April 8, 2025 • 12 mins
Almost every professional developer should be building side projects and here's why.
---------------------------------------------------
🔥 Webdev Career Help - https://calendly.com/donthedeveloper/coaching
🎮 Join Discord - https://discord.gg/TpQe2k8Ab3
❤️ Support What I Do - https://www.patreon.com/donthedeveloper
Disclaimer: Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something I'll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
===========================
WEBDEV COURSES I HIGHLY RECOMMEND:
🎓 Learn Frontend - Scrimba (20% off): https://scrimba.com/the-frontend-developer-career-path-c0j?via=donthedeveloper
🎓 Learn Backend - Boot.dev (25% off): https://boot.dev/?promo=DONTHEDEVELOPER - Get 25% off your first payment with code "DONTHEDEVELOPER"
🎓 Already Experienced? Level Up Here - Code Crafters (40% off): https://app.codecrafters.io/join?via=donthedeveloper
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Don Hansen (00:00):
If you are a professional developer and you
aren't currently working on aside project, I want to try to
convince you to start buildingthat right now.
So I'm going to give you a fewreasons and kind of share why I
really believe that mostprofessional developers should
always be working on a sideproject.
So I know a lot of you are busy, but hear me out okay.
(00:21):
Busy but hear me out Okay.
So for me, when I was workingas a professional developer, I
remember working like 40 hours aweek and I started getting
burned out from work.
I wasn't really that excited todo some of the work and it
wasn't like it became reallyboring as the same stuff that
(00:43):
I've been doing.
Some of it became challengingat times, like some of the
features were a little bit morecomplicated.
So I started getting morecomfortable in my position.
You know I tackle harderfeatures but for some reason I
was getting bored and one thingthat I realized was I hadn't
really built things the way thatI wanted to Like, when you're
(01:05):
working with a personal project,you can have whatever
conventions you want, you canhave whatever technologies you
want, you can do what you want,and there's almost this like
creative expression that happensin becoming a software engineer
or in being a software engineerwhere it's a creative endeavor
and you get to explore that andbe creative in a way that you
(01:28):
code and organize your code andeven just the direction that you
choose to go down and thethings that you learn are going
to influence the some of theconventions that you're going to
develop, paradigms, the ways ofthinking.
And when you're just lockedinto a professional developer
position, kind of working on thesame couple of projects for a
year or whatever, it does startto get a little bit stale.
(01:49):
But also you're locked intodoing things in a way that were
set up by other people, you geta little bit more freedom years
into it when you start owningmore things within the project
but it's still limited with thestack and solving the types of
problems that you need to solvewith that company might be
boring.
I don't know about you guys,but I landed some depositions
where I didn't care that muchabout the product um.
(02:12):
The first uh position I gotlike it was um, std, uh testing
website, essentially right, andit they started expanding into
more health stuff.
But you know I wasn't.
I wasn't jumping um or jumpingto the rooftops and shouting it
out that I was managing abuilding a website for people
(02:34):
that wanted to get tested forstds, like I didn't really care
about the app.
I love the team that I workedwith right and I I thought it
was really cool.
I was really grown with it andI just thought it was really
cool to finally beprofessionally working with the
technologies that I was justdoing a bunch of personal
projects with.
I thought that was cool.
I didn't really care about theproduct.
You might not care about theproduct.
You might care about theproduct a little bit more if you
(02:57):
built your own project, right.
What do you want to build?
Is there anything you want tobuild, especially if you've been
a professional developer for awhile?
Um, don't you want to buildsomething?
Don't you want to buildsomething that you've kind of
put off for the longest time?
Hold on, I'm actually just umclicking play in the song.
It stopped for a second, okay,but don't you want to?
(03:19):
Um, don't you have like ideasthat maybe they're not fully
fleshed out but you're like, hey, it'd be cool if I built this
thing?
Do you have like ideas thatmaybe they're not fully fleshed
out but you're like, hey, it'dbe cool if I built this thing.
Do you have any ideas like that?
If you don't start thinkingabout stuff like that?
But you can dive into adifferent technology.
And then what happens if yourcurrent company kind of locks
you into something that isn'tthat marketable?
(03:40):
Right?
I'm speaking to WordPress peoplethat want to go into more
traditional software engineeringroles.
Right?
Do you want to be stuck withwordpress for the rest of your
life?
If you do, if you love it,that's fine.
But if you don't, this is anopportunity to go outside your
professional environment andbuild something that is a little
bit more complex or that'saligned with the stack that you
(04:01):
want to be working with as aprofessional developer.
So building a personal projectkind of opens up your creativity
, but it also opens up yourmarketability, so you're not
locked into an ecosystem thatyou don't really want to work in
for the rest of your life.
How do you expand that whenyour company doesn't give you
(04:25):
that opportunity?
You take it upon yourself to dothat, right, and maybe you
don't want to work on a personalproject forever.
You don't want to do that stuffforever.
That's fine.
But in the beginning especiallyin the beginning, as a junior
and mid-level.
I would start expanding thoseskills pretty quickly.
(04:46):
You want to dive deep.
It's kind of like a little bitof a T-shaped knowledge.
But you're mainly diving deepand getting depth of knowledge
when you get your first positionright, because a lot of people
don't have that depth and theyhave surface-level knowledge and
they're not hireable.
But you are, you got hired, youhave that depth of knowledge
and then you start expandingright.
Then it, but you are, you gothired, you have that depth of
knowledge and then you startexpanding right.
(05:07):
Then it's more breadth ofknowledge and you start
experiencing different ways ofdoing things and you realize
there's like a whole other world, whole so many different worlds
of Just different, like so manydifferent worlds of using
software in a different way,that is, solving different
problems.
So there's a need, more of aneed for that type of stack.
(05:29):
But you might not have neverknown this was a thing in the
programming world, that thistype of framework was a thing in
the programming world, or youmight not have dove a little bit
lower level and explored.
Ok, I'm kind of dealing with abunch of abstractions if I'm in
the JavaScript world.
But what's outside of thisworld?
Like how, how are some of theselower level problems solved?
You're not solving them throughJavaScript.
(05:50):
What does that look like?
What is it like to code thisout and build in this language?
That's a bit lower level, is it?
Does it give me more ahamoments?
Do I feel more fulfilled withit?
You're never going to know thatunless you explore and a lot of
times you won't have thatopportunity to explore in your
company.
You got to take the reins andexplore that outside of your
(06:13):
professional hours.
So I know a lot of people don'twant to hear that, but I want
to encourage you like reallytake my burnout story seriously,
because when I worked 40 hoursand I was burned out, it wasn't
until I worked on that personalproject on the side where my
burnout started to fade away.
It was crazy to me Put morehours in a coding and the
burnout goes away.
(06:33):
I never thought that would havebeen a thing.
Maybe that can be a thing foryou.
You're never going to knowuntil you try, and so I think I
kind of want to touch on onemore thing.
A lot of professional developershave this kind kind of like
fear in the back of their mind,like I don't like what if I
build an app?
Uh well, actually I think a lotof developers have this idea of
(06:56):
like what if I created an appand I created a company out of
it?
It gave me a little bit morefreedom, right when it unlocked
um.
It allowed me to build thingsthat I wanted to work on.
It allowed me to a little bitmore freedom to choose a stack
of conventions and how I goabout building this and how I go
(07:18):
about planning it.
A lot of people like have thisdream of like what if I built a
SaaS product and that turnedinto its own thing and I could
quit my full-time job.
That I maybe don't like thatmuch, where I kind of like or
I'm kind of comfortable, butit's getting mundane, it's
getting monotonous.
I'm starting to get bored, I'mstarting to get burned out from
it because it's not challengingin the way that it used to be
(07:39):
what happens when one of yourside projects takes off.
You're never going to knowunless you build one, unless you
try that, and you're probablygonna have to build several side
projects to get a little bitmore comfortable with just
building side projects and beingconfident doing that and
following through with that,because trying to manage that
with a full time job and maybe afamily.
That's not easy to do, but youdefinitely build yourself up,
(08:00):
you become faster with coding,you become a better version of
yourself by challenging yourselfin that way.
But also, I think a lot ofpeople are scared because
they're like but I don't knowmarketing, I don't know sales,
how am I supposed to sell thisproduct, right?
Well, these are things that youneed to learn if you want to
create a future for yourselfwith your SaaS product.
But I'm telling you, this iswhere you use AI to supplement.
(08:25):
Ai can supplement a lot ofstuff that you don't know.
For me, ai has helped with,like I'm a big advocate for kind
(08:52):
of like a content, organiccontent strategy where I'm
creating content, building anaudience, and then whatever I
create, I can put in front ofthat audience that is loyal and
get some eyes on it right andkind of get a little bit of
traction with that.
There are different strategies,different marketing strategies,
but I use AI for repurposing alot of my content.
I use AI for some of my designs.
I use AI for analysis oncertain things.
I never use it for coding,because I like coding.
Why the hell would I use AIgenerated code for coding.
(09:12):
I'm just I'm going to leavethat out there.
So maybe that's a question foryou, for people that are using
AI to supplement your enjoymentof coding why are you doing it?
Please stop doing it.
If you want to be a goodsoftware engineer, you want to
enjoy software engineering,please stop doing it.
But you're not a marketer,you're not a designer, you're
(09:33):
not a salesperson, you're not alot of different things that you
kind of have to pick up at asurface level to be able to get
some traction with your product.
And it takes time to learn thatstuff.
It takes testing.
You're probably going to fail abunch.
A lot of people that areentrepreneurs, they fail a bunch
and they learn from it eachtime.
Don't expect to get your firstside project, your product, out
(09:55):
the door and that all of asudden takes off.
What happens if it generateslike a few hundred extra a month
?
Would you feel proud of that?
I know I would, right.
I know I definitely would havewhen I was a developer in
Chicago and just kind ofbuilding an app on the side of
being able to manage that andcreate connections with
customers.
That would have been fun, itwould have been thrilling, even
(10:17):
just to make extra money that Ididn't have to make working for
another employer.
That's kind of theentrepreneurship side of me, but
that's something you candevelop over time through a ton
of failure, and it's not reallyfailure, it's just lessons that
you're learning.
So I know a lot of people kindof fear that.
That's where AI can kind of beon your side to at least give
(10:39):
you some surface level knowledgeand give you some exposure to
things that you can do.
You can try and then you getbetter with it and then you're
able to build better prompts andyou're able to be more critical
of some of the chat historythat is generated through AI to
give you more practicalsolutions that apply directly to
you.
So you can use AI in that senseto kind of help supplement some
(11:01):
of your, some of the areaswhere you feel like you really
lack skill.
So that's holding you back.
I don't think it should, but Ireally want to stress this
because there are some peoplethat say I just don't have the
time to do it.
You don't have the time becauseyou don't want to make time for
it and maybe you are completelyhappy in your professional work
as a developer.
(11:21):
Maybe you don't need a personalproject.
If that's the case, don't do it.
You don't have to If you'rekeeping up to date.
Obviously like, don't trustthat you're going to keep that
job forever.
Job security is an illusion,but industry security is a
little bit more long lasting ifyou keep your skills up to date,
so everything's going smoothly.
You're very marked.
You lose your job.
(11:42):
You're going to be able to pickone up in a few months easily.
You have, you know, emergencyfund.
Probably way more than threemonths at this point.
I go like six months to a yearif you can.
But like you're, you enjoy thework that you're doing.
You like the team that you'reworking with.
Everything's just fantastic.
You don't have to do a personalproject.
(12:03):
This message isn't for you, butfor people that aren't 100
percent satisfied with theirprofessional dev work.
Don't you think you shouldconsider a personal project and
what it can unlock for you?
Yeah,
If you are a professional developer and you
aren't currently working on aside project, I want to try to
convince you to start buildingthat right now.
So I'm going to give you a fewreasons and kind of share why I
really believe that mostprofessional developers should
always be working on a sideproject.
So I know a lot of you are busy, but hear me out okay.
(00:21):
Busy but hear me out Okay.
So for me, when I was workingas a professional developer, I
remember working like 40 hours aweek and I started getting
burned out from work.
I wasn't really that excited todo some of the work and it
wasn't like it became reallyboring as the same stuff that
(00:43):
I've been doing.
Some of it became challengingat times, like some of the
features were a little bit morecomplicated.
So I started getting morecomfortable in my position.
You know I tackle harderfeatures but for some reason I
was getting bored and one thingthat I realized was I hadn't
really built things the way thatI wanted to Like, when you're
(01:05):
working with a personal project,you can have whatever
conventions you want, you canhave whatever technologies you
want, you can do what you want,and there's almost this like
creative expression that happensin becoming a software engineer
or in being a software engineerwhere it's a creative endeavor
and you get to explore that andbe creative in a way that you
(01:28):
code and organize your code andeven just the direction that you
choose to go down and thethings that you learn are going
to influence the some of theconventions that you're going to
develop, paradigms, the ways ofthinking.
And when you're just lockedinto a professional developer
position, kind of working on thesame couple of projects for a
year or whatever, it does startto get a little bit stale.
(01:49):
But also you're locked intodoing things in a way that were
set up by other people, you geta little bit more freedom years
into it when you start owningmore things within the project
but it's still limited with thestack and solving the types of
problems that you need to solvewith that company might be
boring.
I don't know about you guys,but I landed some depositions
where I didn't care that muchabout the product um.
(02:12):
The first uh position I gotlike it was um, std, uh testing
website, essentially right, andit they started expanding into
more health stuff.
But you know I wasn't.
I wasn't jumping um or jumpingto the rooftops and shouting it
out that I was managing abuilding a website for people
(02:34):
that wanted to get tested forstds, like I didn't really care
about the app.
I love the team that I workedwith right and I I thought it
was really cool.
I was really grown with it andI just thought it was really
cool to finally beprofessionally working with the
technologies that I was justdoing a bunch of personal
projects with.
I thought that was cool.
I didn't really care about theproduct.
You might not care about theproduct.
You might care about theproduct a little bit more if you
(02:57):
built your own project, right.
What do you want to build?
Is there anything you want tobuild, especially if you've been
a professional developer for awhile?
Um, don't you want to buildsomething?
Don't you want to buildsomething that you've kind of
put off for the longest time?
Hold on, I'm actually just umclicking play in the song.
It stopped for a second, okay,but don't you want to?
(03:19):
Um, don't you have like ideasthat maybe they're not fully
fleshed out but you're like, hey, it'd be cool if I built this
thing?
Do you have like ideas thatmaybe they're not fully fleshed
out but you're like, hey, it'dbe cool if I built this thing.
Do you have any ideas like that?
If you don't start thinkingabout stuff like that?
But you can dive into adifferent technology.
And then what happens if yourcurrent company kind of locks
you into something that isn'tthat marketable?
(03:40):
Right?
I'm speaking to WordPress peoplethat want to go into more
traditional software engineeringroles.
Right?
Do you want to be stuck withwordpress for the rest of your
life?
If you do, if you love it,that's fine.
But if you don't, this is anopportunity to go outside your
professional environment andbuild something that is a little
bit more complex or that'saligned with the stack that you
(04:01):
want to be working with as aprofessional developer.
So building a personal projectkind of opens up your creativity
, but it also opens up yourmarketability, so you're not
locked into an ecosystem thatyou don't really want to work in
for the rest of your life.
How do you expand that whenyour company doesn't give you
(04:25):
that opportunity?
You take it upon yourself to dothat, right, and maybe you
don't want to work on a personalproject forever.
You don't want to do that stuffforever.
That's fine.
But in the beginning especiallyin the beginning, as a junior
and mid-level.
I would start expanding thoseskills pretty quickly.
(04:46):
You want to dive deep.
It's kind of like a little bitof a T-shaped knowledge.
But you're mainly diving deepand getting depth of knowledge
when you get your first positionright, because a lot of people
don't have that depth and theyhave surface-level knowledge and
they're not hireable.
But you are, you got hired, youhave that depth of knowledge
and then you start expandingright.
Then it, but you are, you gothired, you have that depth of
knowledge and then you startexpanding right.
(05:07):
Then it's more breadth ofknowledge and you start
experiencing different ways ofdoing things and you realize
there's like a whole other world, whole so many different worlds
of Just different, like so manydifferent worlds of using
software in a different way,that is, solving different
problems.
So there's a need, more of aneed for that type of stack.
(05:29):
But you might not have neverknown this was a thing in the
programming world, that thistype of framework was a thing in
the programming world, or youmight not have dove a little bit
lower level and explored.
Ok, I'm kind of dealing with abunch of abstractions if I'm in
the JavaScript world.
But what's outside of thisworld?
Like how, how are some of theselower level problems solved?
You're not solving them throughJavaScript.
(05:50):
What does that look like?
What is it like to code thisout and build in this language?
That's a bit lower level, is it?
Does it give me more ahamoments?
Do I feel more fulfilled withit?
You're never going to know thatunless you explore and a lot of
times you won't have thatopportunity to explore in your
company.
You got to take the reins andexplore that outside of your
(06:13):
professional hours.
So I know a lot of people don'twant to hear that, but I want
to encourage you like reallytake my burnout story seriously,
because when I worked 40 hoursand I was burned out, it wasn't
until I worked on that personalproject on the side where my
burnout started to fade away.
It was crazy to me Put morehours in a coding and the
burnout goes away.
(06:33):
I never thought that would havebeen a thing.
Maybe that can be a thing foryou.
You're never going to knowuntil you try, and so I think I
kind of want to touch on onemore thing.
A lot of professional developershave this kind kind of like
fear in the back of their mind,like I don't like what if I
build an app?
Uh well, actually I think a lotof developers have this idea of
(06:56):
like what if I created an appand I created a company out of
it?
It gave me a little bit morefreedom, right when it unlocked
um.
It allowed me to build thingsthat I wanted to work on.
It allowed me to a little bitmore freedom to choose a stack
of conventions and how I goabout building this and how I go
(07:18):
about planning it.
A lot of people like have thisdream of like what if I built a
SaaS product and that turnedinto its own thing and I could
quit my full-time job.
That I maybe don't like thatmuch, where I kind of like or
I'm kind of comfortable, butit's getting mundane, it's
getting monotonous.
I'm starting to get bored, I'mstarting to get burned out from
it because it's not challengingin the way that it used to be
(07:39):
what happens when one of yourside projects takes off.
You're never going to knowunless you build one, unless you
try that, and you're probablygonna have to build several side
projects to get a little bitmore comfortable with just
building side projects and beingconfident doing that and
following through with that,because trying to manage that
with a full time job and maybe afamily.
That's not easy to do, but youdefinitely build yourself up,
(08:00):
you become faster with coding,you become a better version of
yourself by challenging yourselfin that way.
But also, I think a lot ofpeople are scared because
they're like but I don't knowmarketing, I don't know sales,
how am I supposed to sell thisproduct, right?
Well, these are things that youneed to learn if you want to
create a future for yourselfwith your SaaS product.
But I'm telling you, this iswhere you use AI to supplement.
(08:25):
Ai can supplement a lot ofstuff that you don't know.
For me, ai has helped with,like I'm a big advocate for kind
(08:52):
of like a content, organiccontent strategy where I'm
creating content, building anaudience, and then whatever I
create, I can put in front ofthat audience that is loyal and
get some eyes on it right andkind of get a little bit of
traction with that.
There are different strategies,different marketing strategies,
but I use AI for repurposing alot of my content.
I use AI for some of my designs.
I use AI for analysis oncertain things.
I never use it for coding,because I like coding.
Why the hell would I use AIgenerated code for coding.
(09:12):
I'm just I'm going to leavethat out there.
So maybe that's a question foryou, for people that are using
AI to supplement your enjoymentof coding why are you doing it?
Please stop doing it.
If you want to be a goodsoftware engineer, you want to
enjoy software engineering,please stop doing it.
But you're not a marketer,you're not a designer, you're
(09:33):
not a salesperson, you're not alot of different things that you
kind of have to pick up at asurface level to be able to get
some traction with your product.
And it takes time to learn thatstuff.
It takes testing.
You're probably going to fail abunch.
A lot of people that areentrepreneurs, they fail a bunch
and they learn from it eachtime.
Don't expect to get your firstside project, your product, out
(09:55):
the door and that all of asudden takes off.
What happens if it generateslike a few hundred extra a month
?
Would you feel proud of that?
I know I would, right.
I know I definitely would havewhen I was a developer in
Chicago and just kind ofbuilding an app on the side of
being able to manage that andcreate connections with
customers.
That would have been fun, itwould have been thrilling, even
(10:17):
just to make extra money that Ididn't have to make working for
another employer.
That's kind of theentrepreneurship side of me, but
that's something you candevelop over time through a ton
of failure, and it's not reallyfailure, it's just lessons that
you're learning.
So I know a lot of people kindof fear that.
That's where AI can kind of beon your side to at least give
(10:39):
you some surface level knowledgeand give you some exposure to
things that you can do.
You can try and then you getbetter with it and then you're
able to build better prompts andyou're able to be more critical
of some of the chat historythat is generated through AI to
give you more practicalsolutions that apply directly to
you.
So you can use AI in that senseto kind of help supplement some
(11:01):
of your, some of the areaswhere you feel like you really
lack skill.
So that's holding you back.
I don't think it should, but Ireally want to stress this
because there are some peoplethat say I just don't have the
time to do it.
You don't have the time becauseyou don't want to make time for
it and maybe you are completelyhappy in your professional work
as a developer.
(11:21):
Maybe you don't need a personalproject.
If that's the case, don't do it.
You don't have to If you'rekeeping up to date.
Obviously like, don't trustthat you're going to keep that
job forever.
Job security is an illusion,but industry security is a
little bit more long lasting ifyou keep your skills up to date,
so everything's going smoothly.
You're very marked.
You lose your job.
(11:42):
You're going to be able to pickone up in a few months easily.
You have, you know, emergencyfund.
Probably way more than threemonths at this point.
I go like six months to a yearif you can.
But like you're, you enjoy thework that you're doing.
You like the team that you'reworking with.
Everything's just fantastic.
You don't have to do a personalproject.
(12:03):
This message isn't for you, butfor people that aren't 100
percent satisfied with theirprofessional dev work.
Don't you think you shouldconsider a personal project and
what it can unlock for you?
Yeah,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!