> what are the side projects you are doing currently. This question is about having insight about what people are doing.
I find it interesting that you ask primarily about side projects rather than just projects. Why are side projects more OK to discuss (or more interesting) than projects?
I think it is sometimes a bad habit to follow the impulse to pursue an idea as only a side project. Whether you're a line employee or a founder, I think there's value to seriously pursuing ideas that you believe to have merit and attempt to get traction behind them at your company. It's the path to career growth and success in both cases. Keeping an idea as a "side project" limits its potential success compared with sharing it with others at your workplace and attempting to establish consensus around it and simply doing it as a project. You learn a lot more that way, not only because you get feedback from others about the idea. (Are you invested in the idea, or not? I don't mean financially. Success does not come from investing in no ideas.)
Perhaps what you are asking is: "what are you working on that is too small for you have bothered to try to garner consensus around it with others, to get their support for your idea". Just a thought. Or perhaps your question betrays an anxiety about one's inability to influence one's employer by altering business plans -- that is to say, if you don't pitch an idea, then there's no opportunity for it to be rejected. That is the impulse that I think we should not generally encourage, since it does not promote growth; it allows fragile and bad ideas to survive longer than they should, and it probably stunts good ideas too. This is just my opinion.
All ideas also deserve a time where they're cultivating and premature to share with others. Perhaps you are asking, "Share an idea here that you have not yet shared with anyone".
Perhaps what you are implying is that it would be improper for someone to discuss what they're doing at their job, in the context of their role at their job. "I am a developer at X.com and I'm working on a project for X.com where ..." - perhaps this class of answer seems uninteresting for surface reasons. But why shouldn't it be interesting? Would it be boring to say, "I work at Comcast and I help transition our legacy IPv4 networks to IPv6", or, "I work at Google on an upcoming Google Compute Platform service", or "I help launch the Apple iTunes store in new countries and territories worldwide".
Perhaps what you're asking is, "What work do you do will benefit and be interesting to other engineers (e.g., building general purpose libraries and tools for other software engineers)?"
Sorry, I don't mean to be contrary. I like to play devil's advocate, and I think there's something interesting to dig into regarding what you intend to ask and the implications behind the question. There is a whole bundle of implications in that word "side project".
In many cases, side projects have absolutely nothing to do with one's mainstream work, so trying to have them gain traction at a company is moot. For instance, if I work for the government doing IT services, why should they sponsor my idea of creating a mobile game app?
I find it interesting that you ask primarily about side projects rather than just projects. Why are side projects more OK to discuss (or more interesting) than projects?
I think it is sometimes a bad habit to follow the impulse to pursue an idea as only a side project. Whether you're a line employee or a founder, I think there's value to seriously pursuing ideas that you believe to have merit and attempt to get traction behind them at your company. It's the path to career growth and success in both cases. Keeping an idea as a "side project" limits its potential success compared with sharing it with others at your workplace and attempting to establish consensus around it and simply doing it as a project. You learn a lot more that way, not only because you get feedback from others about the idea. (Are you invested in the idea, or not? I don't mean financially. Success does not come from investing in no ideas.)
Perhaps what you are asking is: "what are you working on that is too small for you have bothered to try to garner consensus around it with others, to get their support for your idea". Just a thought. Or perhaps your question betrays an anxiety about one's inability to influence one's employer by altering business plans -- that is to say, if you don't pitch an idea, then there's no opportunity for it to be rejected. That is the impulse that I think we should not generally encourage, since it does not promote growth; it allows fragile and bad ideas to survive longer than they should, and it probably stunts good ideas too. This is just my opinion.
All ideas also deserve a time where they're cultivating and premature to share with others. Perhaps you are asking, "Share an idea here that you have not yet shared with anyone".
Perhaps what you are implying is that it would be improper for someone to discuss what they're doing at their job, in the context of their role at their job. "I am a developer at X.com and I'm working on a project for X.com where ..." - perhaps this class of answer seems uninteresting for surface reasons. But why shouldn't it be interesting? Would it be boring to say, "I work at Comcast and I help transition our legacy IPv4 networks to IPv6", or, "I work at Google on an upcoming Google Compute Platform service", or "I help launch the Apple iTunes store in new countries and territories worldwide".
Perhaps what you're asking is, "What work do you do will benefit and be interesting to other engineers (e.g., building general purpose libraries and tools for other software engineers)?"
Sorry, I don't mean to be contrary. I like to play devil's advocate, and I think there's something interesting to dig into regarding what you intend to ask and the implications behind the question. There is a whole bundle of implications in that word "side project".