Build Side Projects With Real Users to Stand Out to Employers

Bashiri Smith · Facebook reel · 2026-09-28 · 0:59 · 6,857 views · Open on Facebook

Topics: Portfolio Projects, Resume, Job Search & Interviews · Level: beginner

Summary

Bashiri Smith builds on advice from an unnamed tech influencer. Side projects help you get hired, but only if they have "signal": real users, production-level problems, impressive engineering, and something people want to share. Projects that nobody uses still teach you, but they won't make you stand out. Even a few real users let you tell a stronger interview story: you built it, launched it, saw what broke, and improved it.

Key points

• Building many small apps that nobody uses or sees mostly helps you learn. It doesn't make you stand out to employers.
• Projects that get attention have signal: real users, production-level problems, technically impressive engineering, and enough interest that people share them.
• You don't need millions of users. A small number of real users gives you production-level experience.
• Interview story to aim for: 'I built it, launched it, people used it, here's what broke, and here's how I improved it.' That counts as real engineering experience.
• Quoted advice: sharpen your skills with lots of programming, go deep on the area you want to work in, and build small side projects you can show off.
• Don't rely too heavily on vibe coding. You want people who read your code to think it's good code.
• Put projects on the internet as clickable things people can try. A small viral side project can get you noticed.

Resources mentioned

• How to Build a Coding Project That Will Get You Hired in 2026 [FULL BLUEPRINT] · video · youtube.com · free
  Bashiri Smith's full YouTube tutorial on planning and building portfolio projects that solve real problems and show employers you can do useful work.
  Also in: Be the "Glue": Build AI Projects That Solve Real Problems to Get Hired (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Stop Writing AI Keyword Soup: Build Projects That Solve Real Problems (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Beat the Hiring "Trust Recession" With Public Proof-of-Skill Projects (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), 90-Day AI Engineering Job Search: Targeted Companies, Outreach & Loom Pitches (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes) and 2 more
• BASWE.Ai Engineer (Skool community) · community · skool.com · paid
  The creator's paid community and program, with an AI learning roadmap (including the full ops and evaluation track), daily calls with engineers and recruiters, resume and portfolio help, and a job-search pipeline.
  Also in: Basic RAG Pipeline in 60 Seconds: From Documents to Grounded Answers (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Pointer to Bashiri Smith's Complete AI Engineer Roadmap for 2026 (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), Step-by-Step Roadmap to a $200K+ AI Engineering Role (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes), How to Evaluate a RAG Pipeline: Retrieval vs. Generation (Interview Answer) (Bashiri Smith on Facebook · notes) and 76 more

Try this

• Build side projects that real people actually use, not just practice apps.
• Launch your project publicly and get at least a small number of real users.
• Write code yourself rather than vibe coding heavily, so the code holds up when people read it.
• Make your projects clickable and shareable online so they can spread.
• Keep track of what broke in production and how you fixed it, so you can talk about it in interviews.
• Watch the creator's full project blueprint video (comment 'impressive' or use the caption link).
• A small, shareable side project with real users that deals with production-level problems.