💬 Built an expense app in 4 months. 1 interviewer cared and 1 didn't

Last year I built an expense tracker for myself. It logs what I spend and shows a monthly chart. It took 4 months of evenings because I kept rewriting the same screen. I put it on GitHub and forgot it. In March I had 2 interviews in the same week. The first was at a company in Hitech City. The interviewer opened my resume, saw the project link, and asked me 1 question about it. He asked how I stored the data. I said in a local file. He nodded and moved on to arrays and loops. I could tell from his face he'd never opened the link. We spent 40 minutes on textbook questions. The second interview was on Thursday, at a smaller company near Gachibowli. The manager spent 25 minutes on that expense app. He asked why I picked that chart, what broke, and what I'd change. I talked more than in the whole other interview. I didn't get either job. The second one said they wanted someone with more years behind them. But I came out of that second room feeling like a developer, and out of the first like an exam candidate. A friend says certificates matter for the first filter, the HR one, and projects matter once you're in the room. That sounds believable. I have 2 certificates from a weekend course and nobody has asked for them once. Now I'm planning a second project and I don't want to waste another 4 months on the wrong one. Should it be something I'd use myself, like the expense app, or something bigger like a shopping site clone? I've seen people list 8 projects on a resume and I doubt anyone reads past the third. If you've been on the hiring side, what made you stop and open a link?

I was on a hiring panel for a while, and a project only helped when the person could talk about it. Your second interview sounds exactly like that. 25 minutes on what broke is a good sign, even without the offer. Don't build a shopping site clone, we saw plenty and couldn't tell them apart. Keep building things you use, and write down what went wrong along the way. Interviewers like that.

A friend of mine hires for a small company and says he opens the project link only when a resume looks thin. His tip was to write 1 line under each project saying what it does and who uses it.