🕹️ Why you should have a side project as a software developer/engineer

Mohasin Hossain
3 min readOct 24, 2024

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Photo by Hunter Haley on Unsplash

As an indie hacker myself, I have talked over the years with many people who run side projects.

A side project can be anything, really, but for the sake of this conversation let’s stick with stuff that has some relation to your work — say, if you are an engineer, some web or mobile app.

In many cases, people I talk with would take these things extremely seriously. They hustle to grow users and MRR, with the dream of quitting their job and do that full-time.

And there is nothing wrong, of course. I did that too 🙋‍♂️

But this is not the only reason why you may run projects on the side, even though threadbois want to convince you otherwise. When I spoke with Vic, in fact, I didn’t feel such a tension between his full-time job and his other projects. He loves his job! And he loves his projects, too.

So what’s the deal?

Let’s cover the main reasons why you should have a side project.

1) Skills 🎓

Side projects create excellent chances to practice new skills. Two examples:

  • Vic used to be a PHP developer, then he started using Next.js in a side project, eventually building the confidence to use it at work, and gradually became more of a JS developer.
  • I learned React Native + Expo to create a small app to play fantasy football with friends. The experience was awesome, and we later decided to use React Native for our Android app at work.

This doesn’t only apply to tech skills.

In general, you may want to look for skills that are complementary to your day job. Are you a backend developer? Try some frontend. Are you an IC? Do some project management, prioritize features of your small app, talk with users.

If your project is a small business — however small — it will make you practice marketing, product, design, and develop a proactive attitude that pays dividends on your regular job, too.

Speaking of jobs and dividends, let’s talk about money 👇

2) Money đź’°

When you hear money discussions about side projects, these are usually about the revenues that your project generates. Projects, however, can also seriously accelerate your career, which also means more money down the line.

Not only, in fact, skills equal money — good projects look great on your resume, too. They make for great interview topics, and display the kind of attitude companies hire for.

3) Impact ❤️

If you feel like a cog in the wheel at work, a side project can boost your morale by solving real problems for real people.

One of Vic’s main projects is a SaaS that helps with preschool paperwork. It doesn’t make crazy money, nor is it particularly complex on the technical side — but Vic says it just feels good that it helps some real businesses.

4) Mind space 🌱

Speaking of impact and feeling good, a side project can — counterintuitively — help with your work-life balance.

In fact, I have found that such a balance is often not much about pure time, but rather mind space. You may technically have free time, but still feel like using it for work, because “you have to”, right? And when you don’t have a strong alternative, it may be hard to resist the temptation of working all the time.

So, a side project can work as a creative outlet that just puts you in a different mindset. Your brain gets into the sort of creative problem solving mode that rescues you from working, or even thinking about work.

This words I found from Hybrid Hacker, Hope you found this helpful!

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Mohasin Hossain
Mohasin Hossain

Written by Mohasin Hossain

Senior Software Engineer | Mentor @ADPList | Backend focused | PHP, JavaScript, Laravel, Vue.js, Nuxt.js, MySQL, TDD, CI/CD, Docker, Linux

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