That might look good in the short term, but there are many companies and roles which require you to show the actual number of users, or the load of the service that you worked on. Also many technically challenging issues only come out under load, and actually working on challenging things are very different from reading about them. Just my 2 cents.
there are many companies and roles which require you
to show the actual number of users, or the load of the
service that you worked on.
I got my first job as a programmer in 2001 and not once was I asked that. I'm sure they exist but I wouldn't count on that being so common as to significantly impact the OP's career prospects.
Two things I've most often noticed people care about when hiring:
1. experience with the exact tech / field that they're hiring for
2. having brand-name job experience (google, amazon, etc).
It's sad but you'll probably get better mileage from having worked on a useless prestige/pet project at google using fashionable tech than a critical system written with JavaEE & serving a lot of high-value customers at Alliance Generic Insurance Services Corp.
I do agree that there is a risk of it all crashing down. I dont think they ask us for load or users, but they notice an area where money isn't coming in.
