This talk was delivered at the Women Who Code Connect Recharge 2022 conference. There's a lot of pressure for software engineers to code all the time, and if you're not working on a side project RIGHT NOW, you're not "passionate" enough about your career! Or so you've been told. Let's change the narrative on side projects! In reality, working on a side project can give you more control over your career, help you find meaningful work that fulfills you, and you can choose the topic, scope, when, or whether to work on a side project at all. Instead of seeing side projects as a requirement to have a career, I'll show you how to make one work for you: as an opportunity for self-care, self-empowerment, and to steer your career in the right direction for you!

1. STEER YOUR CAREER
ON YOUR TERMS WITH
THE RIGHT SIDE
PROJECT
May 2022
Vui Nguyen
Senior Consultant
Atomic Robot
@sunfishgurl

2. Welcome 👋
● I’m Vui Nguyen
● Software Engineer for 20+ years
● Currently iOS Engineer
● Worked in many tech stacks over the
years
● Varied & interesting career made
possible through side projects
@sunfishgurl

3. Overview
● Definition: Side Project
● Why undertake a side project?
● Coming up with the right project
○ Goals, Topic, Scope
● Making it happen
○ Project management
○ Making time for balance
○ Support system (Women Who Code, etc)
@sunfishgurl

4. Overview
● Sharing your progress and success!
● I will demonstrate these concepts by walking through a side project I’ve done
● Takeaway Point: Your side project is for YOU! If you’re not enjoying it, or it’s not
working for you, you can change it!
● Final encouragement
@sunfishgurl

5. Side Project: Definition
● Anything you do outside of your regular career that adds to your skill set, or
gets you closer to a career goal
● Career goal could be technical or leadership based
● If your employer can subsidize your project by paying for your time to learn on
the job or training materials / classes, that’s a bonus!
● If such an opportunity doesn’t exist in your career, make your own!
@sunfishgurl

6. Side Project: What They Are NOT
● Unpaid internships or “equity” projects because of possibility of exploitation
● A side project must work for YOU and be done on your terms, otherwise you
are working for free for someone else’s benefit
@sunfishgurl

7. Side Project: Examples
✍ Writing technical articles / blogging
📱 Building and / or publishing an app
📢 Running an event for a non-profit org like Women Who Code
💖 Volunteering for a non-profit with personal meaning / connection for you
🎙 Preparing and giving a talk
✋ Contributing to an open source project
🤖 Participating in a hackathon
@sunfishgurl

8. ● Technology is changing
● New careers in tech keep popping up 🍿
● YOU are changing
● const CERTAINTY = “change”
● You deserve a career where you are
happy, challenged, & fulfilled
Why
@sunfishgurl

9. Why
● https://fortran-lang.org/learn/quickstart/hello_world
@sunfishgurl

10. Project Goals
● Think of an area you want to grow in, or a
problem you want to solve
● Problem I want to solve:
● There are legacy iOS apps still written in older
tech, Objective-C
● Re-writing them all to newer tech, Swift,
overnight is risky!
● Goal: build bridging architecture between older
tech and newer tech in iOS
@sunfishgurl

11. The problem I was trying to
solve
Obj-C file
Obj-C file
Obj-C file
● Objective-C file keeps getting
bigger and bigger, definitely NOT
what we want!
Time
@sunfishgurl

12. The solution I want to
implement
Obj-C file
Swift
extension
Obj-C file
Swift
extension Obj-C file
Swift
extension
Swift file
● Eventually, the Obj-C file & Swift extension can go
away, leaving you with just the Swift file
● Modernization is done incrementally = less risk to
project
@sunfishgurl

13. Determining Topic / Scope for your Project
● Examples of scope for different types of projects:
○ Technical talks: lightning talks at meetups -> conferences -> longer talks
○ Running an event: take responsibility for a small piece -> work your way up
to being the main organizer of the event
○ Building / publishing an app: I’ll show you what I did with mine!
● So …. what kind of app do I want to build to illustrate the solution from the
previous slide?
@sunfishgurl

14. Determining Topic / Scope for your Project
● Things that increase complexity for a mobile app:
○ Grabbing data from a server
○ Many screens
○ Creating your own content
○ Implementing full CRUD (database) operations
@sunfishgurl

15. Determining Topic / Scope for your
Project
● My app:
● 2 screen app
● No interaction with external server
● Content will come from my personal collection, do not have to “create” content
@sunfishgurl

16. Problem to solve: Complex & Deep
Solution: Simple & Shallow
@sunfishgurl

17. Demo Video of App: http://bit.ly/NameThatPetDemo
@sunfishgurl

18. Project Management
● If you’re diving 🤿 into a new topic, start small
● If it’s a bigger project, break up one big goal into multiple smaller goals or
milestones
● You can always reduce scope & deliver something smaller first
(Perfect is the enemy of done!)
● Your career is a journey, so treat your project like one too
● Take breaks regularly so you don’t waste time spinning your wheels!
@sunfishgurl

19. Project Management
● Project management tools:
● Trello
● Github project plans
○ https://github.blog/2022-02-11-getting-started-with-project-planning-on-github/
○ Kanban or Agile
● What other project management tools are out there?
@sunfishgurl

20. Making Time for Balance
@sunfishgurl

21. Support System
● Groups like Women Who
Code can be your support
system!
@sunfishgurl

22. ● Your life partner or family can
also help you
Support System
@sunfishgurl

23. Support System
● Your life partner or family can
also help you
@sunfishgurl

24. Checking in with yourself periodically
● Are you enjoying yourself?
● Are you making progress? (It doesn’t matter how fast you’re making progress)
● If you’re not making progress:
○ get to a good stopping point, or
○ reduce scope and wrap up
○ spend some time evaluating before you continue 🤔
@sunfishgurl

25. Checking in with yourself periodically
● Story: former coworker started as an iOS Engineer and pivoted to Server-Side
Engineer because of DevOps side projects!
● Working on the “wrong thing” for a while can help you discover what you really
want to do!
@sunfishgurl

26. But if everything still checks out
✅
● All systems are a go! Keep going
● Share as you make progress, a great way to stay accountable
● Celebrate and share your success when you get there 🥳
@sunfishgurl

27. Results from my Project 🎉
● At my last job, I was the project lead for several feature projects
● Led my teams into modernizing legacy code via Swift extension files
● We rewrote Objective-C files entirely into Swift in between projects
● Having NameThatPet in the market helped me land my previous job
● Writing more Swift code helped me stay current with iOS tech, which helped
me land my current job at Atomic Robot 🤖
@sunfishgurl

28. Resources
● NameThatPet on the App Store:
○ http://bit.ly/NameThatPet
● NameThatPet source code on Github:
○ https://github.com/vuinguyen/NameThatPet-ObjC-Swift
@sunfishgurl

29. ● You always had it within you to
fly!
● Can’t wait to hear about all your
amazing side projects &
accomplishments!
Final Encouragement
@sunfishgurl

30. Thank you
I’m Vui Nguyen
Connect with me!
Twitter: @sunfishgurl
LinkedIn: vuinguyen
Slack: Women Who Code Mobile