How to start making “conscious” pet projects

This article will be useful for beginning Frontend developers who don't know where to start when thinking about creating a new pet project. Burn after reading.

Many people have heard about pet projects. Most of the readers, most likely, have even started pet projects. However, understanding how to create pet projects for the greatest benefit comes with experience, and for beginners this may not always be clear.

A pet project is a small personal project in any industry for your portfolio or your own pleasure.

This definition of pet-projects is given by Yandex Search, but I would go further and say that pet-projects are usually called everything that a developer/designer/anyone does in their free time from study or work, everything that is done without anyone or supervision, at one’s own request and carries within it some idea, concept or solution to some problem.

Very often we don’t even think about why we are doing a project and what the idea is. Therefore, in the process of implementation, it ceases to be interesting to us and we abandon it or, on the contrary, we add everything that we know/taught/heard to the project and the pet project turns into a rocket that will definitely never take off, because there simply is not enough free time for its implementation.

This approach is completely wrong.

What types of pet projects are there?

1. Training

   Pet project for mastering new technology or consolidating acquired knowledge.

   Motivation: boost for professional development.

2. Private

   Pet project to solve a personal problem.

   Motivation: personal interest in solving a problem is stimulating in itself, and a cool idea can turn into a product in demand on the market, well, maybe you'll get lucky.

3. Command

   Pet project with classmates, friends or open-source projects.

   Motivation: no matter how well the educational material is mastered, without the skill of working in a team it will definitely not work, and working on a pet project in a team will help you identify your weaknesses and strengths, exchange knowledge and experience and encourage each other to complete the project to the end.

4. Employment

   A pet project that became one after you completed the test task.

   Motivation: directly proportional to the desire to get a job. If it was not possible to complete the specification, it is important to complete the project later, because the specification contains technologies that are in demand on the market and is aimed at solving typical problems. There is a possibility that:

   • this will help the future employer assess the availability of the very skills that he needs;

   • Next time it will be easier to complete similar tasks.

   An important point: companies spend money on creating technical specifications, so they definitely won’t like it if the solution to their technical specifications is made publicly available, so you need to follow several rules:

   • Nothing in the description, title, code, or the project itself should indicate the company, test task, mockup, or any other source material that was obtained before its execution. It is better to clear the test task from the elements listed above and then add it to your portfolio;

   • in an ideal world, you can write to the hiring manager about plans to add the project to the portfolio and send an edited version of the statement of work so that HR can be convinced that implementation will not force the company to create a new statement of work. This will help leave a positive impression on HR. and will bring a plus to karma.

What are you?

What do I call “conscious” pet projects? In addition to the fact that a pet project must have some kind of concept and problem that it solves, it must also be scalable.

Obviously, it will not be possible to complete a pet project that is interesting for employers from the point of view of Frontend development only with knowledge of layout. But this does not mean that you first need to gain knowledge and then start “conscious” pet projects.

A good solution to this dilemma would be a plan that can be built even without deep knowledge in Frontend development.

I suggest you try to compose list of my opponents plan below.

Plan

1. Portfolio

   First of all, you need to think about where to store all pet projects – portfolio. When the portfolio is ready, you can quickly and painlessly but not right away add your pet projects.

   A portfolio is a selection of completed work, an effective way to show your skills and abilities.

   With the help of the submitted projects, the employer receives complete information about the candidate’s experience and professionalism.

   The portfolio may include:

   • examples of work or projects;

   • resume;

   • skills;

   • reviews;

   • certificates/diplomas;

   • blog;

   • links to social networks and platforms confirming professional achievements or knowledge (for example, platforms for solving problems leetcode, codewars, etc.).

   You can add any information to your portfolio, the main thing is that it helps everyone who sees it get to know you better.

   Some tips when creating a portfolio:

   • the employer will be interested in the stack that is used in his team, so a keyword search, filter or tagging system is a great idea;

   • The portfolio content will be updated frequently, so it would be cool to update the data without having to get into the code;

   • reviews – you can ask classmates or mentors to be the first to leave reviews so that the section does not remain empty;

   • You can provide for cases when people who do not know your native language will visit the site, and add a function for switching the site language.

   If you don’t have enough skills to fully implement a portfolio, you can limit yourself to layout and, as a database, create a separate file with an array in which a primitive database (DB) will be stored. The database can be edited manually until you have the knowledge to create a CRM system (but it is better to prepare the layout of the CRM system right away).

   Do you still lack the skills to write a server and have nowhere to store information? It doesn’t matter, the path to the files in the database can be specified directly to the repository with the pet project.

   So like magic one of the most important artifacts for finding a job will appear at the very beginning of your career path.

2. Second and subsequent pet projects

   Is the portfolio ready and waiting for more and more new content? Great, it's time to start developing something that is interesting to employers.

   Attracted by fintech? An electronic wallet, an application for tracking the exchange rate of (crypto-)currencies or home accounting may attract the attention of a potential employer.

   Do you like e-com? An excellent option is platforms for selling goods or services.

   Crazy about funtech? The portfolio can be supplemented by a platform application for watching movies/listening to music/a showcase of games, which can also be supplemented with independently written browser games.

   If the knowledge to write a full-fledged application is not enough, finish the layout and move on to the next projects. When the necessary knowledge appears, all that remains is to write the logic and/or server.

   All companies want to see how we can solve their problems. This could be a UI library of components, writing logic for calculating the shortest path using Dijkstra's algorithm, or simply filtering, searching and validating forms. This is exactly what most test tasks are aimed at. It is much easier to complete a test task if you have already encountered a solution to a similar problem.

Conclusion

Pet projects are no less important than a well-designed resume, motivation letter or other artifacts for finding a job. Of course, this statement only works if they are properly formatted and presented in the form of a portfolio.

I hope that thanks to this article, you will be able to write pet projects more effectively and it will take less time to find a job than it could.