Well I wasn’t planning to write a post today – I was actually focusing on relaunching the tech blog for work! But I happened to catch Stefan Natter’s Twitter Space: Developers Real Talk with Marc Backes and a few other speakers. While the topics were pretty diverse, one question actually stuck out for me.

The question was about what kind of projects should a developer be working on to get their first backend job.

This struck a cord with me. When I first started coding, it actually took me months to create any sort of project. That was for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I struggled to really understand code along tutorials which I was trying to learn from. And secondly, was yet another to-do app really going to impress any interviewer?

And that’s what was mentioned in response to the question in the Space.

There were various points brought up so I’ll try to highlight a few:

1. Create an application with solves a problem

2. Build something that isn’t just from a code along, or at least try and spin it so it is different.

3. Keep things on GitHub so it’s accessible

4. Deploy your projects! So others can use what you have built. One speaker actually mentioned they got a job because their interviewer had already been using something they had created.

5. Work with others to develop a project. This demonstrates not only your coding ability but also team work and planning.

6. Focus on an area that you want to work in. For example, a backend developer would not want to spend ages working on making a nice UI and vice versa.

I know that everyone is jumping on Clubhouse and there are probably plenty of tech chats going on over there for Apple fans, but if you do fancy an alternative, I would suggest Twitter Spaces and certainly another one of these Real Developer Talks.