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Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
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Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#2bumping for interest
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#3Anything at all relevant to the role - same language, same functionality at least.
Ideally things like good tests, good code structure, personally I'd also like to see a stable language choice too - if you're jumping from one language to the next to the next I'll probably assume you're going to want to rewrite everything in the new hotness every other week and that's a pain in the arse.
Associated blog posts that explain how your code works and why though? I'd put your name to the top of the "get this person in" list on the spot
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#4Look for "fit & finish" in a completed app. There is an old saying: "we're 90% done, now all we have to do is the remaining 90%!" I like to see that polish. It implies an understanding of the craft that is required, attention to detail, good debugging skills and an appreciation of human-centric design principles.
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#5Anything at all relevant to the role - same language, same functionality at least. Ideally things like good tests, good code structure, personally I'd also like to see a stable language choice too - if you're jumping from one language to the next to the next I'll probably assume you're going to want to rewrite everything in the new hotness every other week and that's a pain in the arse. Associated blog posts that exp…
That seems like a wierd expectation for evaluating peoples home side projects.
One reason people do side projects to develop and demonstrate effectiveness with technologies they don't use at work.
If I saw someone using a familiar and established stack to build fininshed, highly polished applications as side projects... I'd assume they were trying to make a product. That's what you do when you are making a product. You'd need to bring it up because they might be more interested in building their own startup than working for me.
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#6Anything at all relevant to the role - same language, same functionality at least. Ideally things like good tests, good code structure, personally I'd also like to see a stable language choice too - if you're jumping from one language to the next to the next I'll probably assume you're going to want to rewrite everything in the new hotness every other week and that's a pain in the arse. Associated blog posts that exp…
That seems like a wierd expectation for evaluating peoples home side projects. One reason people do side projects to develop and demonstrate effectiveness with technologies they don't use at work. If I saw someone using a familiar and established stack to build fininshed, highly polished applications as side projects... I'd assume they were trying to make a product. That's what you do when you are making a product. Y…
The question was "What portfolio items are most impressive" not "What portfolio items are required" :P
Infinite disagree on the "they might want to work on their own thing more than my thing" angle
They're keeping their skills sharp on their own dime and that's a bad thing? Many employees only stick around for 2 years or so anyway who cares whether they move on to the next 9-5 or their own thing?
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#7Anything at all relevant to the role - same language, same functionality at least. Ideally things like good tests, good code structure, personally I'd also like to see a stable language choice too - if you're jumping from one language to the next to the next I'll probably assume you're going to want to rewrite everything in the new hotness every other week and that's a pain in the arse. Associated blog posts that exp…
I sometimes do projects in new frameworks or languages as a learning experience - in a professional setting I would still default to tried and true tools that I have a lot of experience with and are relatively stable. How do you differentiate between individuals like you describe and people like me who like to experiment for education's sake?
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#8Anything at all relevant to the role - same language, same functionality at least. Ideally things like good tests, good code structure, personally I'd also like to see a stable language choice too - if you're jumping from one language to the next to the next I'll probably assume you're going to want to rewrite everything in the new hotness every other week and that's a pain in the arse. Associated blog posts that exp…
I sometimes do projects in new frameworks or languages as a learning experience - in a professional setting I would still default to tried and true tools that I have a lot of experience with and are relatively stable. How do you differentiate between individuals like you describe and people like me who like to experiment for education's sake?
> How do you differentiate between individuals like you describe and people like me who like to experiment for education's sake
I wouldn't, that person would - I don't imagine many people put their experiment/education projects in their portfolio
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#9I like to see lots of personal projects, the more complete and fleshed out the better, it shows you have a passion for the craft. I'm also slightly biased in favor of people without a college degree like myself, but I certainly wouldn't hold a degree against anyone.
so my most impressive candidate would be someone without a degree and quite a few very complete and well polished personal projects.
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#10Look for "fit & finish" in a completed app. There is an old saying: "we're 90% done, now all we have to do is the remaining 90%!" I like to see that polish. It implies an understanding of the craft that is required, attention to detail, good debugging skills and an appreciation of human-centric design principles.
This sounds really great - but how does something look 'fit & finish'?
Is a decent Readme.md with descriptions + screenshots of a sharp app good enough, or does it need to be actually deployed somewhere public?