[i_made_a_booboo]

I'm pretty much coming to the end of mine now. Except I feel burnt out from the sabbatical whereas I generally always felt pretty good at work.

I read a shit tonne this last 8 months and have noticed a big upgrade in my worldview. I shipped a couple of projects on my own which I'm proud of too.

I grew immensely from the experience and a whole bunch of things I always toyed with the idea while working I actually got to try out and see how I really felt about them and not how I thought I was going to feel.

The recruiters being suspicious about the time off thing is something I wasn't suspecting but I did get that vibe. I made a point to network the whole time I was taking off and have been invited to visit a small company I'm pretty excited about after an hour chatting to the CTO. Political savvy was one of my unexpected skills at my last job, so I feel like so long as I can get in a room I can get a job (provided I'm actually interested and think the company would be a good fit).

So many lessons learned. Perhaps both good and bad.

[biscottigelato]

I shipped 2 projects that I feel are highly polished. Been almost 3 months in the job market cuz i have since ran low on funds. Being in Vancouver it's just extra tough. The Unicorns doesn't care one bit of your side projects. The smaller guys just doesn't have the resource to relocate. Let alone getting in the same room with them for interviews (aka. fly you over).

So far very disillusioned. Seems like if the projects didn't become million dollar businesses, then it's algorithm puzzles or working at McDonalds. Shipped products doesn't matter one bit...

[automoton1]

I think side projects can make a difference if it's relevant to the business that your applying for. For example, in college I did a lot of Amateur Radio and was part of a club there. I did a lot of Amateur Radio related things, building circuits, programming microcontrollers, etc. This helped me get a job at a Radio company working on SDRs. However, I think a lot of my ability to get that job was because I networked a lot with the recruiters.

Side projects aren't the be all end all to gainful employment. You need to use your network to build relationships and engage with people you know that can help you get employed.

[i_made_a_booboo]

For me it's about creating a personal connection and telling a good story. I dunno I just have a belief in my ability to do that from past experience.

This is new territory for me though, so we'll see.

I'm not in the US on, so I don't play the whole unicorn game. I imagine that's a whole different ball game.

[biscottigelato]

Unfortunately more and more companies are going the 'we don't care about your resume, we just want you to do algorithm puzzles'. way. Triplebyte, as listed on the Hackernews job board, is especially proud that they don't look at your resume and measure you only on the few things they deem important. Basically you can be good at a hundred things. But they measure you on ten things and don't care about any of the others, relevant or not. So if you so happen only have 6 things out of the 10, you are out, even if you have clearly demonstrated that you are capable of 100 things, and learning those 100 things in short order.

I would say I learned more in the 2 years than I did 10 years as a Firmware Engineer. But if I stayed my course just lurking in my old job I'd have been a Firmware lead. I can't even get an intermediate development job now...