This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, hey, what's up? Welcome, Side Hustle School listeners. My name's Chris Guillebeau. Guess what? I have a new episode for you today.
It is a listener question, in fact. It is a very interesting question. Definitely not one we have had before. Our listener here, you're gonna hear from him in a moment, he made a coding test for programmers. And he put it online, he put it on Hacker News specifically, and it got a lot of attention.
Not only did it get a lot of attention, it also got a job offer. So as you're gonna hear, that wasn't really the objective. This was a side hustle. He was just kind of experimenting. You know, I was thinking, maybe this is gonna be my next project.
You know, he already has a day job, but now he's being offered another day job. So what should he do? He's also kind of looking just for general advice on the project he's made. So I'll do my best to help give him a next step there. And perhaps someone else who's listening as well by proxy.
I'm so glad you're out there. Thanks for tuning in today. The question is, I'm being head hunted for my side hustle. What's next? That detailed question and my answer coming right up.
[Music]
Hey, Chris, this is Josh. I've got an interesting question for you. While I was working in IT, I developed a simple coding test to measure the abilities of our junior programmers. I didn't do this for my job. It was just a hobby I started working on for myself.
Along the way, I realized I could sell it. So I created the MVP and posted it on Hacker News. The response was a huge, but it was favorable and I had a lot of downloads. Weirdly, however, a company reached out that wants to interview me. I didn't even apply.
I'm gonna talk to him 'cause I figured no harm can come from that, even though I probably don't want a new job. I just thought I'd share this story and ask if you've heard about it happening with anyone else. Also, what's your number one tip to grow the side project based on what you've heard so far? Thanks, I'm looking forward to your spots. [Music]
Hey, Josh, thanks for the question.
Yeah, I don't think I've actually heard this one before. So well done. We're almost 2,000 episodes into side hustle school. Never had this question. What I would say though, is even though I haven't heard this particular scenario, unexpected outcomes are not unusual.
When you start a project, when you take some active steps to share something with the world that you have made, all kinds of things can happen that may not be what you expect. And often these consequences are positive. That word consequences can seem negative, but it really just means what are the outcomes in response to the inputs that you publish or share or whatever. So I often hear of all kinds of interesting things happening for somebody who's like, I just wanted to make a little money, but they ended up changing their entire life. And we've heard stories of that many times in the archives of the podcast and try to tell some of those stories in my books and such.
Therefore, well done. And yeah, as you said, you might as well talk to them. As you said, no harm can come from that. So yes, for your second question, what are some good next steps? What's the best tip to grow the side project based on what we've heard so far?
Well, I would say, okay, what did you hear from that Hacker News post? You said the response was good, but not huge. What was the response specifically? What did people like? Did they offer any constructive feedback?
You don't necessarily have to listen to that or follow it, but it's good to maybe pay attention. I would say for you, since you are a coder, let's look at this question in two tracks. What's next in terms of development? What do you need to do to advance the actual programming test? How does that need to be improved?
And then what's next in terms of marketing? You publish that on Hacker News, which is a great platform for things like that. Where else could you publish it? Could it go on Reddit? Who else can help spread the word?
I would work on those things in tandem, continuing to develop the product and continuing to get the word out. A lot of people just work on the product and then they don't have a following and then they don't have anywhere to offer that product, even if it's great. So that's my suggestion. Work on those things together and let us know how it goes. And maybe you'll get a new job.
Who knows? But maybe not. Whatever happens, let us know. Listeners, if you've got a question, sidehustleschool.com/questions, let us know what's going on, what's going well and what you're struggling with. We'll continue to feature them throughout the year.
A new episode every single day. Thanks for tuning in. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
