I have the utmost respect for devs who spend their free time on side projects, especially the open source people. My motivations have always been more aligned with work, so if I'm employed my focus goes to what I do during office hours and (unfortunately) not projects. We only have so many spoons to use in a day, after all.
That being said, it's hard to apply for dev jobs without a portfolio. One thing that I can do is create guides talking about the many challenges that I've faced working: real engineering challenges for real production-level applications.
Here's my dev.to account, where hopefully by the time you're reading this I've posted enough to make you go "wow! this guy does write guides!" If the volume of guides doesn't elicit that reaction, check again in a week--or risk it all and have a read at the articles anyway. What's the worst that could happen?
Some of my current guides:
- Deploying a Rails 7 + React app to AWS via Dokku (proud of this one!)
- Reusable form inputs with React Hook Form and TypeScript
- Setting up private routes with react router v6
Outside of work, I like reading, writing, badminton, competitive chess, cooking for my loved ones, and playing the bass. I'm always open to meeting new people and finding a bit of myself in them (and vice versa0.