you canbuild internal tools are it's
like a hack.
You're not given a developerposition, but if you are willing
and hopefully have a goodmanager with this, I can maybe
like give you ideas of what youcould build.
Um, but if you are willing toinvest the time into a project
like this that now getsprofessional proof, you're not
necessarily a software engineerat that company.
If you build a tool and peopleuse it, but you're building a
(28:38):
professional, you're doingprofessional dev work and that's
something to add to your storyabout how you took that
initiative to replace yourshitty web software with your
own that now is utilized by yourteam.
That is a really powerful hackto just kind of getting
(29:01):
professional-like experience onyour resume.
It's really powerful on yourresume.
It's really powerful.
So I you know some of you mightnot have a job where or a
company where you could do that.
But if you are in that position, I would try to take advantage
of that.
Like today, tomorrow, talk toyour manager about this and
(29:24):
hopefully your manager islooking out for your best
interest.
But like you're like, hey, youknow, I think maybe in a couple
of years I might want a devposition, and hopefully there
are dev positions at yourcompany too.
Right, you can kind of word it.
Like you know, I think I wantto move into a dev position
within this company and here'smy idea and present that to your
manager.
In that way Maybe you'll getmore support over it.
(29:46):
But it's a really powerful hackof getting that
professional-like experiencethat is a lot more valuable than
a random crud project thatbecomes a graveyard project.
So now let's talk about the mostpowerful portfolio project, and
I know it's maybe about 30minutes.
(30:09):
In so far it's kind of beenleading you on a little bit.
Wouldn't that be kind of funnyif I just said that's it?
That'd be cruel, that'd bereally cruel.
I'm not going to do that to you.
But this project almosteveryone gets wrong.
This type of project almosteveryone gets wrong, and I've
(30:30):
seen some coding boot camps inthe past do this extremely
effectively with their studentsand this is where I got it from
actually was coding boot camps,where they actually had high
standards in the past.
Some of them, a few of them.
Just let me clarify that acapstone project is what you
(30:52):
want to aim for, for a personalproject.
So, to me, what is a capstoneproject?
The ideal project, a capstoneproject is a project that it's a
tool that you build.
It's an app that you build thatsolves your problem.
A lot of companies are foundedon a capstone project.
(31:12):
They build a tool that solvestheir problem and if it solves
your problem, it probably solvesother people's problems.
You're not unique in the world,not in that respect.
The problems that you face arenot unique, I hate to say it.
You're not this uniquebutterfly, which is awesome
because you can eventually findpeople to relate to your
(31:34):
problems.
But you can also buildsolutions for your problems and
then share that with otherpeople and that solution can
evolve into a really impressivecapstone project.
So I say, solve a problem foryourself.
You don't necessarily have todo that, but I think you don't
really have to do any userresearch.
You don't have to scan aroundand go through a bunch of
(31:54):
subreddits and try to figure outwhat people need.
Like it actually doesn't evenmatter if you're trying to find
a good market fit or not.
Like someone will use yourproduct.
But you're not trying toreinvent the wheel necessarily
and it could be kind of like aslightly different variation of
a tool that you use that youjust it's not very effective,
(32:17):
right, you're like why it's beensix months?
I still haven't, like flushedout these features that
everyone's asking for.
I'm just going to build my ownsoftware.
Like fuck it.
Right, you are building aproject that solves a real
problem.
You are flushing out therequirements.
You decide what an MVP is forthat project.
So, minimum viable product whatis the minimum viable product
(32:39):
that I can build that providessome value to someone?
A feature You're building out asingle feature.
You start your app with a singlefeature that solves a problem
and you put that out in front ofpeople.
You get feedback.
You go to subreddits.
Build something in a hobbycommunity you're involved in,
maybe a local community thatwould use it.
(33:00):
Think about, now that you havethe skill level, what can you
actually build that ispurposeful, that's meaningful to
people, that people would use?
We want to simplify it to that.
Build that, finish the MVP.
Don't let the scope creep.
Just completely tear yourproject down, which means don't
(33:25):
think about the other whileyou're building your MVP.
Don't think I need to buildthis feature and now this
feature and this feature untilit's done.
No, no, no, you've alreadydecided on the feature that
you're going to build.
Finish it.
Build good habits.
You flush out the requirements,you document that.
You build that feature, you pushit out in front of people, you
continue working on anotherfeature and then maybe feedback
(33:47):
comes in, maybe a bug comes in,or you discover bug.
You work on that.
Push that out.
Now you got to startprioritizing.
Okay, I got this featureworking, but my friend or this
person in this community justspotted this bug.
This is kind of a serious bug.
I should probably pivot, pausethis feature.
How do I pause this feature?
Go and fix this bug, push thatup, push it out as quickly as
(34:09):
possible and then go back tothis feature.
Now you're thinking like a realdeveloper.
Now you're going through thechaos of what it is to be a
developer and juggle thesethings and so you push out to
more people and more people.
You get more feedback, morefeedback.
Now you have to startprioritizing stuff that comes in
and you don't have to chargefor this.
I highly encourage you to try.
You don't have to charge forthis.
(34:36):
You treat it like a real product.
You treat it like somethingprofessional.
It doesn't have to turn into acompany.
You don't have to bullshit yourway and say you were the CTO of
your project which come on,stop that Like.
You don't have to do that.
You're just.
You don't have to do that.
(34:57):
Let the project itself, let theusers that you're going to
highlight on your resume, speakfor the professional value that
this project solves, for thesocial proof that this project
provides by having a user baseand you being that solo
(35:17):
developer working through that.
So this isn't some amateurlooking project.
So you have to gain some userexperience.
Fundamentals.
Stop being lazy withinconsistent spacing.
They're just really amateur.
(35:38):
They're not even amateur.
They're just lazy mistakes thatnew developers make.
And it's just attention todetail, it's consistency in what
you do, it's caring about thequality of your code.
It's caring about how youorganize this.
And then, as this project grows,really cool opportunity happens
where you have to figure outhow to scale it, because now you
(35:59):
keep going back into your codeand six months later, I don't
know where the fuck I am.
I don't know what this app isdoing.
Maybe I should have documentedthat well.
And do I just like writecomments in my code?
Do I write better functionnames?
Do I organize the files in adifferent way?
How the hell do I do this solike if I can't even come back
(36:19):
in here and understand my code?
How do I expect otherdevelopers to do that?
And so now you have to startthinking about how to structure
your app in a way that makesthat easier, makes your code
more readable.
Now you are starting to focuson more complex problems that
professional developers have todeal with, and you only start
(36:44):
getting to this point when youdon't give up on that project.
It's a real problem thatcontinues building into
something much more impressiveand complex, and it's not just
complexity for the sake ofcomplexity.
It's because you have usersgiving you real feedback and it
(37:05):
evolves.
That's what a company does.
I come from the startup worldand that's exactly how a lot of
startup founders start.
They solve a simple problem andit snowballs when they don't
give up on that idea.
That is the type of personalproject that now is very
(37:28):
professional-like.
You build a landing page withit.
Maybe you have to build an FAQsection.
Maybe you have to build an faqsection.
Maybe you have to build helpdocs with it.
Um, you know, maybe you want toflush out, maybe it turns into
kind of a crud project andyou're working on the front end
and the back end and now youwant to flush out documentation
and now you you're applying forback-end positions.
Maybe you add open apidocumentation or you know, like
(37:51):
that.
I'm not saying you need to dospecifically that, but now you
can start evolving the projectinto something where you can
start replicating the processesthat you're going to be going
through as a professionaldeveloper and you can look up
some of this stuff and you lookat job postings and what they
care about and you have tofigure out does that actually
make sense to implement in myproject?
(38:11):
If not, don't just add itarbitrarily, necessarily, but
this project will evolve overtime and it becomes your
capstone project where you canliterally continue working on
this project until you get adeveloper job, a developer job
(38:33):
and this is a misconception.
A lot of people think they needa variety of projects to stand
out.
No, no, no, no.
There are multiple methods togetting that first position and
I'm telling you the complexityfrom this type of capstone
project, this professionalproject, professional-like
project.
I want to be clear about that.
It is really impressive toemployers and what I see is a
(38:55):
lot of employers rejecting a lotof new developers because they
just don't go deep enough.
They're way too surface level.
Their work represents theirsurface level knowledge and
their conversation in theinterview showcases that as well
.
They don't have a good story.
(39:16):
They don't have a good uh, theydon't have a lot to talk about
with their journey of growingbecause they've just tackled a
lot of surface level things.
And I'm like you just havenothing impressive to talk about
when you just keep bouncingfrom project to project to
project every week.
I don't, I don't care what youthink, you're just not really
building anything impressive.
(39:39):
So I highly recommend you reallyconsider a powerful capstone
project and you have to starttraining yourself, because some
people don't know what to comeup with.
You have to start brainstorming, training yourself.
You could even use AI to helpyou, like, solidify an idea or
whatever.
(39:59):
But you have to start trainingyour mind to become more of a
user-centered developer.
A user-centered developeridentifies problems and
empathizes with users and solvestheir problems.
And a lot of times I think it'sa lot easier to start within
your own community, within yourhobby community, because you
(40:19):
already know the software thatcould probably benefit them, and
so I think that's probably theeasiest place to start.
So that's it.
So we went over somemisconceptions.
I think the capstone project issomething most people get wrong
and I think it's the key.
I honestly think it's the keyto truly standing out.
(40:43):
Now there's more to the jobsearch than just your portfolio.
It's a piece of it.
It's actually I wouldn't sayit's a small piece, but it's not
a big piece of it.
There's so much more to it.
So I totally empathize with thestruggle and the frustration
with going through it.
This is just a piece, buthopefully you can get better at
a lot of other areas.
(41:04):
But I really want to emphasizeand this is kind of like one
last message that I think youshould get down.
You can't do everything in thejob search and you are going to
hear a ton of advice, a varietyof advice, and you need to
figure out what advice youshould follow, what advice you
can reasonably apply in yourschedule to consistently follow
(41:27):
to make meaningful progress.
There are a lot of differentpaths to becoming a developer.
You can't follow all of themand there is nothing that will
hurt you more than splittingyourself up, tearing your hair
out and trying to do everysingle path and just trying it a
little bit and getting rejectedor not getting the feedback or
(41:49):
not getting responses back, andyou try this and you try this,
and you try this and you trythis and then nothing's working.
And then now you feel like youhave no control over it because
you're not really doubling downon anything.
And if you're going to doubledown on something, I highly
highly recommend it be yourcapstone project.
All right.
So let's talk about what typesof portfolio projects you should
be building to stand out as anaspiring developer in 2025.
Now I'm going to go overseveral low-value projects that
I see on many portfolios, andI'm also going to go over
high-value projects as well, ashow many of you are screwing up
(00:26):
those projects and turning theminto lower value projects.
So I'm going to be very bluntwith this, but we're going to go
into code along tutorialprojects.
Right, they hit, hold your handa little bit.
They kind of give you steps.
Maybe you do a few steps, buildsomething, you build a feature,
you check it.
Is it working?
Cool?
No, okay, I need to figure outwhat I did wrong.
(00:48):
These are really usefulprojects in reinforcing your
skills and getting you to applythese.
Currently, what seem asarbitrary concepts.
You're like how do I apply it?
Okay, I'm learning this.
I'm learning a loop.
What do I do with it?
How is it applied?
So you're using thesefundamental concepts in
something practical.
(01:08):
That's fantastic.
High value learning project.
Extremely low value portfolioproject.
You're not really showcasingwhat you can do, you're just
learning.
These are okay, and you canstill have these on your GitHub,
for sure, but these are not theones that you're going to be
highlighting.
Okay, and you can still havethese on your GitHub for sure,
(01:30):
but these are not the ones thatyou're going to be highlighting
Clone projects.
So clone projects are a reallyeffective tool at getting you to
kind of shut off the part ofyour brain that requires you to
come up like, think like aproject manager a bit and like
kind of a user, a developer whocares about user experience.
You get to turn, turn that off.
You don't have to think aboutthe design, how things look or
whatever like that.
You just find a tool, you finda website, you find something
(01:57):
and you just rebuild it andsometimes, especially like css,
if you're trying to get betterwith HTML and CSS you can take a
Photoshop document or a JPEG orwhatever else that just shows a
layout and then you code itwith HTML and CSS.
That's a really good way toreinforce your CSS skills.
(02:22):
You don't own the rights toclaim that you own that project.
You don't own the rights toclaim that you own that project.
You don't own the rights tomake that project public.
You don't, unless it's likeopen source or something else
that gives you a license to dothat and it explicitly states
that.
But a lot of your clone projectsshould not be on your portfolio
.
Stop it.
(02:44):
They don't belong there.
You don't own them.
They're really good forreinforcing your skills.
You just do it locally, right.
You rebuild it locally.
It's good practice.
It's really good practice, butnone of those should be on your
portfolio.
That's crazy that some of youare putting like Spotify clones
and stuff like that.
They're not even high valueprojects.
You're just what building?
(03:04):
You're turning half like halfyour brain off to just be a code
monkey and apply concepts, andwhich is good.
When you're learning, you wantto reinforce these concepts, but
they look you're not reallyproblem solving.
You don't have to think abouthow you're going to separate
these features and organize thisstuff.
A lot of this just based on itbeing created already and how
you've used it and how you knowhow everything works Like a lot
(03:27):
of this has been solved for youalready.
There are just certain parts ofyour brain that you're not
activating.
There are certain parts ofbeing a developer that you're
not really showcasing thatyou're strong in certain areas.
You're just able to look at,essentially, design and
replicate it.
So it's really good atreinforcing concepts, but again,
(03:51):
this is just tutorial projectessentially.
Look at it like that.
It's high value with thelearning, low value with the
portfolio.
And then the third one isopen-ended projects.
We don't know by now.
I mean, I've kind of fought forboth bootdev and scrimpa.
Bootdev is really good atpreparing backend developers,
(04:11):
scrimpa is really good atpreparing front end developers.
They're an affiliate partner ofmine and I still, to this day,
tell people like these openended projects, like scrimpa
will give you an open endedproject where they give you like
high level requirements And'rejust like yeah, build this,
here's the design I'm gonna beat this point.
(04:32):
Low code solutions can do that.
Ai can do that.
Right, I don't think ai is thatimpressive, but I could do that
um, like just kind of taking adesign with some open-ended
requirements and then justbuilding it yourself.
It does require you to breakthose higher level requirements
(04:56):
down into more specificrequirements, which is a skill
in itself breaking kind of a bigconcept down into smaller
concepts and making it moretechnical so that you
essentially have like aguideline that you've created
for yourself to be able to gothrough these steps and build
this thing.
It's really good at helping youbreak those concepts down, but,
(05:17):
again, like you're not reallyshowcasing what you want to
build, the kind of problems youwant to solve.
This problem has already beensolved for you.
You're essentially just beingstill a code monkey and building
what you're told to buildwithout much thought into it.
(05:37):
It's a really low-valueportfolio project, but it's
still a very high-value learningproject.
All these, you get this like.
You get this.
You always get this like advicethat lacks nuance on places
like Twitter and Reddit andLinkedIn and it just it lacks
(06:02):
context.
These projects are really goodto build.
They're not bad projects tobuild.
They're just horrible portfolioprojects.
And if you are shoving theseprojects on your portfolio,
you're essentially tellingemployers you don't really have
anything impressive to show.
It's just a self-report.
It's a horrible idea, and sowhat needs to happen is you got
(06:27):
to dive a little bit deeper.
So we talked about someessential projects for your
learning, low value portfolioprojects.
Now we're going to talk abouthireable projects and we're
going to start with open sourcecontributions.
So a lot of people do opensource contributions the wrong
(06:48):
way.
Here's the wrong way.
I've heard that I'm supposed tomake open source contributions
because it looks likeprofessional experience and
employers will now pay attentionto me and pay attention to my
portfolio, because now I'mworking on professional projects
.
So I can tell you veryconfidently, if you are just
(07:12):
using open source as a checkmark and then moving on, you're
just wasting everyone's time.
If you want to get some exposureto a larger code base, that's
what open source is really goodfor you can download the code
base, play around with it, breakstuff, discover how it works.
In doing that, like that'sessentially what you're doing
when you get hired as adeveloper.
(07:33):
You're going to download itlocally, get it working, maybe
solve a couple of bugs.
I got to figure out, like,where in the code base is
relevant to even look for thesebugs.
And as I dig deeper, I startlearning more about the code
base and how it works and howthings are organized and the
conventions right.
Open source is really good forthat.
But if you are just making acouple of contributions to a
(07:54):
popular open source project orsomething like that, you're
probably going to start off withreally minor stuff.
You're not really doing anyintensive problem solving,
solving minor bugs who gives ashit?
You're not really showcasingwhat you can do, not showcasing
your depth of skill as adeveloper.
Just because you can eventuallynavigate a code base to make a
couple of minor contributions isworthless.
(08:15):
Who cares Like every juniordeveloper is eventually going to
be able to do that?
Who cares Like no one caresabout that?
If you are putting, if you arecreating a public repo on GitHub
and adding an open sourcelicense and calling that open
source, you're just full of shit.
(08:36):
People who actually care aboutopen source projects know you're
full of shit as well.
It's going to have really noactivity.
Full of shit as well.
It's gonna have really noactivity.
Um, and a lot of hiringmanagers at this point are very
aware of like coding boot camps,encouraging some students in a
very dishonest manner, um, tojust like label their projects
(08:57):
as open source and just stareach other's repos.
Like.
Hiring managers are a lot moreaware of stuff like this.
You're just making up a projectsaying it's open source and
you're a contributor.
You're full of shit.
You're going to get found out.
A really good use case of opensource for making yourself stand
(09:19):
out to employers is spendingthree to six months diving deep
into an open source project youbelieve in.
Open source is about developersas they gain skills and get
better, and they've been helpedthemselves.
They now want to give back tothe developers that are now
walking their path.
(09:40):
It's a beautiful thing aboutopen source and there's more
mission.
There's more values and missionamong open source developers.
But in terms of what youprobably will want to focus on,
open source with it's, you wantto get more comfortable with a
(10:01):
larger code base, but it's aboutlike contributing to a tool
that you've used in the past.
You like it, you like thecommunity and you want to give
back.
That's a really, reallypowerful story to bring into an
interview.
Um, that speaks way more thanjust making a couple of minor
contributions.
Um, that's a story that's partof your story.
(10:22):
That's part of your story.
That's part of your learningand the why of why you decided
to spend a lot of time in that.
Open source software matters,and it can appeal to certain
hiring managers and certainteams that care about what
you're doing.
Sometimes they'll care aboutthe project you're working on.
(10:42):
Sometimes they just love opensource right, and you can just
spark up a conversation andconnect with someone on the team
in the interview.
Because of that right, you getexcited, developers get excited,
they talk to each other, youmake friendships, you vibe your
story can help you do that inthe interview process.
It can help you get noticed.
So open source is reallypowerful when you take it
(11:05):
seriously, when you respect theopen source community and when
you don't just use it as acheckmark for your own selfish
needs.
That's when it becomes valuable.
Most aspiring developers are notgoing into depth with that.
Now be careful.
Are not going into depth withthat Now be careful.
I had someone come to my meetupabout like seven years ago and
(11:30):
she contributed to somethingwith Mozilla for like three to
six months and that belonged onher resume 100%.
But she was still due and whatshe should have done was pair it
with a personal project so shecan kind of like really
reinforce the technology shewants to reinforce and apply for
(11:52):
and she could have likeshowcased to employers.
I have depth of knowledge whenI have control over this and I
have ownership over what I canbuild.
Here are my conventions,because you have to adhere to
whatever the open source projecthas.
But with my personal project,here are my conventions.
Here's what I believe, here'show I would organize my code
(12:12):
right and that tells theemployer more about you.
It's about painting that storyand it's really hard to do that
when you're contributing toothers' projects.
So, again, contributing to opensource can be great as an
(12:33):
aspiring developer if done inthe right way, but it's not
needed.
It's another thing.
There's no nuance and advicegoing around.
It's like you don't have tocontribute to open source.
It's like if you want to,that's great.
There are different paths to godown as a developer, and this
is one where you could goheavily into open source
contributions.
Okay, so hackathon projects arefantastic.
(12:54):
You got to use probably somesource control, not step on each
other's toes.
You have a time limit.
You have a group.
Maybe you have a fun story of adeveloper that you just clashed
with, but you still got it tothe finish line.
That's fantastic, right, and alot of hackathon projects where
(13:15):
they're hosted like largerhackathon projects, where
they're hosted by companies.
Maybe you're solving realproblems.
Maybe you get paid a certainamount or get interviews with
the company or whatever.
Um, if they like your idea.
Uh, that like working onsomething practical, solving
real problems, is great.
It's really valuable.
(13:36):
Companies want to hiredevelopers that can solve real
problems and you can showcasethat with a hackathon project.
Um, now, even if you, if youdon't think you can build
something practical or anythinglike that, you could still
participate in hackathons andbeginner-focused hackathons.
I think it's still a really goodexperience to meet people.
Sometimes you get recruiterseven at smaller hackathons, but
(13:58):
hackathon projects make reallygood friendships.
You got to realize when you goout to meetups and you meet
people with hackathons and stufflike that, if you form
friendships they get hired.
Even though they can't hire you, then they're trying to get a
job just like you.
They're your competition.
But when they get hired, ifthey vibe with you, you made a
friendship and that company asksthat developer as well as the
(14:19):
rest of the team hey, who shouldwe interview before we put this
job posting out publicly?
They're usually going to takepersonal recommendations first,
because it kind of like weedsout a good culture fit too, like
if they're willing to putthemselves out to recommend you.
That's a big deal.
Companies like personalrecommendations like that.
(14:39):
That's how you can kind ofstart building up your network
just by working with otherdevelopers and talking with them
and building friendships.
You never know what can happenwith that.
So hackathon projects are reallyreally good and I think group
projects in general kind ofalmost force you to well,
hopefully, you guys do this butit forces you to get a little
bit more comfortable with thescrum process and even just bare
(15:01):
minimum writing outrequirements and communicating
those requirements effectivelyand what you're working on and
checking in with people.
And what's cool is some ofthese hackathon projects can go
public and really get somesocial proof behind them with
that.
But hackathon projects arereally good, just like group
projects are really good.
(15:22):
You can build more impressivetools when you have a team
behind you and just being ableto work with other developers
and source control.
It's like how many mergeconflicts are you dealing with
when you're just working solo?
I can tell you right now I workon solo projects.
I have not dealt with a mergeconflict in years.
You should get comfortabledealing with merge conflicts and
(15:44):
group projects and hackathonprojects can help you do that.
But also larger hackathons haverecruiters, have eyes paying
attention and when you do buildsomething impressive, um, that
can get you a little bit of anin right Um, you're not just a
resume.
At that point You've showcasedwhat you can do and you build
(16:05):
something real.
You'd be surprised.
Hackathon projects are reallypowerful for making you stand
out.
So now we're going to talk aboutfreelance projects.
Some of the worst advice I hearis a blank prescription that
(16:26):
you should build freelanceprojects because that gives you
professional experience and willmake you stand out Horrible
advice, just absolutely trash,garbage, horrible advice.
And let me tell you why advice.
(16:50):
And let me tell you why.
Most people that are going tobe working on freelance projects
are going to start with reallysmall challenges maybe a landing
page.
The features are going to bevery unimpressive.
There's not going to be anycomplexity, no depth to it.
It takes a lot like you're as afreelancer if you're trying to
actually make money.
That's entrepreneurship.
You're learning way more thancoding way more.
(17:13):
You better expand your timesignificantly if you want to
make any meaningful progress atgetting progressively more
lucrative clients and morecomplex projects to be able to
put on your portfolio.
That takes time.
(17:33):
Most people are going to failat that and that's kind of the
route that starts to make youlook impressive.
But a lot of freelance projectsagain, a lot of companies just
want you to build a solution.
They don't care about yourstack.
They don't care that it takesyou longer to work with your
stack to build what they want.
(17:53):
A lot of clients also just liketo not be tied into the
developer making a bunch ofupdates and they want a content
management system.
So if you want to do freelance,I highly recommend you get more
comfortable with PHP andWordPress and you can go the
Shopify route.
You're going to start movingaway from kind of that
(18:14):
traditional software engineeringposition that you might have
been aiming for previously.
Now, if you want to get intothat and you want to work with
content management systems,there's nothing wrong with that.
There could be a lot of workfor you down the road.
That is a path.
That is a career path.
Nothing wrong with that.
There could be a lot of workfor you down the road.
That is a path.
That is a career path.
(18:34):
But it's actually kind ofseparate from going for your
typical product role or buildinginternal tools or whatever.
Take you away from divingdeeper into building very
(19:00):
complex products with a ton offeatures.
It's really good if you want todo agency work, where you get
hired at a company and you canget paid a salary.
But you get hired at a companyto then, which then partners you
with companies that they findand you build an application,
you build a website for them.
So there are full-timepositions available at the end
of that freelancing route ifthat's what you're using it for,
(19:23):
um, but a lot of the work thatyou're going to be doing to kind
of prepare you for that, it's alot of surface level work that
you're going to be doing.
A lot of freelance developers,you know with like under two
(19:45):
years of professional freelanceexperience where they're getting
clients all the time, a lot ofpeople that maybe have gotten a
client or two or something likethat.
Their skills are just solackluster and surface level
they're not competitive with alot of other people that have
deepened their skills.
It can show initiative.
(20:07):
I've even given the advice.
One thing that you can try isgo to local businesses and build
their websites.
It's a little bit of socialproof, but I've warned them it's
still kind of surface levelstuff.
You want to try to get morecomplex projects, build trust
with them.
So maybe you can build internaltooling, you can build features
.
Maybe it's not just thismarketing page.
Now you're building kind oflike a crud application that now
(20:29):
you've got to deal withauthorization, you've got to
deal with whatever else thatthey need, and it becomes more
of a complex project and youcould showcase moving it off
from social media, where maybethey were marketing a little bit
.
Maybe you were able to optimizeit for search engines to be
able to bring them much moretraffic.
You can highlight that on yourresume.
You hear this kind of stuff,with the freelance route being a
(20:54):
more marketable route.
Almost no one does thiseffectively.
A lot of people that try topick up a few freelance projects
most of them are just peoplewho build some surface level
apps and that's all they reallyachieve with it.
(21:15):
It almost makes it notworthwhile.
If you're not going the agencyroute, if you're going the
traditional software engineeringroute, it's a detour For most
people and I think that's thebest description for it.
For most people the freelanceroute is a detour.
(21:41):
It doesn't help build you up.
It doesn't provide the socialproof that people claim it does.
For most people it's just adetour and your skills wither
away because you're not reallyapplying them in a very hard
problem.
So you're reinforcing someskills to be able to do that
kind of work, but it's verysurface level and I see it
hurting people quite a bit.
(22:03):
I think freelance is just one ofthose things.
It's like open sourcecontributions, huge
misconception about it and justlike build freelance stuff,
professional experience and likeagain, it depends on how you go
about these things and what Iwould even start considering as
I'm going through.
This is what sounds appealingto me.
Do I kind of like have thesalesman?
(22:23):
Do I wouldn't even say salesmanattitude, but do I have this
initiative, this resourcefulnessand this charisma to go to
local businesses and sell myservices?
Do I have that in me?
Hell, if you're like a carsalesman and you are getting
into development work, you mighthave that.
This is ingrained in you atthis point.
(22:44):
You might be really good with afreelance route.
You can make that veryeffective and even with a
freelance background, you canget into product work.
I just think it's moremarketable for agency type work,
especially before that.
Two years of professionalexperience as a freelance
developer.
So start thinking about whatappeals to you, because what,
(23:05):
ultimately, is going to make youstand out and deepen your
knowledge is you diving into apath that gets you incredibly
excited to continue justgrinding this out, and that's
what it is.
It's a grind, and so you got todeepen your knowledge at some
point, but you got to find apath that appeals to you, so you
(23:27):
really build up an impressiveportfolio.
So I have been talking about umprojects that almost like don't
really sound that marketable,right.
I've kind of been squashing thevalue of a lot of these
projects.
(23:48):
So I'm going to squash thevalue of one more project I'm
just going to make a note of it,actually and then we're going
to talk about two projects thatI think are extremely effective.
And so there we go.
So we have personal projects.
(24:08):
Personal projects are what youshould be building most of the
time, and you're able to focuson the technologies you want to
grow.
You're able to build cool stufffor yourself.
If you can build cool stuff foryourself, it can be valuable to
other people, but you can buildstuff that just sounds fun to
build.
I always wanted to try buildingthis Now.
(24:29):
I have the skills now.
Now let's reinforce thoseskills and let's try building
this thing.
There are a lot of personalprojects that end up being
pretty impressive, and there area lot of personal projects that
make me think that you are likeyears away from getting a dev
(24:53):
job.
No one gives a shit about yourcat gallery.
No one gives a shit about yourSpotify like clone.
I'm building like a differentversion of it and I'm building
it with the most basic featureever and, um, it looks like shit
.
I don't like didn't really puta lot of time into the user
experience of it, or I'm not.
(25:15):
I have no idea what to build,so I'm just building a bunch of
random shit for no reason at all.
Now we're just getting back intothe realm of tutorial based
projects where it's like you'rekind of just reinforcing your
concepts at this point a littlebit.
Hopefully, and hopefully youfind a project where you can
deepen that with features.
But a lot of personal projectsare just incredibly unimpressive
(25:43):
, boring, provide no value andjust end up as graveyard
projects where you didn't evenfinish it.
You got bored of it.
Listen, I've gotten bored ofprojects.
I have a lot of graveyardprojects and at this time of
recording this they are still upon my GitHub.
I don't think I've deletedanything.
(26:04):
A lot of really bad projects.
A lot of really bad projects.
These projects make you feellike you are making progress.
These projects where you'rekind of just building something
because you don't know what tobuild and you haven't taken the
(26:28):
time out to figure out what kindof problems you want to solve
these projects are just they'rereinforcing your skills a little
bit, but they're dopamine hits,like so many aspiring
developers are just buildinglackluster projects that know
that just don't make youcompetitive.
It's not that you're notgetting a little bit of value
(26:48):
out of them or that they're notvaluable at all, it's just you
have very high competition atthe entry level of everyone else
doing the same damn thing,building the most unimpressive
personal projects ever.
So I'll give a little bit morecontrast towards a personal
project and compare it with apersonal project.
(27:10):
That is really impressive.
But before I do that, I want totalk about one really useful
thing that you can do right now.
A really useful project.
If you are in a differentindustry let's say you're not
even in a tech industry but youuse software, especially if it's
web-based software and you'retrying to become a web developer
, or if you're trying to getinto Java, can you build
something with Java?
(27:30):
Think about what you can build,the tools, the application that
you could build that your teamwould actually use, that your
company would actually use Ifyou spent time outside of work
doing this thing for you tobuild even an internal tool that
optimizes things for your team,for your manager and you had
(27:51):
regular users that would giveyou feedback and then you would
iterate, you would get, youwould apply that agile process
and you would iterate and pushout your updates and get
feedback and assist this cycle.
Right now we're gettinginvolved with the agile process,
going to assist this cycle.
Right Now we're gettinginvolved with the agile process.
(28:16):
Those projects where you canbuild internal tools are it's
like a hack.
You're not given a developerposition, but if you are willing
and hopefully have a goodmanager with this, I can maybe
like give you ideas of what youcould build.
Um, but if you are willing toinvest the time into a project
like this that now getsprofessional proof, you're not
necessarily a software engineerat that company.
If you build a tool and peopleuse it, but you're building a
(28:38):
professional, you're doingprofessional dev work and that's
something to add to your storyabout how you took that
initiative to replace yourshitty web software with your
own that now is utilized by yourteam.
That is a really powerful hackto just kind of getting
(29:01):
professional-like experience onyour resume.
It's really powerful on yourresume.
It's really powerful.
So I you know some of you mightnot have a job where or a
company where you could do that.
But if you are in that position, I would try to take advantage
of that.
Like today, tomorrow, talk toyour manager about this and
(29:24):
hopefully your manager islooking out for your best
interest.
But like you're like, hey, youknow, I think maybe in a couple
of years I might want a devposition, and hopefully there
are dev positions at yourcompany too.
Right, you can kind of word it.
Like you know, I think I wantto move into a dev position
within this company and here'smy idea and present that to your
manager.
In that way Maybe you'll getmore support over it.
(29:46):
But it's a really powerful hackof getting that
professional-like experiencethat is a lot more valuable than
a random crud project thatbecomes a graveyard project.
So now let's talk about the mostpowerful portfolio project, and
I know it's maybe about 30minutes.
(30:09):
In so far it's kind of beenleading you on a little bit.
Wouldn't that be kind of funnyif I just said that's it?
That'd be cruel, that'd bereally cruel.
I'm not going to do that to you.
But this project almosteveryone gets wrong.
This type of project almosteveryone gets wrong, and I've
(30:30):
seen some coding boot camps inthe past do this extremely
effectively with their studentsand this is where I got it from
actually was coding boot camps,where they actually had high
standards in the past.
Some of them, a few of them.
Just let me clarify that acapstone project is what you
(30:52):
want to aim for, for a personalproject.
So, to me, what is a capstoneproject?
The ideal project, a capstoneproject is a project that it's a
tool that you build.
It's an app that you build thatsolves your problem.
A lot of companies are foundedon a capstone project.
(31:12):
They build a tool that solvestheir problem and if it solves
your problem, it probably solvesother people's problems.
You're not unique in the world,not in that respect.
The problems that you face arenot unique, I hate to say it.
You're not this uniquebutterfly, which is awesome
because you can eventually findpeople to relate to your
(31:34):
problems.
But you can also buildsolutions for your problems and
then share that with otherpeople and that solution can
evolve into a really impressivecapstone project.
So I say, solve a problem foryourself.
You don't necessarily have todo that, but I think you don't
really have to do any userresearch.
You don't have to scan aroundand go through a bunch of
(31:54):
subreddits and try to figure outwhat people need.
Like it actually doesn't evenmatter if you're trying to find
a good market fit or not.
Like someone will use yourproduct.
But you're not trying toreinvent the wheel necessarily
and it could be kind of like aslightly different variation of
a tool that you use that youjust it's not very effective,
(32:17):
right, you're like why it's beensix months?
I still haven't, like flushedout these features that
everyone's asking for.
I'm just going to build my ownsoftware.
Like fuck it.
Right, you are building aproject that solves a real
problem.
You are flushing out therequirements.
You decide what an MVP is forthat project.
So, minimum viable product whatis the minimum viable product
(32:39):
that I can build that providessome value to someone?
A feature You're building out asingle feature.
You start your app with a singlefeature that solves a problem
and you put that out in front ofpeople.
You get feedback.
You go to subreddits.
Build something in a hobbycommunity you're involved in,
maybe a local community thatwould use it.
(33:00):
Think about, now that you havethe skill level, what can you
actually build that ispurposeful, that's meaningful to
people, that people would use?
We want to simplify it to that.
Build that, finish the MVP.
Don't let the scope creep.
Just completely tear yourproject down, which means don't
(33:25):
think about the other whileyou're building your MVP.
Don't think I need to buildthis feature and now this
feature and this feature untilit's done.
No, no, no, you've alreadydecided on the feature that
you're going to build.
Finish it.
Build good habits.
You flush out the requirements,you document that.
You build that feature, you pushit out in front of people, you
continue working on anotherfeature and then maybe feedback
(33:47):
comes in, maybe a bug comes in,or you discover bug.
You work on that.
Push that out.
Now you got to startprioritizing.
Okay, I got this featureworking, but my friend or this
person in this community justspotted this bug.
This is kind of a serious bug.
I should probably pivot, pausethis feature.
How do I pause this feature?
Go and fix this bug, push thatup, push it out as quickly as
(34:09):
possible and then go back tothis feature.
Now you're thinking like a realdeveloper.
Now you're going through thechaos of what it is to be a
developer and juggle thesethings and so you push out to
more people and more people.
You get more feedback, morefeedback.
Now you have to startprioritizing stuff that comes in
and you don't have to chargefor this.
I highly encourage you to try.
You don't have to charge forthis.
(34:36):
You treat it like a real product.
You treat it like somethingprofessional.
It doesn't have to turn into acompany.
You don't have to bullshit yourway and say you were the CTO of
your project which come on,stop that Like.
You don't have to do that.
You're just.
You don't have to do that.
(34:57):
Let the project itself, let theusers that you're going to
highlight on your resume, speakfor the professional value that
this project solves, for thesocial proof that this project
provides by having a user baseand you being that solo
(35:17):
developer working through that.
So this isn't some amateurlooking project.
So you have to gain some userexperience.
Fundamentals.
Stop being lazy withinconsistent spacing.
They're just really amateur.
(35:38):
They're not even amateur.
They're just lazy mistakes thatnew developers make.
And it's just attention todetail, it's consistency in what
you do, it's caring about thequality of your code.
It's caring about how youorganize this.
And then, as this project grows,really cool opportunity happens
where you have to figure outhow to scale it, because now you
(35:59):
keep going back into your codeand six months later, I don't
know where the fuck I am.
I don't know what this app isdoing.
Maybe I should have documentedthat well.
And do I just like writecomments in my code?
Do I write better functionnames?
Do I organize the files in adifferent way?
How the hell do I do this solike if I can't even come back
(36:19):
in here and understand my code?
How do I expect otherdevelopers to do that?
And so now you have to startthinking about how to structure
your app in a way that makesthat easier, makes your code
more readable.
Now you are starting to focuson more complex problems that
professional developers have todeal with, and you only start
(36:44):
getting to this point when youdon't give up on that project.
It's a real problem thatcontinues building into
something much more impressiveand complex, and it's not just
complexity for the sake ofcomplexity.
It's because you have usersgiving you real feedback and it
(37:05):
evolves.
That's what a company does.
I come from the startup worldand that's exactly how a lot of
startup founders start.
They solve a simple problem andit snowballs when they don't
give up on that idea.
That is the type of personalproject that now is very
(37:28):
professional-like.
You build a landing page withit.
Maybe you have to build an FAQsection.
Maybe you have to build an faqsection.
Maybe you have to build helpdocs with it.
Um, you know, maybe you want toflush out, maybe it turns into
kind of a crud project andyou're working on the front end
and the back end and now youwant to flush out documentation
and now you you're applying forback-end positions.
Maybe you add open apidocumentation or you know, like
(37:51):
that.
I'm not saying you need to dospecifically that, but now you
can start evolving the projectinto something where you can
start replicating the processesthat you're going to be going
through as a professionaldeveloper and you can look up
some of this stuff and you lookat job postings and what they
care about and you have tofigure out does that actually
make sense to implement in myproject?
(38:11):
If not, don't just add itarbitrarily, necessarily, but
this project will evolve overtime and it becomes your
capstone project where you canliterally continue working on
this project until you get adeveloper job, a developer job
(38:33):
and this is a misconception.
A lot of people think they needa variety of projects to stand
out.
No, no, no, no.
There are multiple methods togetting that first position and
I'm telling you the complexityfrom this type of capstone
project, this professionalproject, professional-like
project.
I want to be clear about that.
It is really impressive toemployers and what I see is a
(38:55):
lot of employers rejecting a lotof new developers because they
just don't go deep enough.
They're way too surface level.
Their work represents theirsurface level knowledge and
their conversation in theinterview showcases that as well
.
They don't have a good story.
(39:16):
They don't have a good uh, theydon't have a lot to talk about
with their journey of growingbecause they've just tackled a
lot of surface level things.
And I'm like you just havenothing impressive to talk about
when you just keep bouncingfrom project to project to
project every week.
I don't, I don't care what youthink, you're just not really
building anything impressive.
(39:39):
So I highly recommend you reallyconsider a powerful capstone
project and you have to starttraining yourself, because some
people don't know what to comeup with.
You have to start brainstorming, training yourself.
You could even use AI to helpyou, like, solidify an idea or
whatever.
(39:59):
But you have to start trainingyour mind to become more of a
user-centered developer.
A user-centered developeridentifies problems and
empathizes with users and solvestheir problems.
And a lot of times I think it'sa lot easier to start within
your own community, within yourhobby community, because you
(40:19):
already know the software thatcould probably benefit them, and
so I think that's probably theeasiest place to start.
So that's it.
So we went over somemisconceptions.
I think the capstone project issomething most people get wrong
and I think it's the key.
I honestly think it's the keyto truly standing out.
(40:43):
Now there's more to the jobsearch than just your portfolio.
It's a piece of it.
It's actually I wouldn't sayit's a small piece, but it's not
a big piece of it.
There's so much more to it.
So I totally empathize with thestruggle and the frustration
with going through it.
This is just a piece, buthopefully you can get better at
a lot of other areas.
(41:04):
But I really want to emphasizeand this is kind of like one
last message that I think youshould get down.
You can't do everything in thejob search and you are going to
hear a ton of advice, a varietyof advice, and you need to
figure out what advice youshould follow, what advice you
can reasonably apply in yourschedule to consistently follow
(41:27):
to make meaningful progress.
There are a lot of differentpaths to becoming a developer.
You can't follow all of themand there is nothing that will
hurt you more than splittingyourself up, tearing your hair
out and trying to do everysingle path and just trying it a
little bit and getting rejectedor not getting the feedback or
(41:49):
not getting responses back, andyou try this and you try this,
and you try this and you trythis and then nothing's working.
And then now you feel like youhave no control over it because
you're not really doubling downon anything.
And if you're going to doubledown on something, I highly
highly recommend it be yourcapstone project.
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