You’re building a side project to help you stand out. Good.
You’re using a modern stack. You’re thinking about architecture. You’re adding authentication, logging, messaging, maybe some AI. You’re trying to build something that proves you can do more than another CRUD tutorial.
None of that is wrong.
But if the goal is to create opportunities, there is a problem.
You’re building it where nobody can see it
You spend nights and weekends working on it. You solve hard problems. You make architecture decisions. You learn why one approach didn’t work and replace it with something better.
Then six months from now, you add another bullet point to your resume. And hope someone asks you about it.
You just spent six months creating proof that you’re a good developer, and hid almost all of the proof.
The finished application isn’t the valuable part
The decisions are.
- Why did you choose that architecture?
- Why a queue instead of a direct API call?
- What did you get wrong the first time?
- What broke when you tried to scale it?
- Why did you choose that authentication approach?
- What would you do differently if you were building it for 100,000 users?
Those are the things that show people how you think. And you don’t have to wait until the project is finished to talk about them.
Build the project. Absolutely. But build it in public.
Because six months from now, I’d rather have 100 people who have watched you solve problems than one more project sitting quietly in your GitHub account.
Don’t just build proof. Distribute the proof.