Ask HN: What portfolio items are most impressive to you when hiring developers? - nullundefined
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kasey_junk
The 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.

~~~
gdfer
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?

~~~
kasey_junk
See my other answer to the subthreads. I could go on and on about software
hiring as its something I've spent a fair amount of time testing and thinking
about. But in a limited answer:

\- If I had a good work sample based proxy for hiring, I'd use that and
basically nothing else.

\- But that never happens, so what I (and most places I've encountered)
actually use is network based hiring. So a bunch of great reviews from your
managers is _awesome_ for hiring assuming I know them. If I don't its
basically a crap shoot, but I view it as much more valuable than some half
baked collection of github repos proving to me you've done the the first
couple chapters of several hot "how to" books.

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indescions_2017
Look 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.

~~~
robpethick
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?

~~~
wibbleywobbley
Typically when I am presenting a project as part of an interview I spin it up
in AWS (or elsewhere) and provide login credentials for them to actually play
with the application. It makes it a lot easier to discuss the specifics of how
an application was built when you can demo the application directly.

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corobo
Anything 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

~~~
shubb
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.

~~~
corobo
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?

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softwarefounder
Authentication.

i.e. Have you successfully implemented a good OAuth[2] security system? Can
you explain the difference between JWTs, and session auth? Why choose one over
the other. Talk to me about SSL a little bit, even at a high-level. How do you
secure APIs? Talk to me about how you encrypt passwords, and sensative data.

Have you had to deal with PCI DSS?

This is one of the differences between "I'm a developer who has maintained a
simple CRUD app" and "I'm a senior developer who can build a secure system".

Or in other words, authentication separates the men from the boys.

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agitator
I like seeing personal projects that solve interesting problems, and that show
that the person really considered the use cases and application of their
project (UX design, functionality, etc.). There are good engineers, and then
there are engineers that focus on why/who they are doing the engineer and I
think that's really important, especially in a startup setting where people
need to be intelligent self starters and hold themselves to high standards
without having someone breathing down their neck.

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sodafountan
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. 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.

~~~
gaius
_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

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camhenlin
I like to see projects that people are obviously passionate about. A project
that someone worked on with passion is likely to be some of their best work
and best ideas melded together. If the output of that is good, they're
probably worth giving a shot.

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edoceo
Anything that has shipped.

If you run an open project on GitHub I'll also look at your wiki and issues,
to evaluate communication.

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20years
Something that has shipped, acquired customers and made money. Those things
are more impressive to me than what framework, programming language, etc. you
used.

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lj3
Why would a programmer who can do all these things work for you?

~~~
kasey_junk
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.

~~~
lj3
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.

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lastofus
Something 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.

~~~
lj3
> 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.

~~~
lastofus
The question was what I find most impressive in a portfolio, not what I
require in a candidate. "Soft skills" on top of good engineering is extremely
impressive.

