8 Months of Side Projects After Work: Results and Regrets
I started last November, and I've built three side projects so far. One is launched, and two are running for personal use.
To be honest, there's almost no revenue. I've spent more on ads. Still, I definitely gained something.
First, doing planning-development-deployment-operations all by myself helped me understand why things at work run the way they do. The biggest thing is that I've developed the habit of checking logs.
Second, I now have criteria for choosing technology. At first, I always went with the latest stack, but now I've shifted to "I'm the only one who'll maintain it, so let's use something stable even if it's less trendy."
I have two regrets:
- Spending the first two months on designing a perfect architecture (and eventually scrapping it all)
- Being too embarrassed to tell people I know about it (early users are the most precious)
In conclusion, if you want to build something, just start small. That's what I'd like to tell myself from eight months ago.
3 answers
The habit of reading logs is seriously huge. I also set up proper error tracking for the first time while working on a side project, and after that, I started seeing company code differently.
I see spending two months overhauling the architecture less as a regret and more as just a toll you have to pay. On my first project, I got caught up in DDD and all that, just kept building out the structure, and ended up throwing it all away. But if I hadn't gone through that fumbling, I don't think I'd have the standards I use now. Still, it's a bit of a shame you were too embarrassed to promote it to people you know. Those first 10 early users are genuinely worth more than 100. Next time, just put it out there somewhere, even in a community. Even if you take some heat, the feedback sticks with you more than money does.
Well, 3 projects in 8 months makes me think none of them were really finished properly. You said yourself there was almost no revenue—so isn't claiming you "gained something" just rationalization? If the side project is for learning, then that's where it ends; but concluding with "just start" feels like a hasty generalization. While holding down a job, burning yourself out doesn't last as long as you'd think. And you can develop the habit of looking at logs plenty at work. Shouldn't we at least ask whether it's something you can only learn by doing a side project?