I always bill my projects as if investing in a fast growing company. I often look for new restaurants, new housing developments, cultural institutions - but I don't exclude any project unless the client is overly aggressive.
It's always important to ask them for a website that they like and this gives you a target. When you meet and beat that "ideal" website - they're often incredibly grateful. I never attempt to retire off my prospects :)
I've done bakery and pastry shops and in addition to my project bid, I negotiate permanent discounts and even a few let me eat for free whenever I'm there.
I've done furniture stores and in addition, I get permanent employee discount.
I've pitched housing developments and in addition, I'll get employee rate for rent.
Lawyers are the same - you can rely on them to help look over your contracts. They're just as important, so I often do exchange in hours.
Just be a nice developer and realistic. We're blessed to know what many people don't and a few bad apples like to take advantage of their clients because of this. Be a breath of fresh air and watch the doors open.
I'm compelled to create. Side-project means a lot of things to me. It could be an app, or it could be a painting, or a series of short stories examining the human condition, or an EP of instrumental tracks using mathematics as the guiding compositional tool (this is something I have explored and am exploring more of).
I wish side-project didn't have such preconceived connotations as "web app" like it seems to here. Does anyone else like creating non-tech things as their side projects?
I work on side projects (my own and others) for a number of different reasons. But primarily to see how I can solve problems. Working on non-time critical projects means you can get a bit more creative and explore a lot of different options to see which work the best rather than the quickest to integrate. Some of the side projects I work on add a little extra rev every month, some don't. The only side project that consumed a good deal of my time is the one that in fact doesn't make much money (I probably lose every month) but its the one with the largest user base and its the one that is more of a love rather than anything else.
I love complexity and complex systems. I feel this irresistible urge to take everything and anything apart and understand the internal components and structure. I enjoy visualizing the components within hardware, devices, objects, buildings, and larger things.
I believe all of the above apply to me. If it brings me additional income, awesome, If not, No big deal, I will have learned a lot in my endeavor.
During my path to completion I will have learned from scratch or improved my knowledge base in C#,Python, Flask, Twilio, S3, NodeJS, and my other technologies.
This side project has been invaluable.
Development is slowly coming along, But that is the way I like it.
Apart from the things I voted for (fun, learning, new tech, itch-scratching, portfolio), I do it for creative control. As a developer with just a little over two years experience, the world of work only very rarely seems to give a shit what somebody like me thinks I should do. I spend most of my life building things that other people decided on, in the way they decided, to the schedule they decided. People with more experience and influence than me choose the features, the colours, the technologies, the equipment, the furniture, everything.
Don't get me wrong: I don't have a problem with authority and I truly respect all those people and their decisions. But when I get home sometimes all I want to do is escape into something where I get to call the shots.
They could be side projects at work! It's kind of weird, but I have my main work at work, and then I have a small stable of things that I work on when I'm not behind on my regular stuff and want to do something else.
My top priority when working on a side project is to work on something meaningful to me in ways that a full time job don't allow. Both on the technology side of getting to use tools I don't use full time, and working for non-profits or other organizations that would not have the ability to hire someone like me full time.
Voted for Fun and testing new technologies, but like someone mentioned before, it is the creative control of a project. Not ruining a perfectly functional and UI designed application or website and have a client have an opinion that changes the whole dynamic of how it works. Reminds me of the oatmeal comic about the client and the web designer.
One big motivation for me to work on side projects is that (since I don't expect them to be really successful or anything,) I don't have to be pedantically pragmatic about the choices I make. What I mean is that I get to do things the 'right' way, not the fastest-to-ship way.
I get to write code in _my_ way, not in the way that business requires it to be.
Doing it the right way _does_not_ mean that it will not involve hacks or clever techniques etc. It just means that I get more time and space to think about the choices I make and I get to model my data-structures, code and the visual design in the best way possible (for my definition of best).
I like the fact that I can look at the same piece of code for a few days and refactor it like crazy.
I have found that this eventually helps me in my day job too.
I hate my job. I made some stupid mistakes in picking my first job out of college and it's pretty bad. I was shuffled into a position I didn't sign up for (business analyst work instead of development) and the culture is extremely toxic.
I've been trying to get out but so far having this company on my resume has been a huge red flag to anyone hiring actual developers making it very hard for me to find something better.
Side projects are my way of proving myself as a software developer. I'm trying to build up a GitHub profile of projects which I've seen through from start to finish. My current project is an excuse to learn about the Play! Framework and asynchronous web development with Akka actors.
Your willingness to learn new things on your own should help you get your foot in the door as far as interviews. It's a total developer's market right now, so I would encourage you to quit your job and start looking for a position.
I was in a place like that straight out of college as well. It was for a trade magazine. The job description had lots of programming requirements but it turned out to be a basic "Webmaster" type job that only really required basic HTML/CSS knowledge to take the magazine editorial content, format it for the web, and put it up on the website. I was out of there within 6 months. If you have any programming credentials whatsoever, it should be fairly easy to plan your escape route.
I want to win. I'm not sure what I want to win exactly, either a pat on the back from friends, an e-pat from imaginary friends on the internet, a double take when I tell someone what I did. I'm investing right now in my life, I'm 22 (23 in a week!) and I have no responsibilities. I'm unemployed (haven't looked for jobs, as I don't want to have a boss ever again). I'm investing my time (as I have no money) which is something that cannot always happen. I'm stretching the boundaries of my brain to do the things it can when no one tells me what to do (I like to think of it as wandering in a forest without a compass. It's lonely - none of my friends are thinking about the same problems I am at the depth that I'm thinking about them, but very rewarding. I'm investing to learn things that I will be unable to when I have money.
I like to be ignorant as to how hard a challenge is. I watched an episode of numbers last year about prime numbers (not a computer scientist so I did not know many of the complexity things and ways of finding primes, just a lowly self-taught programmer), and boom, off to the races to solve the primes. I never once slowed down enough to say hey... people have been doing this for a long time... just me and a friend trying to be naive and find a route no one found before. I think that's what gives me a lot of momentum, not putting things into perspective, and gives me motivation to keep working. It's awesome to run the show, to stop working when I get bored, to see and understand the smallest to the biggest details in what you're doing. To know the rationale behind all the decisions. Even if they're small ones, and there's only 100 decisions to make, being able to say "This is why I did that." and give a specific, personal, reason i awesome, rather than making excuses or attributions for why something did or did not happen.
Fantastic and inspiring. You should really consider getting this book: http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steve-Skiena/d... It's super fun to figure everything out for yourself, but I guarantee you that if you read this book, it'll blow your mind and have you off to the races trying a hundred fascinating things.
To change the world. This is why people do startups, but my project is not something that could ever make money, and besides I'm not a businessman and prefer the stability and resources of working at an established company.
Doing side-projects is like using the right side of my brain. It allows me to follow my heart rather than the logic of my head and do projects that sound interesting/challenging to me, in the language I choose to use, in the way I like to code. That is power to me.
Without funding, it's the only way I have to move towards the freedom to work on my own products and ideas full time. Can't quit my job to work on my own company unless I can also pay rent, buy food, etc.
The very thought of working fulltime on my own products/ideas is intoxicating, a daydream that never ceases to get me to close all my browser tabs and open up Vim.
1º: for fun
2º: To learn something new
3º: something else - I love/hate when some of my coworkers say something is impossible/very hard to do, or that I can't do it. I know they are aware that saying that is pretty much all they need to make me do the hard work for them (not related with our work) but I do it anyway. =P
76 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 207 ms ] threadIt's always important to ask them for a website that they like and this gives you a target. When you meet and beat that "ideal" website - they're often incredibly grateful. I never attempt to retire off my prospects :)
I've done bakery and pastry shops and in addition to my project bid, I negotiate permanent discounts and even a few let me eat for free whenever I'm there.
I've done furniture stores and in addition, I get permanent employee discount. I've pitched housing developments and in addition, I'll get employee rate for rent. Lawyers are the same - you can rely on them to help look over your contracts. They're just as important, so I often do exchange in hours.
Just be a nice developer and realistic. We're blessed to know what many people don't and a few bad apples like to take advantage of their clients because of this. Be a breath of fresh air and watch the doors open.
I wish side-project didn't have such preconceived connotations as "web app" like it seems to here. Does anyone else like creating non-tech things as their side projects?
This side project has been invaluable.
Development is slowly coming along, But that is the way I like it.
Don't get me wrong: I don't have a problem with authority and I truly respect all those people and their decisions. But when I get home sometimes all I want to do is escape into something where I get to call the shots.
For Alex, who asked, "Why can't I just hit F7 and get what I want?"
For Jerry, who asked, "Why can't this software just do things the way WE do them?"
For Sarah, who said, "We never have enough information! There's got to be an easier way to get information out of this system."
For Tom, who said, "I've been dreaming of doing something like this for years, but never met a programmer who could make it happen."
For Jolene, who said, "There must be a way to process our orders without spending $8 million on software."
For Jeff, who said, "I just want to know what's on HBO at 8:00 without clicking 47 times."
For Sue, who said, "Excel is the only thing we can get to do what we want. We love it, but we hate it. Can't someone just turn this into a real app?"
For Joe, who said, "If I just knew which products I was losing money on, I could do something about it."
For Jerry, who said, "If someone could just write an app to tell me when and where to mount my spools, everything else would fall into place."
For Wendy, who asked, "I just want to know what to buy in November. Can't this system just tell me without 37 different reports?"
For Fred, who said, "800 fucking emails every morning! Isn't there a better way to apply some intelligence to this without being a nuclear scientist?"
I get to write code in _my_ way, not in the way that business requires it to be.
Doing it the right way _does_not_ mean that it will not involve hacks or clever techniques etc. It just means that I get more time and space to think about the choices I make and I get to model my data-structures, code and the visual design in the best way possible (for my definition of best).
I like the fact that I can look at the same piece of code for a few days and refactor it like crazy.
I have found that this eventually helps me in my day job too.
I've been trying to get out but so far having this company on my resume has been a huge red flag to anyone hiring actual developers making it very hard for me to find something better.
Side projects are my way of proving myself as a software developer. I'm trying to build up a GitHub profile of projects which I've seen through from start to finish. My current project is an excuse to learn about the Play! Framework and asynchronous web development with Akka actors.
I like to be ignorant as to how hard a challenge is. I watched an episode of numbers last year about prime numbers (not a computer scientist so I did not know many of the complexity things and ways of finding primes, just a lowly self-taught programmer), and boom, off to the races to solve the primes. I never once slowed down enough to say hey... people have been doing this for a long time... just me and a friend trying to be naive and find a route no one found before. I think that's what gives me a lot of momentum, not putting things into perspective, and gives me motivation to keep working. It's awesome to run the show, to stop working when I get bored, to see and understand the smallest to the biggest details in what you're doing. To know the rationale behind all the decisions. Even if they're small ones, and there's only 100 decisions to make, being able to say "This is why I did that." and give a specific, personal, reason i awesome, rather than making excuses or attributions for why something did or did not happen.