Something that has shipped, acquired customers and made money. Those things are more impressive to me than what framework, programming language, etc. you used.
Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
21–30 of 37 posts
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#22I 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.
I like to see lots of personal projects, the more complete and fleshed out the better, it shows you have a passion for the craft
Translation: young, impressionable, willing to work lots of unpaid overtime
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#23Something that has shipped, acquired customers and made money. Those things are more impressive to me than what framework, programming language, etc. you used.
Why would a programmer who can do all these things work for you?
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#24Something with a vibrant community built up around it is most impressive to me. It shows a degree of communication and management, not to mention marketing. Otherwise, most github repos are not that impressive as I have no idea how long it took to write (did it take a few months to write something most devs could write in a few days?), or if the candidate even wrote it at all.
> It shows a degree of communication and management, not to mention marketing.
Which is important when hiring a programmer who won't be managing anybody or marketing anything.
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#25The best devs I know dont have portfolio pieces. They tend to work on problems that the people employing them pay a lot of money to prevent being public.
So for me portfolios are for junior devs & graduate students looking to leave academia. Therefore, I look for things that are uncommon in those environments, engineering over theory, documentation & tests over novelty.
Note: if I were hiring for a researcher the above would not be true.
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#26Something that has shipped, acquired customers and made money. Those things are more impressive to me than what framework, programming language, etc. you used.
Why would a programmer who can do all these things work for you?
Because those things imply a team effort not an individual one? But demonstrating you've been part of one of those teams is a good indicator.
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would a programmer who can do all these things work for you?
Because those things imply a team effort not an individual one? But demonstrating you've been part of one of those teams is a good indicator.
If it's a team effort, then why are you judging the developer candidate based on what other members of the team did or did not do well (acquire customers and make money)? It makes no sense to judge a developer based on criteria he's not directly responsible for.
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#28The best devs I know dont have portfolio pieces. They tend to work on problems that the people employing them pay a lot of money to prevent being public. So for me portfolios are for junior devs & graduate students looking to leave academia. Therefore, I look for things that are uncommon in those environments, engineering over theory, documentation & tests over novelty. Note: if I were hiring for a researcher the abo…
Just curious, how do you consider maintainers of popular open source projects? I broadly agree with your thinking here, but I'm wondering if you consider an open source project part of a "portfolio" if it's mature software.
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#29The best devs I know dont have portfolio pieces. They tend to work on problems that the people employing them pay a lot of money to prevent being public. So for me portfolios are for junior devs & graduate students looking to leave academia. Therefore, I look for things that are uncommon in those environments, engineering over theory, documentation & tests over novelty. Note: if I were hiring for a researcher the abo…
This is refreshing to hear. I've been a successful developer for years working for a few different clients but don't have this portfolio of things I've done after work.
What I do have is a bunch of great reviews from my managers in the past years. Do those carry any weight in an interview?
Re: Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would a programmer who can do all these things work for you?
Because those things imply a team effort not an individual one? But demonstrating you've been part of one of those teams is a good indicator.
Please don't generalize without evidence to back it up.
The first version of the Linux kernel wasn't written by a team, for example, and writing an OS is clearly impressive. Linux didn't ship, get customers, and make money.