

Ask HN: How much do employers value an online portfolio/blog? - leejw00t354

Is running a portfolio or blog a good professional move to make? Has anyone here ever been hired or been offered work thanks to their online presence?<p>How many hackers out there run their own personal blog?
======
danielamitay
Me: Final year college student, iPhone/iOS developer, NYC.

My blog: Personal app milestones, interesting app statistics.

Traffic: 5k unique/month, >100k back in June 2011 (when I was active).

Every so often I receive unsolicited (but much appreciated) offers from SV,
NYC, and Israel to work at a startup doing iOS development or management. A
number of these have been well funded by top-tier VCs. What drives my traffic?
A blog post detailing the most common iPhone passcodes, a blog post detailing
how piracy doubled my legitimate sales (despite it being a poor post), and
another blog post describing how to programmatically detect the apps installed
on the iPhone.

In my opinion, a personal blog is an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise
to those who are interested, and a way to increase your luck surface area.

Side note: I like Bump (YC S09), and I duplicated a minor feature of theirs
(app detection in v2.X). Because I blogged about their feature and how I did
it myself, a few people at Bump read my post. Later on, I found out that the
CEO of another major company was referred to me for advice by them. I'm
probably nothing special to Bump, but when I graduate, if I want to go work at
Bump, I'm not just another name.

~~~
naithemilkman
'increased your luck surface area'

This line is gold. I've been saying the same thing but I use 'increase the
probability out outlier events'. Yours sound much nicer :)

~~~
danielamitay
Source: [http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-
surf...](http://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-surface-area)

------
mschaecher
I was blogging on startups while living in the midwest getting ready to move
to SF. Blogging got me meetings with people at Google, Twitter, Square and
Airbnb. I ended up as employee #17 at Airbnb. So yea, it helped.

------
yashchandra
Definitely a good move. The idea is not just that you might get hired. The
idea is to get visibility to the outside world of people, share what you know
and learn more in the process or just enjoy yourself while you blog. Of
course, your chances of being somebody from nobody goes up significantly.

