Senior Devs: do you have a portfolio, or do you believe your experience shows in interviews without it?

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ExperiencedDevs-ModTeam@reddit

Rule 9: No Low Effort Posts, Excessive Venting, or Bragging. Using this subreddit to crowd source answers to something that isn't really contributing to the spirit of this subreddit is forbidden at moderator's discretion. This includes posts that are mostly focused around venting or bragging; both of these types of posts are difficult to moderate and don't contribute much to the subreddit.

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bytebl@reddit

Doesn't matter, I have learned. They still ask you leet code and a standard design round.

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k_dubious@reddit

If a company cares more about some shitty app I built off-hours than they do about my 15 YOE working in Big Tech, I’m applying to the wrong companies.

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reddit_man_6969@reddit

Not all of us have big tech on our resumes though

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Appropriate-Dream388@reddit

I'm sure the 15 YoE of non-big tech experience will suffice.

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reddit_man_6969@reddit

I’m not so sure of that tbh. At least not for remote roles

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upsidedownshaggy@reddit

Sure if your 15 years of experience are as the lowest level IT phone support, but if you’ve got 15 years of dev experience on your resume and you can’t land work it’s not your years of experience that’s the problem.

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Appropriate-Dream388@reddit

Extremely unlikely to matter unless you're applying to other big tech roles which demand some level of XL enterprise scale, and even then, worst case scenario is a downlevel to adjust for differences in scope.

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Cheap-Upstairs-9946@reddit

Skill issue.

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wongaboing@reddit

Wild statement

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thodgson@reddit

I have 30+ experience at mostly non-noteworthy companies. Nobody cares about what I do during my personal time. They might ask about it if they are board, but it isn't a main driver. Having 30+ YOE is mostly a huge benefit, unless there is a bias against older applicants for a position.

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j-random@reddit

Anything over 20 years really doesn't count. Technology moves fast, anything you were doing 30 years ago is probably irrelevant. I say this as someone who started programming professionally in 1981.

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thodgson@reddit

I can see your point, however, you aren't considering the years of soft skills that I have honed and developed. I would put my first 10 years of experience (20 years ago) up against someone else's for the same job where we both have knowledge. Plus, I would say that my experience from 20+ years ago DOES count and matter more than you think: it's still problem solving, experience working with other people, teams, and companies. Sure, nobody GAF about the old C++ driven UI on Unix platforms I did years ago, but the fact that I hold that knowledge does contribute to me as a candidate and influence the people deciding who to hire.

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unflores@reddit

To add to this, 30 year old experience gives context. I'm not using jQuery in my apps but experience with it and other things that lead to modern webdev helps me understand the current web environment in a more complete way. It doesn't necessarily make me a better dev but more context gives me a better feel for somethings /shrug

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clientserverdotdev@reddit

If somebody singlehandedly wrote vast swaths of a 50-person company's tech stack over 15 years, or made major contributions every 3-5 years in new companies, I would definitely consider talking to that person. The distribution of these candidates are super bimodal -- some of them are elite engineers that just need some coaching on how to work effectively in larger teams. But some of them picked up bad habits from working either alone or with low coordination.

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edgmnt_net@reddit

Doesn't matter. Projects with multiple contributors pose challenges of their own. It could be a somewhat larger project in a smaller company, it could be contributions to an open source project.

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maria_la_guerta@reddit

After 10+ years (well before that IMO) you should be able to explain your impact and 'principles well enough that we don't need to see the code. Big tech or not.

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takuonline@reddit

Yeah, but what I about me with the same amount of experience in Big tech and an app l built off-hours. The market seems to be getting competitive, l would take very chance l can get.

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PaleCommander@reddit

I would take every chance if I had enough time and energy, but I don't. The RoI on polishing how you talk about your 15 YoE in interviews is probably better. Working on an open source project related to your work probably has a better RoI as well. If you get done at work and feel like building an app, that's fantastic. I hope it does well, teaches you new things, and is fun to write. But this isn't advice; it's anxiety in a can.

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Constant-Listen834@reddit

B-b-but I built an app! It is the Uber of sports betting. You won’t hire me?

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UXUIDD@reddit

Wait..?!?! no To-DO app .?

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Xsiah@reddit

I keep meaning to write one, but I always forget to do it. If only I had a to-do app to remind me...

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UXUIDD@reddit

(..insert Greta's face here..) HoWWw DaRee YouUuu ..!!

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rexspook@reddit

No. I don’t do side projects.

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dungeonHack@reddit

I don't have a portfolio. I have personal projects I can bring out, but they're tangential to my career and only really useful as a bonding device. I have never been asked to show a portfolio in development interviews. I had to show an art portfolio way back when I interviewed for a level design job, but that's it.

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casualfinderbot@reddit

Depends who’s hiring. Personally I think any side projects are a green flag. If someone has built something cool in their spare time then it means they’re passionate, and passionate people are who you want on your team because they perform better. But plenty of people who are passionate don’t have side projects. So it’s not necessary but can be helpful

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sleepyj910@reddit

Unless they are just passionate about grifting job interviews.

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SoulSkrix@reddit

I just have a projects page (from jobs, not in my free time) that is separate to my CV and available on my LI that explains in a few sentences what each project was for, the tech stack and what I generally did for that project. That is enough background information that has interested a few hiring managers into giving me an interview.

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HappyFlames@reddit

I have a portfolio from my college days but it's unnecessary for interviews. All people care about are a couple of projects from your most recent experiences and how that translate to what they're looking for.

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CallousBastard@reddit

My GitHub account is my portfolio, since most of the code I've written over the past ~15 years is open source. Not that interviewers ever look at it. They just want me to solve leetcode questions that have no relevance whatsoever to the job they're interviewing me for.

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wongaboing@reddit

Side projects? I barely have time to code during work time

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TheOnceAndFutureDoug@reddit

I rebuild my website between jobs. Otherwise? Nope. I'm trying to write more...

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Constant-Listen834@reddit

Not even time for me. Maybe I’m aging but man after 3-4 hours of coding (if I can even get that in between meetings) I am so fucking sick of writing code.

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PineapplePanda_@reddit

Maybe you’re just bored of your current tech stack / product? Possible if you worked in something new it may challenge you more - and you may enjoy it.

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Constant-Listen834@reddit

Yea probably true. I’ll likely quit mid late next year and move on to something else

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angrynoah@reddit

Hiring managers have no time to look at it anyway.

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bananas_are_ew@reddit

i didn't until recently. when companies ask me to do a demo, i tell them to look at the portfolio repo lol

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GoziMai@reddit

I think a portfolio is definitely just for engineers that don’t have the work experience to put on their resume. And imo revenue impacting work experience is always gonna be more valuable than ad hoc projects because it’s not just about what you know the more senior you are, rather how you applied what you know to make a company money that is attractive

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keelanstuart@reddit

Disagree, but... why wouldn't you include your hobby projects if you had them? I spend a lot of nights and weekends building more software aside from what I've done for an employer.

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fortunatefaileur@reddit

this is such a completely foreign concept to me, unless I was applying for a job as an actual open source developer. all the big code I wrote is in some private repository because that’s what the company, like basically every company in the universe, wanted and paid me to do. it is also absolutely toxic to me to demand that programmers have performative hobbies. I definitely don’t give a fuck when I’m hiring and would tell a recruiter to fuck off if they demanded I provide a portfolio of my hobbies.

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69Cobalt@reddit

I agree with your sentiment, but at the end of the day it comes down to supply and demand. If the supply of developers is high enough companies can choose to filter for the person that does this for successfully work and for fun. In theory if the job market got exceedingly competitive you can tell whichever recruiter you want to fuck off but your choice may be step up your game or find a new career field. I'm hoping the field never gets to that point though, despite the tightening lately.

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Scarface74@reddit

No one to a first approximation is going to take time to look at your portfolio. Any company that expects me to code after work doesn’t respect my work life balance and isn’t going to be a company I want to work for. I applied for a job before where one of the interviewers didn’t even look at my resume. I know this because they spent 15 minutes describing what the company does. It was listed on my resume as n-2 job that I had worked for one of their major acquisitions and I was the architect who built one of the systems he was describing. That was also on my resume

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69Cobalt@reddit

In the current state of affairs I agree with you. I'm just saying fundamentally the belief that you would choose not to work for these companies is under pinned by the idea that there are enough companies with open spots that don't want this. In a sufficiently competitive market is 5 hours a week on a side project really going to be what makes you go hungry /retire /switch careers /work at McDonald's?

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Scarface74@reddit

I’ve been on the hiring side as the single decider who gets hired at startups, part of the interview loop at BigTech and I have been on the other side of the table looking for a job 10x now. In the modern era of me looking for a job since 2012, the profile of the jobs have been a few different types. The first type is they are looking for your a good enough CRUD framework developer a mid level ticker taker. They aren’t going to take the time to look at your GitHub portfolio. In a larger tech company, I can’t imagine that anyone takes the time to look at one. The couple of times I’ve been part of the interview loop at one as an interviewer for an SDE (system design rounds) I know we didn’t bother looking at the resume, just judging their performance during the interview. The second type of interview since 2014 that I have had as an “experienced developer” has leaned way more on behavioral questions where I was an early strategic hire by a new to the company manager/director/CTO. They definitely weren’t going to look at code. On a broader scope if you are looking for a true “senior”, you are going to lean more heavily on system design and behavioral questions to ascertain the level of “scope”, “impact” and “dealing with ambiguity” they can handle. Those three traits are called out in some form of fashion in every leveling guideline I’ve ever seen - Amazon, Google, Dropbox (publicly available). A project you worked on in GitHub isn’t going to demonstrate that. Ironically, I do have a pretty impressive GitHub profile with 8 projects that came from work I did when I was at AWS ProServe until mid last year, put through their open source approval process, published to [AWS Samples](https://github.com/aws-samples) and then forked to my own repo - no one cared

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riplikash@reddit

I'll just say that while I largely agree with you, I have had 2 hiring managers look at my github profile in the past. I've had several over the years look into my socials. In at least one case they were excited enough about what they saw in my github that we spent a good chunk of the interview discussing it. So i don't know that i would go so far as to say they will NEVER get looked at.

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Froot-Loop-Dingus@reddit

The unemployment rate for senior devs is like 2%…

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PaleCommander@reddit

If you said I could do 5 extra hours a week on a side project the entire time I'm employed, or I could take a year off every time I change jobs to wait for the job market to get better so that I don't need a side project... then yeah, I'll take the year off. I could see why you'd go the other way too, but it's not a ridiculous choice. Why are you jumping all the way to McDonald's?

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69Cobalt@reddit

Literally my only point is that I've noticed alot of US based engineers have a twinge of arrogance when it comes to what they will or will not "accept" in their career. I don't think it's a bad thing I just think it's a little unrealistic to act like what you "accept" as normal in your career is dictated by your fundamental values when it's really market circumstance. "I can find something better" is a similar but differing sentiment to "I deserve better". Doctors don't say "I will tell any residency program that doesn't respect my WLB to fuck off ". Investment bankers don't say "i will tell any hedge fund that doesn't respect my WLB to fuck off ". It's only due to the tech boom of the 2010s that devs have the confidence to say "1 hour over 40 for my 250k a year job and they can fuck off ". Again not a bad thing but it's not really a principled stance it's a circumstantial stance that people like to act is principled.

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riplikash@reddit

Even accepting all of that (and the senior market is not THAT competitive) filtering based off of portfolio or hoppy is just NOT a great way to find good hires. Brilliance in programming just isn't important for the vast, VAST majority of positions. People skills, working as part of a team, willingness to do boring tasks, and being able to see things from other perspectives is SO much more important.

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Constant-Listen834@reddit

lol of all the people I have been involved in hiring, i have made a concerted effort to not hire people that code outside work. I want to work with people that actually have hobbies and a life.

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69Cobalt@reddit

That is absurd lmao, some of the most interesting collegues I've had coded outside of work. These individuals tended to be not basement dwellers but simply very high energy driven family men (with a touch of insomnia perhaps). I knew one guy that had two full on side businesses, one working with hardware drivers for small phone companies and another a legit photography business with multiple photographers he hired that he would shoot on the weekend with. Some people just like to be productive, the fact that they spend 0 hours a week in front of a TV doesn't make them boring...

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UXUIDD@reddit

are you talking about adding in the resume a hobby sectio with a short listing of them or sth else ? and does it matters if you hire for freelance or not ?

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riplikash@reddit

I used to. It helped on occasion. Not these days. My expertise and experience comes out in interviews just fine.

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official_business@reddit

In job interviews I've never found potential employers to care much at all about my github profile. I don't really have any side projects anyway. Coding is how I make my money, not how I spend my spare time.

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sozer-keyse@reddit

I have a GitHub, but I don't really keep it updated. IMO it's one of those things that's more relevant when youre more green in an industry, but the more experience you get it just becomes a "nice to have".

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noonemustknowmysecre@reddit

No. I have a couple side projects I can talk about, but no one has ever looked at them. All my professional work is owned by companies and ITAR controlled. Everyone in the industry knows this.

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MoreCowbellMofo@reddit

I've never been required to show it, but I've got small apps I've written over the years for various things. They're nothing special and potentially don't even work today due to expired API keys and such. However they're a good indicator of whether some one legitimately enjoys their work, or whether they tolerate it. For me its something I can add to my CV to help me stand out from a crowd. I also attend various meetups which can also be a good indicator. Ultimately, it's never really played a role. If you want to work at big tech, go to some of their meetups, get to know someone in a position to refer you and chances are they will as they're heavily incentivised to do so whether or not you're any good (500-5k per hire at a previous employer).

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Froot-Loop-Dingus@reddit

All my code is owned by my employers. No I don’t have side projects. I have other hobbies and a family that take up my time outside of work. 40hrs a week is more than enough. As an interviewer…I’m busy with a bunch of other crap at work. I’m not even going to open your repo links. I sometimes don’t even read your resume.

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TroubleIntelligent32@reddit

Honestly, the best thing for me was to get a professionally written resume designed to make the important parts stand out, and to get people to see me as the missing link in their personal path to success. You also need to be able to go into arbitrary depth on every one of those story points on your resume. When I'm on the interviewer side, this is how I can tell whether this _your project_ or just a project you "contributed" to.

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Bullshit103@reddit

10 YOE here, I’ve never had to show a portfolio. My work history is the picture and I’m the painter.

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Constant-Listen834@reddit

8 YOE here. I just grind leetcode for 2 weeks before interviewing. Stupid but it works very damn well

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PaleCommander@reddit

If you do a few leetcode-style problems a year (hello Advent of Code), it makes the pre-interviewing grind easier. That said, do what you can actually tolerate. It'll kind of suck if that's knuckling down and grinding it all at once, but you'll get it done and stay sane the rest of the time.

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Constant-Listen834@reddit

When I was a new grad the leetcode grind was hard. Then when I was mid level it was ok. Now that I’m senior it’s easy. Each time I do it, it gets significantly easier. Now it really only takes like 10-20 hours

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azmith10k@reddit

Based

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Dean_Roddey@reddit

I have a huge public portfolio, but only one company seemed to actually have looked at it last time out. Though, to be fair, that was the one I ended up at.

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greensodacan@reddit

Anything that helps you prove you are who you say you are will work in your favor. Tech blogs (not necessarily portfolios) can definitely get you hired, especially if you have tutorials and balanced takes on the industry. It shows that you go out of your way to learn new things such that you can communicate them back to strangers. That's proof of being a "self starter", "constant learner", and "strong communicator".

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Pttrnr@reddit

I have a Website with my Portfolio stuff, extended CV explanations, code examples, system design blueprints and other Software Development related information. According to the logs nobody has ever checked it and I've been without a job for months.

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Dreadmaker@reddit

So I was looking for something in the last year. I had about 6 years of experience at the time, and exactly nobody asked me for portfolio anything - it was all practical experience questions. Once you’re no longer looking for internships, I’d say it’s not really relevant anymore.

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spoonraker@reddit

17 YOE, never had a portfolio, never needed it. Speaking as somebody who has been involved in a lot of hiring, I can say that the vast majority of portfolios and side projects don't even get looked at, and if they are, it's never a factor in the decision anyway. At most a portfolio and side projects can help get you past an initial recruiter screen, but generally just talking credibly about your past experience is all it takes, and you probably need to be able to do this anyway regardless of whatever portfolio or side projects you might have.

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atmosphericfractals@reddit

I don't. I had one when I was starting out and I'd showcase things I was working on that pertained to the position I was applying for. 20 years into my career, nothing worth showing is actually allowed to be shown as it's all proprietary code developed for a specific purpose, or it's hidden behind a login.

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Powerful-Ad9392@reddit

No portfolio but I'll talk your ass off about stuff I've done. 16YOE

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venusaur42@reddit

If I were a core contributor of an important open-source project I would show it off proudly. Otherwise my industry experience is more valuable than pet projects.

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thodgson@reddit

No portfolio. The interview process is such a sh\*tshow of hurdles, that I don't even bother putting together a portfolio. No body cares about one anyway.

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messycan@reddit

15+ YOE, I’ve also conducted hundreds if not close to thousands of interviews. The interview says it all, you can easily tell if they know their shit, but I never ask about side projects unless they bring it up (which is nice sometimes) The strategy? Phone screening you get their breadth of knowledge, technical interview I try to see their depth of knowledge on the phone screening topics. I try to not to push hard, but with this you can easily see if they fit the bill. They’ll be very enthusiastic about explaining things and will quickly let you know if they don’t know a certain topic (deep level), which is OK. With this strategy, I also “ace” interviews and never show them side projects (only speak towards them if they ask).

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Raptori@reddit

I sunset my portfolio site recently, it's just too much effort keeping it updated. I've also privated all my repos, since the things I spend my spare time on aren't things I want to be open-source (e.g. a pretty complex app for visualising gameplay in my favourite game). The one time it was useful was when I was moving from WordPress agency work to a tech startup - they saw my portfolio, looked through its code in GitHub, and that gave them the confidence that I'd be worth hiring. Didn't even have to do a live coding interview. Aside from that, I've had a couple of people mention reading a blog post on my old site once or twice in interviews, but that's about it. There was also one time when I got sent a big take-home and just could not be bothered; I told them I didn't have the time, but I could give them access to a personal project and walk them through some cool stuff in there. They were happy with that, and impressed that I added a readme for them which explained some of the problems it was aimed at solving, pointed to interesting areas, and listed some feedback I was looking for on things like code organisation, what aspects of the code made it easy/hard to follow to an outsider, etc, which we then chatted through later on. Good companies are more flexible than people realise!

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Highwind__@reddit

Despite what YouTube tells you, you can get high paying jobs without a GitHub account full of handwritten compilers.

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Skittilybop@reddit

I have a simple website with simple side projects on it because why not. I had fun making the site and I have the old projects lying around. But then again I am a front-end dev. I have never heard any potential employer reference it specifically, but it’s quite possible someone looked at it and was like “okay let’s interview this guy”. You never know. If you’re applying for front-end roles, like I am, it’s kinda lame IMO if you don’t even have a simple “business card” website that you can share.

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kbn_@reddit

Not useful. When hiring, if someone lists their GitHub in their resume, I’ll look at it and form some opinions. It can be really helpful to get an idea of what kind of things they’re interested in and what their code quality is when they think people are looking. But beyond that it’s pretty valueless. People who have genuinely impressive open source credentials also have names you know. I don’t have to look at Norman Maurer’s github profile to know the kind of work he does; I already know enough about Netty and its ecosystem and his name is his brand. So in other words, do side projects for fun if it’s fun, and don’t worry about it beyond that.

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danielt1263@reddit

I've been programming professionally for 25 years. For the past 15, I've been doing iOS development. I have a spreadsheet with a list of the apps I've created (about half of which are still in the store) but I don't have code to show. That said, I have written articles and answered almost 1400 questions on Stack Overflow so if someone wanted to understand my programming philosophy/skills, I've made a lot of information available. (And yes, links are on my resume.)

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PineapplePanda_@reddit

And do you think the apps and apps articles give you a leg up over other candidates? And at what stage - does it assist in obtaining the interview but not much else?

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danielt1263@reddit

hmm... It, for sure, helps you get the HR interview (which is usually the first one). They aren't technical and just see the volume of publicly facing work. However, it doesn't help get past the AI gatekeeper that comes before the HR interview, so I still get a lot of auto-rejections. As for the technical interviews, my assumption is it tends to change the abstraction level of the questions. So I'm not asked the difference between sum and product types and instead I'm asked to compare different paradigms. In other words, the technical interview tends to be more along the lines of me teaching the interviewer than them quizzing me. (I still have to run the leet code gauntlet though.) Also, the culture interviews are more breezy because they have a good idea of my communication style already by reading the articles. Of course, all of this assumes they actually clicked on the links and read some of the work. Often they don't have time to do that so they treat me just like anybody else. The thing is, people, even developers, generally dislike reading code. If you hand them the code to your open source project, they won't read nearly as much as they will if you give them an article you wrote. And the open source project doesn't really work, unless you are very entry level. If you write the code as simple as it should be for such a small project, you aren't really showing off your capability, and if you make the code complex to show off your understanding of various ideas, then they see that over-complex Todo app as a mark against you. That's my thinking at least, I have no real data to back any of this up.

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barndawe@reddit

Nope, and nobody should be judging how I code when I'm not paid and I'm not bothering with epics and sprint boards and tests

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De_Wouter@reddit

I think it can be beneficial for beginners if they are better than their equal (un)experienced peers. But as a senior... no, we got no time for that. We make real stuff in the real world. Made this cool project X but can't show because confidential, I made this project Y which does something like that but can't tell more because NDA and worked on project Z but it hasn't released yet.

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Elmepo@reddit

Not sure how to word this exactly, but portfolio's are a junior dev thing for the most part. Like, don't get me wrong - you can totally have a cool github profile with lots of stars, but having a "portfolio" of projects could be a red flag to me. It would imply that the work you're currently doing isn't at a senior level. That might be fair if you're a mid-level looking for an upgrade, but otherwise my question would be "why don't you want to focus/highlight the work you're currently doing" Part of this is also just scale - a large part of being a senior is things like mentoring, code reviews, and other non-coding aspects that 99% of projects just won't highlight.

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flakeeight@reddit

No portfolio, I have side projects on my main github account, some random stuff you can check, but the ACTUAL work I did is under private repositories. I'll always share my GH/Linkedin, but I totally can sell myself during an interview.

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timelessblur@reddit

Nope no real portfolio other than my experience on my resume. My GitHub has more things from long time ago. Side projects are a hard nope. No time for that and at this point if I am not getting paid I don’t code.

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leeliop@reddit

I wouldn't get any jobs if they saw the state of my personal github lul

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Appropriate-Dream388@reddit

This was a much bigger thing before I accrued tenure. It's almost unrealistic to even consider right now. Most of software engineering isn't pumping out code or solo-manning projects. It's mostly about collaboration and general problem-solving in a professional capacity, and most side projects are woefully irrelevant to this end.

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aerfen@reddit

13 YoE Staff Engineer here. I've never been asked to show off side projects, I've never asked interviewees for them either. I have a family, children, hobbies, and a social life I've barely got the time to keep together. If you want your engineers to have lots of side projects outside of work, you're inherently selecting for a narrow group of candidates.

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mincinashu@reddit

I guess it depends on your work type. Makes sense for front-end people to showcase their CSS skills, but backend guys aren't going to brag about their microservice stacking skills. Right now, if I would start a side project, it would be a rewrite of work stuff in a different language. I know the goal, the requirements and it's an actual production proven thing.

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Practical-Ideal6236@reddit

I don't have a 'portfolio', but I do have a [personal site](https://www.trevorlasn.com/). When people search my name, the site appears first in the search.

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GrapefruitMammoth626@reddit

It’s not that common. It’s useful to show experience in an area you were unable to explore during your employment. Imagine trying to break into AI from software dev role. All you’d have experience wise is a portfolio of home projects.

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soundman32@reddit

After 40 years of development, I have exactly 1 piece of externally identifiable work. All the code I've written has been proprietary, and the websites private.

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originalchronoguy@reddit

I have video show reels. I have a background in motion graphics, video, 3D. So my portfolio is made with After Effects and it always draws dropped jaws. And I say, "I can build a web tool that makes these videos. " That is my MOAT. And then the conversation steers toward, "How would one go about building this as a web service." It then becones a good segueway into system design and architecture. 9/10 people who see them ask me why I go that far and I usually tell then instead of boring powerpoint, wouldn't department demos be more interesting if people were captivated for 2-3 minutes versus boring slides. And I ask the interviewer, "Can you see where this effort draws attention?" It works. Just give me 45 seconds for the elevator pitch or when they ask, "Tell me a little bit about yourself." That is when I pull out an iPad with videos all ready to play.

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UXUIDD@reddit

nice explanation and an example. But you are kind of a niche aren't you ? Im creative too but not so much with the motion

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originalchronoguy@reddit

Not really, this can apply to any market. I worked in Health, Retail, and Finance. In the enterprise space and it is all the same --- how coherently you can communicate/make presentations to get buy-in from stakeholders. Communication how your app works, regardless of domain, matters. When a customer/employer/vendor clicks on a button on a webpage... What happens? Zoom into a tunnel with flying arrows to go to a moving cog-wheel to provide a visual analogy of how queues works is a lot easier to explain to a technical person. They see a spinning cog and can relate to a process that is running and arrows flying to different places means the data flow goes to different teams. It is easier to "show" that a user data is going through a lot of mechanical bits visually than trying to explain a pub-sub queue and JWT auth flow with callback. I see a lot of my peers show UML and visio diagrams that no one understands. 15 second animation explains it better.

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UXUIDD@reddit

well .. u got me thinking now . im one of UML'er as I though that IS understandable. of course that shooting arrows will point better where a user have to press a button. But a 'niche' as making moving stuff instead of static one as I do.

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cosmopoof@reddit

They're useful for juniors and early day seniors. After a certain status it becomes irrelevant or even weird. Nobody's asked me for a portfolio in the past 15 years. Instead it's mostly discussions about challenges, big projects one was responsible for and sharing thoughts about what direction to (potentially) take together.

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gomihako_@reddit

I don't even read other people's, no way in hell I'm gonna make my own.

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temp1211241@reddit

Portfolios are for interviewees without work history. Shipped beats portfolio every time, you should be able to speak to the things you’ve done in a manner that shows knowledge and demonstrates how you will approach something similar for them.

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David_AnkiDroid@reddit

I include a GitHub link, and I mention a couple of side projects which either have name recognition/impressive outcomes. I don't have a specific portfolio. "Show off" repos: I wouldn't expect it, and you can quickly tell whether side projects / open source contributions are designed for an interview... I guess it shows more motivation than LeetCode, but it's likely a less efficient use of time That all being said: * I once had an interview question on a data structure which I implemented a week or two prior for a side project * I was really impressed with an emulator which an ex-colleague made, and it's nice to know you're around 'your kinda people'

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Scarface74@reddit

I had a decent up to date GitHub profile. But only because there was an easy process to publish sanitized work to [AWS Samples](https://github.com/aws-samples). I then forked it to my own profile. But now out of the 9 projects I have in my profile - 5 are completely useless either because the AWS service that they were based on has been deprecated or AWS has solved a problem in an officially supported way. - 4 would require minor to major updates to make them run on supported language runtimes and a couple of modifications All of these projects came out of real world implementations I did at work. No one cares. At my last job, I was able to use 5 of them after I forking them to the companies internal repo and making changes

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armahillo@reddit

I dont have a “portfolio” exactly, but i do a lot of stuff online and am constantly creating things. If an employer asked, i could probably point them to some projects Ive done and gather examples together, i think, but it would be easier just to talk with me. What Im good at and not good at is apparent and I am up front and can cite examples.

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AakashGoGetEmAll@reddit

If you want to tap into the freelance market. I think you might need some portfolio built. If you want to just job hop, I don't think anyone cares about your portfolio. They are just looking at your resume.

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zero-dog@reddit

I have a pretty good OSS GitHub portfolio with 4 fairly popular projects. I think it’s helped a little bit with getting interviews and getting hired in my current position which has an OSS component that I’m responsible for developing. Personally when I was responsible for hiring I was always very impressed when a candidate had a portfolio and would spend a large portion of interview time discussing— but as I discovered I’m in the minority 🤷‍♀️

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jeerabiscuit@reddit

Anyone having side projects is not doing their actual job or they are a manager.

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loosed-moose@reddit

You should be able to have an impromptu conversation about pretty much any topic as a senior. The funny thing is, too many senior candidates don't realize that "I don't have a clue" is a perfectly valid answer when it's true

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jdlyga@reddit

15 YOE. I’ve never had a portfolio or repo on my resume, or shown one during an interview. I’ve only ever run into one person who showed a personal project off during an interview either. But it was because we were hiring for a graphics developer and he developed his own engine.

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xaervagon@reddit

No. I know people who created portfolios and they get dragged through the leetcode/whiteboard/tech interview nonsense anyway. If you want to code on your own for your own enjoyment or to impress others, by all means.

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Hot_Bologna_Sandwich@reddit

I actually do have a portfolio, but I never brought it up when I was interviewing, only if asked, and even then I tried to not focus on it too much. I've always relied on having an "impressive" list of accomplishments and strong recommendations from my peers. Honestly, I've milked that for all its worth (tried, anyway). Now, does that show in an interview? I sure hope so, but there is only so much you can do to prove yourself. It's going to fall down to who's interviewing you to determine if it really matters in that moment.

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fragofox@reddit

I do, i've had one ever since college, so almost going on 20 years. A lot of folks dont see a need, but i like to have one to help keep track of the projects i work on, both professional and personal/professional. But i do a lot more than just programming, i do a lot of front end and back end work, a lot of graphic design and marketing as well as communication and project management. So with all the varies types of projects, my portfolio isn't a dump of any code, but instead more my projects with in-depth analysis, my roles in them, and various assets like screenshots, or video's/audio and/or graphics, reviews and assessments. Has this helped me get jobs?... ehhhh yes and no... i know for a fact it helped 10+ years ago... now a days i'm not so sure. I recently got a new job and during my job hunt a lot of the recruiters did view it, some asked questions about specific projects, overall any feedback i received was positive. but i'm not sure how much it impacted any decision. There have been a few jobs i've applied to that required one, so it was nice to have. Then there were a few jobs that required githubs, but i dont share mine. If anything it helps me out. I use it as a way to really focus what my contribution was to a project. It helps me mentally prep to discuss what i've done for an interview. This way i'm prepared with specific examples on just about any question they may have, the "tell me a time..." type questions. So while it certainly isn't a requirement, it can be beneficial if you have the time to put to it.

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TScottFitzgerald@reddit

Don't have "show off" projects but I do have a few things in prod I've been tinkering with for years piece by piece, usually to do and learn stuff I don't get to at my work projects. I don't think most recruiters really care, they do open some venues for discussion in interviews, but I don't know that it's ever been a dealbreaker.

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Commercial_Arrival58@reddit

I do have side-projects on Github, although I wouldn't call that a portfolio. Most companies where I interviewed didn't care about it, however they really appreciate when I tell them that I do have extensive contributions to known Open-Source projects. When I'm recruiting, I definitely check if the candidate as a Github profile. I won't demote candidates with empty or poor profiles, but if I notice something interesting I may ask about that in the interview (which is probably good for the candidate since it's likely a topic they are ready to discuss).

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DeterminedQuokka@reddit

I had a portfolio for my first job. I do currently have a website that has some stuff linked but it’s not at all show off stuff it’s stuff I find interesting. Thankfully recruiters also tend to find it interesting. But I don’t think the code is particularly well written and it’s all just front end, and in my career I’m like deep in the backend. But it’s stuff like animations of algorithms. Generally I assume my career speaks for itself. The biggest issue I find with being sent portfolios is that they are all kind of the same thing. So you look like everyone else. I’d rather know something about you.

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libre_office_warlock@reddit

10 YOE, never felt the need, never needed it. During interviews, just talking about my previous work projects has always sufficed and I've gotten plenty of offers without ever needing to bust out the personal GitHub, even if I wanted to. Companies get enough info from their own interview materials often times.

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wwww4all@reddit

Portfolios are not a thing for experienced software devs. The experience delivering projects is the "portfolio".

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huge-centipede@reddit

I had a portfolio when I did agency style sites early in my career (up to about 4 years in) when I applied to other agencies, but at this point many many years later, I just list the companies I work for. I have and list my github on stuff like linkedin, but it's mostly personal stuff that doesn't directly go with my selling tech stack (my projects on github are QML, I do front-end web).

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