[yieldcrv]

have an open source project, but company’s take home interview projects suffice for this, specifically when you are writing it from scratch based off of instructions. I open source every one I don’t get an offer from and it looks like I just loooove coding in my free time

I don’t know if junior devs have a different experience but I don't find projects help you stand out at all. Third party recruiters are going to find you, via linked in if you have the right keywords in your profile, and they will get you interviews.

Getting a “call back” may be a champagne popping moment in other professions, but not in software engineering, getting interviews isn't the problem its passing the random af broken af technical interview, system design, behavioral/culture interview.

but everything youre optimizing for is the “call back”, which your projects wont help with

speaking of junior dev, that really just means lack of validation from a company for several years. so all you gotta do is form a company say you worked for them and point to their product. literally just do a wyoming llc for $120 online, make a website about the product, say you worked for that now real company. congratulations you're a senior engineer now, you’ve already done the software work just transpose it on the dumb uncalibrated ways employers try to identify competence

[coffeebeqn]

If you do create your own company please don’t pretend to be an employee. It’s fine to be the founder engineer of a micro startup that didn’t find product market fit. If that’s what you do then you should probably focus on just one product. Most hiring managers aren’t idiots and many companies HR will verify employment so you might end up in a morally tricky situation down this path.

I’ve hired a bunch of people and any whiff of dishonesty or things not quite adding up is one of the biggest red flags you exude

[yieldcrv]

or most likely you land jobs without a comprehensive HR department or they don't care, and that launders your reputation into actual experience you use for the next employer within 6 months, who you do a 1-2 year stint with so you don’t look like a mercenary, and then upgrade again from there, unless one of the FAANG offers come through and you just drop the short stints off your resume assuming you ever even need to be on the job market again