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> 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 o

> 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 > If I'm looking at someone's personal site, it should look personal --- not "I cloned someone else's I found on GitHub To me that seems petty and I feel you'll end up isolating a good portion of the talent pool. Anecdotally, I can only recall a handful of personal sites that appeared to be truly personal (by your definition) and not all may have been. For whatever reason this reminds me of: https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/67e0hl/whenever_i_get_a_stack_of_resumes_i_throw_half_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/67e0hl/whenever_i_ge...

zapzupnz 7y ago
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.
- rgoulter 7y ago
  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 should look like, or how it should be written.
  - abhinuvpitale 7y ago
    It's actually a better thing to have a template to start with and then customise it to reflect what you want it to show.
  - xwdv 7y ago
    Expecting a dev to reuse code for a personal website is not reasonable. A personal website is not a software development project. It is not something to use to evaluate a developers technical skills. When you have a real project on the line, then you will see the real skills come out. For a personal website, I’d expect a developer to give a fuck enough to develop something on his own.
  - Ragib_Zaman 7y ago
    > Judgements like "I'd expect dev to write it themselves" come across as arbitrary. I feel like this depends on the type of dev. If you write C code for microcontrollers then who cares, but if you do web dev then using a generic template not authored by you seems like a bad sign, no?
    - ChickeNES 7y ago
      Why would you expect a webdev to do a designer's job?
    - rgoulter 7y ago
      Part of my concern is: judging a resume is fine, since an applicant is explicitly submitting this. But rejecting based on things done for fun and publicly shown seems 'unfair'. (It's 'unfair' since I'll be judged right now for crap I haven't glanced at for 5 years or whatever, and haven't maintained to the best of my professional ability). But part of why I consider it arbitrary is it's easy to come up with contradictory criteria, each of which might make sense. (-1 for using latest technology on a personal website, since it shows they buy into hype/resume-driven-development. -1 for not using the latest technology, since it shows they don't know the tools of the trade). I think this bleeds from trying to judge someone's professional capabilities as part of a team, from something produced in their spare time.
      - rumanator 7y ago
        > But rejecting based on things done for fun and publicly shown seems 'unfair'. Portfolio sites are used to showcase the developer's work. If the developer's work sucks then it doesn't matter if it was done just for fun or as an extension of his CV.
    - davvolun 7y ago
      If it accomplishes the minimum functional requirements without additional time/money, isn't that the point?
  - nextlevelwizard 7y ago
    Depends on the position. If a web dev is running standard out of the box WordPress Blog that should be some sort of a flag.
    - dgellow 7y ago
      Please, explain why then? That really doesn’t make sense to me. If someone setup their personal blog/website it’s something they do in their free time. Using the default template is a good way to spend their limited time on what matters, the actual content, instead of creating something that random people will find or not “personal looking enough to be worthy of the job position”. You get zero signal from the fact that someone decided to use a default template.
      - nextlevelwizard 7y ago
        If your profession is to create new, compelling, functional front ends and you opt for the easiest default you can imagine for your personal project, why wouldn't you opt for the most easiest thing on your work project? If I want just someone to write simple stuff I have whole of India to choose from and they are way cheaper than you. If I'm looking for a web dev from western market I'm looking for highly talented people and if you can not showcase that talent then what good are you for? From my experience thous who have no personal projects of passion that involve programming to any extend usually aren't that good at their job. That obviously doesn't mean that you can not or shouldn't have other hobbies that are not computer related, but again if it comes down to two candidates and one has proof of work in their github profile then the choice isn't that hard to make.
  - vonseel 7y ago
    If anything, writing my own website sounds like a waste of time, especially when there are so many good tools out there like Hugo, Jekyll, etc. and templates to use as a basis for any personal blog or portfolio. 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.
_hardwaregeek 7y ago
I don't think that parent comment means "you need to spend hours slaving over a personal website for me to look at". A unique site could be raw HTML with some links to projects. Or you could just not have a site and let your GitHub/LinkedIn/resume speak for itself. A cookie cutter site like this is arguably worse than no site because of how generic and uninspired it is
- kreetx 7y ago
  Exactly, and it is actually the content, i.e text, that matters, not the design (unless the person is a designer, at which point the homepage should be really good).
40four 7y ago
It is just one person's opinion. You don't have to try to slam it down as 'petty'. They didn't say they reject candidates based on this, simply that it doesn't make a 'good impression'. Weather you agree or not, it shouldn't be hard to understand why someone would think that.
- Xelbair 7y ago
  >It is just one person's opinion. You don't have to try to slam it down as 'petty'. Why? if it is petty, why not slam it? it is a single opinion - do we need at least N people to share it before we can slam it? >They didn't say they reject candidates based on this, simply that it doesn't make a 'good impression'. Weather you agree or not, it shouldn't be hard to understand why someone would think that. Unless you make 'Good Impression' on recruiter you aren't gonna pass forward in the process, so it is indeed equivalent with rejection.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

zapzupnz 7y ago

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.

rgoulter 7y ago
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 should look like, or how it should be written.
- abhinuvpitale 7y ago
  It's actually a better thing to have a template to start with and then customise it to reflect what you want it to show.
- xwdv 7y ago
  Expecting a dev to reuse code for a personal website is not reasonable. A personal website is not a software development project. It is not something to use to evaluate a developers technical skills. When you have a real project on the line, then you will see the real skills come out. For a personal website, I’d expect a developer to give a fuck enough to develop something on his own.
- Ragib_Zaman 7y ago
  > Judgements like "I'd expect dev to write it themselves" come across as arbitrary. I feel like this depends on the type of dev. If you write C code for microcontrollers then who cares, but if you do web dev then using a generic template not authored by you seems like a bad sign, no?
  - ChickeNES 7y ago
    Why would you expect a webdev to do a designer's job?
  - rgoulter 7y ago
    Part of my concern is: judging a resume is fine, since an applicant is explicitly submitting this. But rejecting based on things done for fun and publicly shown seems 'unfair'. (It's 'unfair' since I'll be judged right now for crap I haven't glanced at for 5 years or whatever, and haven't maintained to the best of my professional ability). But part of why I consider it arbitrary is it's easy to come up with contradictory criteria, each of which might make sense. (-1 for using latest technology on a personal website, since it shows they buy into hype/resume-driven-development. -1 for not using the latest technology, since it shows they don't know the tools of the trade). I think this bleeds from trying to judge someone's professional capabilities as part of a team, from something produced in their spare time.
    - rumanator 7y ago
      > But rejecting based on things done for fun and publicly shown seems 'unfair'. Portfolio sites are used to showcase the developer's work. If the developer's work sucks then it doesn't matter if it was done just for fun or as an extension of his CV.
  - davvolun 7y ago
    If it accomplishes the minimum functional requirements without additional time/money, isn't that the point?
- nextlevelwizard 7y ago
  Depends on the position. If a web dev is running standard out of the box WordPress Blog that should be some sort of a flag.
  - dgellow 7y ago
    Please, explain why then? That really doesn’t make sense to me. If someone setup their personal blog/website it’s something they do in their free time. Using the default template is a good way to spend their limited time on what matters, the actual content, instead of creating something that random people will find or not “personal looking enough to be worthy of the job position”. You get zero signal from the fact that someone decided to use a default template.
    - nextlevelwizard 7y ago
      If your profession is to create new, compelling, functional front ends and you opt for the easiest default you can imagine for your personal project, why wouldn't you opt for the most easiest thing on your work project? If I want just someone to write simple stuff I have whole of India to choose from and they are way cheaper than you. If I'm looking for a web dev from western market I'm looking for highly talented people and if you can not showcase that talent then what good are you for? From my experience thous who have no personal projects of passion that involve programming to any extend usually aren't that good at their job. That obviously doesn't mean that you can not or shouldn't have other hobbies that are not computer related, but again if it comes down to two candidates and one has proof of work in their github profile then the choice isn't that hard to make.
- vonseel 7y ago
  If anything, writing my own website sounds like a waste of time, especially when there are so many good tools out there like Hugo, Jekyll, etc. and templates to use as a basis for any personal blog or portfolio. 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.

_hardwaregeek 7y ago

I don't think that parent comment means "you need to spend hours slaving over a personal website for me to look at". A unique site could be raw HTML with some links to projects. Or you could just not have a site and let your GitHub/LinkedIn/resume speak for itself. A cookie cutter site like this is arguably worse than no site because of how generic and uninspired it is

kreetx 7y ago
Exactly, and it is actually the content, i.e text, that matters, not the design (unless the person is a designer, at which point the homepage should be really good).

40four 7y ago

It is just one person's opinion. You don't have to try to slam it down as 'petty'. They didn't say they reject candidates based on this, simply that it doesn't make a 'good impression'. Weather you agree or not, it shouldn't be hard to understand why someone would think that.

Xelbair 7y ago
>It is just one person's opinion. You don't have to try to slam it down as 'petty'. Why? if it is petty, why not slam it? it is a single opinion - do we need at least N people to share it before we can slam it? >They didn't say they reject candidates based on this, simply that it doesn't make a 'good impression'. Weather you agree or not, it shouldn't be hard to understand why someone would think that. Unless you make 'Good Impression' on recruiter you aren't gonna pass forward in the process, so it is indeed equivalent with rejection.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]