https://blog.vnykmshr.com/writing/tags/building/Recent content in Building on vnykmshrHugoenFri, 03 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.vnykmshr.com/writing/the-side-project-mirror/Fri, 03 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://blog.vnykmshr.com/writing/the-side-project-mirror/<p>The job title says architect. The side project says &ldquo;why is this Dockerfile 300MB, let me fix this real quick&rdquo; &ndash; three hours later, still shaving layers, completely happy.</p> <p>Nobody assigns you ops on a side project. Nobody assigns you anything. But there you are, writing monitoring for something with twelve users, eleven of them are you in different browsers.</p> <p>The role is what someone else decided you were good at. The side project is what your hands reach for when nobody&rsquo;s directing them. Sometimes they match. Mostly they don&rsquo;t. The backend engineer with strong opinions about font spacing. The tech lead who&rsquo;d rather be tailing logs than running standups. The platform architect who writes a blog engine from scratch and tells you with a straight face that the existing ones were fine, just not the way they&rsquo;d do it.</p>