Senior/Tech Leads: do you actually have public portfolios/side projects?
Posted by Big-Discussion9699@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 72 comments
Hey folks,
I’m curious how other seniors/tech leads are handling this in 2026 with AI changing everything so fast.
I’ve got \~8 years of experience , currently in a lead role, strong frontend/system design experience, but honestly… no real public portfolio lol. Between work, wife, kids, life, the last thing I want sometimes is to sit in front of another computer after hours...
The funny thing is AI has made me like 10x faster, so now I constantly spin up mini side projects/ideas. Most are private repos.
A couple even make a few dollars per month. I also contribute to open source here and there.
But I’m thinking about job hunting again and wondering:
Are companies actually expecting senior/lead candidates to have public portfolios now?
Do you guys keep your side projects public or private?
Is showing projects without exposing the full GitHub/common enough?
Does “built with AI” reduce credibility in interviews nowadays?
I feel confident in my actual engineering skills, architecture, debugging, scaling, mentoring, etc. But if someone asked me “show me your portfolio” I’d probably just awkwardly stare at them.
Curious what the market is like right now from other experienced devs. Thanks
DenialGene@reddit
Nope, and I have no desire to
Big-Discussion9699@reddit (OP)
And what's the process like nowadays for experienced devs?
ecethrowaway01@reddit
For me:
Independent-Hurry618@reddit
jeez. good for you. i'm pretty high up but it's rather difficult to get any bites these days.
ecethrowaway01@reddit
Ah, thanks but to be fair - it could be a variety of factors. I'm working in an in-demand area in SFBA, which I think will always be a lot easier for hiring than something more specialized in a smaller hub
DocHoss@reddit
SFBA?
ecethrowaway01@reddit
San Francisco Bay Area, a region known for many tech jobs
Independent-Hurry618@reddit
gotcha. i only work remote, so that's an added challenge these days.
honestduane@reddit
Basically, 25+yoe+ the same experience, except:
I did a lot of consulting and contracting, so I’m not legally allowed to technically get referrals because I wasn’t allowed to stay in contact with people that I worked with because of the anti-poaching agreements they forced me to sign. I feel like that really limited my social group; sure I could work at a public company, but I’m not allowed to stay friends with anybody? That seems unfair. Thankfully, not all of my jobs had them, but it sucked when it did.
Not all recruiters are safe to talk to. It used to be that I would get multiple calls a day from different recruiting shops asking for my expertise. Now I have to be worried as an American about section 174A of the IRS tax code and the fact that if I get contacted by somebody who is not domestic then I have to be worried about it being a tax fraud scam, meaning that I can’t treat anybody on LinkedIn that has a profile that shows they are not based in America to contact me and call themselves or Recruiter to be a legitimate recruiter and not just a reseller or somebody trying to do a pig butchering scam to help somebody from North Korea.
I’m not sure how people are actually getting interviews. None of my friends are able to hire because all of their headcount is locked. I’m applying elsewhere. But something you only need to understand is that the technical skills we have are amazingly valuable. We just have to have the peace and quiet to be able to leverage them in a way that might compete with their current business.. the more chaos and pain we feel the better it will be for them. That’s why they’re doing the layoffs in waves. It’s to modulate and control the amount of suffering so that the conditioning works.
The random job offers with cash signing bonuses, and all that other stuff are the worst on the paperwork side, and honestly, you should never say yes to them immediately, and you should always do your due diligence to be able to figure out what you’re actually getting yourself into. Predatory use of non-disclosure agreements to act as non-competitive agreements that are often illegal in states like Washington are often used as part of these and then they dump you after you’ve signed the deal because now you’re off the market and not competing with them anymore as an ex employee.
ecethrowaway01@reddit
Out of curiosity - is it that all their headcount is locked up? Or is it the headcount relating to being a principal engineer/director.
I'm not sure our problems are 100% analogous, but I would am only a good fit for senior/staff positions in infra, which seems to have ample headcount across the board.
Hard agree that it's worth due diligence to verify before you sign anything
honestduane@reddit
Doesn’t really matter because even somebody with director or principal engineer experience is probably going to have no problem going back down to an SRE.
hubilation@reddit
No. I don't particularly love coding. But I'm good at it and it pays well. No desire to do it outside of my job.
MocknozzieRiver@reddit
And I love coding, but I also don't want to do it outside of work!
Sea_Comparison_1799@reddit
i stopped worrying about the portfolio question when i realized a static showcase of old projects is actually the worst representation of someone who ships constantly. if you've been quietly building and iterating on private repos for three years, a polished portfolio of three public projects from 2022 undersells you. the signal most hiring managers actually want is 'does this person consistently build and iterate' - and the honest version of that is ongoing commit activity and project evolution, not a landing page. the hard part is there's no friction-free way to make that ongoing work visible without it becoming a second job, which defeats the point. most senior devs i know just rely on the interview itself and skip the portfolio entirely. written with s4lai
vooglie@reddit
Nothing that I’ve worked on could ever be hosted publically so
honestduane@reddit
For anybody working in HR at a future, or current employer who is reading this, my answer is that is no, because I am very dedicated to the company and its goals. I would never seek to have my own desires or interests that might accidentally compete with the companies goals.
Now that I have that out of the way, I found it’s not even in my in my own best interest to have a public portfolio anymore. AI killed that.
xamott@reddit
I think I’m missing something, how did AI kill that? I feel like there’s horror stories I haven’t heard here
iggybdawg@reddit
No. Who has time to work outside of work hours? That time is reserved for friends, family, hobbies. I work to afford recreational activities.
fmmmf@reddit
I upvoted this because same, but annoyingly a lot of other senior devs and directors do their own side projects in the evenings/weekends as their hobby.
Lanky-Ad4698@reddit
Software engineering is my hobby lmao
aeroverra@reddit
Yes I have a lot of repos I maintain and closed source projects that for the most part loose money but it has helped me get hired in every job I have had so I see it as more of an insurance plan.
I don't let myself bend over backwards to fix bugs anymore though unless it means downtime so not everything stays up to date
DeterminedQuokka@reddit
I mean hypothetically? I have a personal GitHub and I periodically do stuff. But I don’t ever show it to anyone during job searches.
I did a job search recently and no one asked for a portfolio or even a GitHub link.
considerfi@reddit
No and as someone with 25yoe, I've never looked for or at anyone else's GitHub either.
Now that I think about it, I vaguely remember I discussed my masters project when I was looking for a job a long time ago and the interviewer was into that and looked at the site. But yeah I don't think I've ever looked at someone else's or bothered to have a portfolio since.
zip117@reddit
Yeah, and they are pretty substantial. A couple C++ projects that helped me get better at template metaprogramming and some embedded projects I’ve been building on for years. All public on GitHub and on my CV, where they actually have given me an edge over other candidates.
People seem awfully negative here… I’ve been doing this for 16 years and I still enjoy doing a bit of programming in my spare time. At some point you must have had a personal interest in programming that made you choose this career and I hope you can find that spark again.
Ok_Slide4905@reddit
Fuck no
F1B3R0PT1C@reddit
I am a tech lead but I don’t have side projects making money. I do however like to make video games as a hobby. It’s very different from my business software work. Far more interesting problems and way more “sub hobbies”. I can spend all my time making art, or sounds, or music, or code, or effects, or writing. It’s nice.
At our level of experience it is not as important to have side projects because you should have a network that can get you jobs.
Lanky-Ad4698@reddit
Damn nobody actually loves tech, I do. I got into this by coding for fun lmao. I code on weekends and after work any time I get
ZukowskiHardware@reddit
No, I do enjoy programming tremendously, but I do it for work, so in my free time I have lots of other hobbies.
Lanky-Ad4698@reddit
Software engineering is my hobby
Lanky-Ad4698@reddit
Yes, tons actually that it’s actually almost full standalone project. All the way from UI/UX to K8s
nullvoxpopuli@reddit
yes.
https://github.com/NullVoxPopuli
https://nullvoxpopuli.com/page/sites
A lot of my open source happens to be during work time tho. (I always say the job does not stop at the dependency boundary, and you should solve a problem where it most makes sense so that your company isn't responsible for hacks/work-arounds long term)
yabadabs13@reddit
8 years exp, front end lead also.
Hell no
Outside of work I'm at the gym, with my girl, doing investment research, meal prepping, working on mobility etc..
Health above software. I'm jacked, lean and feel great.
However, to find another position I'm definitely behind more than most. I have lots of catching up to do when it comes to interviews and studying. Slowly starting but figuring out how to without sacrificing elsewhere too much.
The mentality I have is as long as I'm spending my spare time doing things I care about and benefit me, I'm ok with not studying or coding after work.
tactis1234@reddit
Absolutely not, I have no desire to do more work outside of working hours.
Wide-Pop6050@reddit
Absolutely not. There is nothing public on my github since grad school.
Cultural_Wheel_6936@reddit
No there should be more than enough to talk about from your work. Projects are for juniors with no professional experience to show for
valadil@reddit
I used to have side projects. When I stopped and focused on work, I got waaaay better at my day job.
ThoughtfulPoster@reddit
My problem is that my code makes money, and the people my code makes money for don't like me posting their competitively differentiating software for free on the Internet.
ActionLeagueLater@reddit
I’ve never had anyone in my nearly 20 years of software engineering ever ask me for side projects. So never did.
And now with AI you said it’s faster than ever to spin up tons of side projects. That just tells me they’re ever more useless than before, in regards to obtaining a job.
lawrencek1992@reddit
No. I write code and build systems for work, but not for fun.
ambassador_pineapple@reddit
Nope. Too busy working crazy hours to do any of this stuff in my free time. It’s parenting relationships, gardening, and robotics in free time.
gfivksiausuwjtjtnv@reddit
A human child
Void-kun@reddit
Yes but more as a hobby not side gigs.
I don't bring it up in interviews unless relevant to the role or asked, the experience on my CV/resume is what matters
magichronx@reddit
I have 3 reasonably sized hobby projects that are public on my github, all 100% solo work done by me. I list them on my CV and personal site but other than that I don't go out of my way to promote them or anything.
These projects are significantly different from my day-to-day work so I share them just to show some breadth of knowledge outside of my current and previous professional roles
fued@reddit
Yes, its all video games lol
It helps in a "im interested in coding and have things to talk about way" doesnt help in a "i have proof i can do what is asked" way
moreVCAs@reddit
not really aside from recreational stuff. but i work on a large nonfree open source distributed system for a living so ymmv
leftofzen@reddit
Yes, I have a couple of side projects. I love programming so its easy enough to want to do it, its just tough sometimes after an 8 hour day and you don't want to think any more, so its often a weekend-type-deal.
curiouscirrus@reddit
No, and even worse the only public projects I have are from years ago when I was a noob, so it probably doesn’t reflect well on my current abilities.
Direct-Fee4474@reddit
I'm a principal. I've never had a public "portfolio" and all of my opensource contributions over the past decade have been done under a pseudonym. I have zero interest in ever letting my "i enjoy this" projects comingle with my work life, plus I've seen too many petty companies trying to claw IP rights from their employees.
I would never expect an interview candidate to have a portfolio, because they're writing code, not taking headshots. And frankly I'd never even ask to see prior work for fear of IP rights issues.
exploradorobservador@reddit
I've struggled with this. I did a BS in biochem, then I explored graduate school for a while, took some CS courses, some math courses, and ended up doing an MS CS. I've been working as a dev for 7 years now as the acting team lead at a small company.
I went from being used to courses and networking to feeling sort of isolated. I've started to work on my own projects, for me, not for finding a job.
AcanthisittaKooky987@reddit
No
x-jhp-x@reddit
I have a few, but nothing public. If someone asked for a portfolio, I think I'd make a joke about trapperkeepers, and/or politely decline.
Mahler911@reddit
No. My brain is full. The last thing I want to do is free work after real work. If anyone wants to offer me a job my LinkedIn is right there. 25+ years if experience, so on and so forth
Own_Outcome_6239@reddit
No side project/open source at all, not even mention anything on my resume. Recently moved from one FAANG to another as SDE III. No one ever asked at all
mq2thez@reddit
16 YOE. My side projects are private, or for my personal use. I don’t include them as part of my resume because they’re not indicative of the work I’d produce professionally, and I wouldn’t want my professional resume to be judged by what I do in my spare time.
I should also say: I generally don’t program outside of work. It’s like… a portfolio for my photography with Astro, or some random AI stuff when I was trying to learn that a bit, etc. Nothing serious, because coding outside of work tends to cause me to burn out hard.
obelix_dogmatix@reddit
nope. I am closer to hardware, so I am not sure what side projects even look like for my colleagues, but fuck no. I am not spending my free time to write a debugger at the compiler level for a new architecture.
AbstractLogic@reddit
I’ve been trying to AI develop some side hustle website projects so I keep those all public. I have some business ideas I’m working on and I have a website for my small businesses that I run on the side. It only grosses $150k annually and is net negative… but I figure if I keep learning and pushing new ideas I might land on one and retire. But anyway I keep all that work in public repos.
khedoros@reddit
I have a bunch of public repos with personal projects, but they're more things that I've written for fun over the years, rather than anything I'd present as a professional portfolio.
poutreparisienne@reddit
No I don't I can't stand being on screen when I'm not at work, I can finally move and have a life
tallicafu1@reddit
I used to but not any more. Had a family and that was the end of that era.
WeiGuy@reddit
I have a 3 small side projects. I enjoy coding outside work and I get a kick out of making the code really clean and simple. I don't really make a portfolio out of them, but if I were ever to change jobs, I'd put them in my CV
ArchitectAces@reddit
portfolio.acestus.com
shinn497@reddit
I don't have a public portfolio but I have side projects. I actually have a GitHub page I made locally, with the help of ai, but I am waiting for my current side project to finish first.
phatdoof@reddit
No side project, how about a blog or personal website?
Big-Discussion9699@reddit (OP)
I was thinking about that. The web is full of AI crap nowadays. Maybe I can do a small blog and share my thoughts
Slodin@reddit
It’s actually really hard to throw yourself at the same stuff after work hours.
I used to have personal projects, but the amount of time and effort usually gets eaten up by work. So I would neglect those projects and eventually abandon them.
Aside from work and hobbies. Life also gets in the way. It’s next to impossible for me to even spend more time on the computer besides work. Not that I don’t want to, but many things gets in the way.
nomoreplsthx@reddit
God no.
AngusAlThor@reddit
I have hobbies, not side projects. If someone wants to see my code, they can pay me to write some for them.
javatextbook@reddit
My private side projects are purely for my own learning and development
lab-gone-wrong@reddit
Staff AI Eng
No and never have
Puzzleheaded-Pen9979@reddit
I've always felt self-induced pressure to have a solid public portfolio but I've never had a job where the hiring manager looked at my github and I've never been on a hiring committee that cared about side projects unless it happened to be directly relevant to our work. I keep most of my side projects private.
Jeep_finance@reddit
I do. But only because I run a few side projects for fun. I don’t work on them like I do my job, so they go neglected for weeks at a time.
kevinossia@reddit
No.
I’m not a frontend web developer though so I can’t speak to that aspect of it.