Reader, one of the best ways to learn and showcase your skills as a developer is through your projects.

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But a lot of people are stuck in 2018 and make wrong projects that present them in a bad way.

So in this email, I want to mention projects that you SHOULD NOT build as a developer, and what you should build instead.

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What not to build?

A long time ago the typical developer portfolio looked like this:

• TOOD App
• Netflix clone
• Movie App
• E-commerce Website
• Portfolio Website

If you were a hardworking person you were also building:

• Instagram Clone
• Facebook + Messenger Clone

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And these all are GREAT APPS TO BUILD!

I built similar apps myself and LEARNED so many things from them.

But the key word here is LEARN.

All those apps are learning projects.

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What to build?

If you want to get a job in 2024, besides building learning projects, you should also build 1-2 big real-world projects.

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Those projects should look like real apps that you use on a daily basis and solve customer (B2C) or business (B2B) problems.

For example, I'm writing this email using the platform ConvertKit, which allows me to write emails and send them to 7000 people at once, see who reads them, and so much more.

Without this platform, I wouldn't be able to run this newsletter, so it solves a big problem for me (And that's why I pay $800+/year for it 😭)

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Another important thing about your project is its design.

The first thing people will pay attention to is how your project looks.

If the look of your project doesn’t make people face like this: 😲, you’ve lost!

Bad design example:

It looks okay for 2017, but not for 2024 and 2025.

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Good design example:

And the coolest thing is that you don't have to be a designer to build a beautiful project as a web developer.

You can just use free available Figma designs and use them as inspiration.

Just google: "Free figma designs for X" (replace X with your project type, ex. "food delivery app").

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If you don't have any ideas for your portfolio projects, here are a couple more ideas for free:

• Social Media Managing App that helps you to write scripts for viral shorts
• Convenient expense management tool for business that supports multiple currencies and syncs with Stripe (popular payment processor)

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So besides building learning projects, build real-world projects.

They will help you to stand out, and you can even potentially turn this side project into a real business!

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Content

The IT market isn't in the best state, and just coding isn't enough anymore, so I recorded a video about what is enough in 2024 to succeed in IT, you can watch it by clicking here or by clicking on the image below:

I also started receiving my first hateful YouTube comments 😅.

It's not nice to receive hate, but I'm happy because it means that I make people feel something. Someone will hate you, but someone will also like you.

It's way worse when your content isn't making people feel anything.
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I wanted to address this hate, as I'm always open to communication and feedback.

The point of the video was to quickly cover how the market has changed and what you should focus on right now.

So I'm not sure what exactly in the video is wrong information (he hasn't replied to my comment 😅):

• I didn't say that there were no requirements to work in a team. Of course, if you can't talk to people, nobody would have hired you even in the past, but now this is even more important as there are a lot of candidates with good tech skills, and great soft skills can be something that helps you to stand out.
• The tax code change is true, but the tax code has changed only in the US, and the market started to change even before that. So it's not the main reason.
• I also mentioned overhiring.
• I mentioned that previously it was way easier to get investments, so money was “cheaper”, therefore now, money is more “expensive”.

The rest of the video focused on how you can stand out in the current competitive market to help people during hard times!

And as I said when someone hates you, someone will also like you 😊

Thanks everyone for your support and positive feedback!

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Enjoy your day and see you next week 👋!

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Best regards,

Andrew "Builds Nice Projects" Zacker

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