61–70 of 111 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think people want it to look fancy, rather than just plain: http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ Most people don't benefit very much from having prettily-designed websites.
motherfuckingwebsite has google analytics. kind of surprising imo.
Speaking from the perspective of someone looking to hire: It doesn't make for a good impression if I see anyone other than the original author with the same obviously distinctive style of site showing pretty much a subset of the info I can already see from your GitHub account, except the latter doesn't require JS to view. If I'm looking at someone's personal site, it should look personal --- not "I cloned someone els…
Speaking from the perspective of someone looking to hire: It doesn't make for a good impression if I see anyone other than the original author with the same obviously distinctive style of site showing pretty much a subset of the info I can already see from your GitHub account, except the latter doesn't require JS to view. If I'm looking at someone's personal site, it should look personal --- not "I cloned someone els…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once you have a certain amount of experience, I don't think a person's website is going to matter anymore.
With the exception of frontend developers. There is an expectation that you have a good personal site regardless of how much experience you have if your job is to push HTML, CSS and JS. Its a showcase for what you can do when you're not constrained by a product or a client.
(I say this as someone who used to overengineer my own personal websites with the hottest tech stack of the week, but am now in the process of throwing it all away for a simple WordPress site.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Petty though it may be, if it's true, if it's sufficiently widespread, then it's a reality with which we must be able to deal.
Judgements like "I'd expect dev to write it themselves" come across as arbitrary. I think there's no shared context wherein interviewers / job-applicants have the same set of assumptions. Especially since "I'd expect a dev to not rewrite everything themselves, and leverage what's already available" is just as reasonable. There's not exactly a specific "right answer" about whether you need a personal website, what it…
Hell, I can’t even find time to pick a template and design the look and feel or choose what content to put on my own website.
Ummm....shouldn't a programmer make their own? Dumb question I know.
- Do I want the site to demonstrate the areas of coding I most enjoy (eg HTML5 canvas)? Or should I use it as a glossy form of CV which I can use to impress potential clients?
- Do I want it to act as a simplistic (single-page) calling card? Or should I be looking to use it more as an interactive hub aiming to do stuff like gather contacts, generate discussion on blog posts (which I could submit/share on HN, LinkedIn, Twitter) etc, etc.
- What tech should I be choosing to demo to visitors? If I go for a React front end is that going to put off potential clients with Vue projects I could work on? If I want to attract bread-and-butter work should I be looking to demo a Wordpress site with a home-built theme and plugins? Do I want to show off my skills with 3rd Party APIs?
At the moment I'm thinking of doing a minimalistic HTML site hosted in an AWS S3 bucket, with a picture of my cat above a big CTA button saying "Hire my human!" and a couple of links to my GitHub and LinkedIn accounts. At least it'll be easy to maintain and easy to replace once I'm clearer on the areas of work I want to focus on.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With the exception of frontend developers. There is an expectation that you have a good personal site regardless of how much experience you have if your job is to push HTML, CSS and JS. Its a showcase for what you can do when you're not constrained by a product or a client.
If your definition of "frontend developer" is designer, then sure. Otherwise for any dev with experience, this is a dumb expectation. Part of a dev's job is to use the right tool for the job, and there's no sense in wasting time reinventing the wheel. (I say this as someone who used to overengineer my own personal websites with the hottest tech stack of the week, but am now in the process of throwing it all away for…
A good website that demonstrates some ability to write frontend code well is a shortcut to demonstrating that you're good at what I want to employ you to do. It's a showcase of your skills, just as a graphic designer would have a Dribbble portfolio or a backend dev would have a few repos on Github. I'm not suggesting you can't get hired without a nice site, but if I get your resume you're much more likely to get a call for an interview if you do.
Speaking from the perspective of someone looking to hire: It doesn't make for a good impression if I see anyone other than the original author with the same obviously distinctive style of site showing pretty much a subset of the info I can already see from your GitHub account, except the latter doesn't require JS to view. If I'm looking at someone's personal site, it should look personal --- not "I cloned someone els…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once you have a certain amount of experience, I don't think a person's website is going to matter anymore.
With the exception of frontend developers. There is an expectation that you have a good personal site regardless of how much experience you have if your job is to push HTML, CSS and JS. Its a showcase for what you can do when you're not constrained by a product or a client.