4 ms·

I'm a salaried software/database guy for the last 10 years. I ceased programming for personal pleasure before github was invented and haven't done anything more

I'm a salaried software/database guy for the last 10 years. I ceased programming for personal pleasure before github was invented and haven't done anything more complex than a minor tool on my own time in years. My personal website is a wordpress blog we've I've dumped some photos of the hardware stuff I do as a hobby. I'm curious to hear how this factors into your views on what to look for when hiring people?

cortesoft 7y ago
Once you have a certain amount of experience, I don't think a person's website is going to matter anymore.
- onion2k 7y ago
  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.
  - lazyasciiart 7y ago
    I am a web dev and I hire web devs. It's never crossed my mind to evaluate them based on personal sites. (My own personal sites are unstyled html!)
  - JDiculous 7y ago
    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 simple WordPress site.)
    - onion2k 7y ago
      Otherwise for any dev with experience, this is a dumb expectation. 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.
      - JDiculous 7y ago
        Personally I place more weight on their professional experience / portfolio and don't feel that having a pretty or flashy site is a good predictor of a developer's ability, especially when most devs are using templates anyways. But yea, all else equal a nicer site is an advantage even if a minimal one at that, not going to disagree with you there.
        onion2k 7y ago
        While it's nice for someone to have a public portfolio of URLs they've worked on you can't really rely on that so much now. 15 years ago sure, everyone made websites so you just asked to see what site's the candidate had built. Over the past 10 years I've found it increasingly common that developers working with front end tech are building things they can't show off - SaaS, internal apps, etc. That's one of the reasons I like to see a personal site or a side project - often that's the only publicly visible code they have.
        JDiculous 7y ago
        Ok sure, if you have nothing to show off and no publicly visible code, then sure a nice site might help. My last two companies I worked at have publicly visible websites that I worked on that I can point to, so I don't see why that would matter in my case.
      - hombre_fatal 7y ago
  - stefanfisk 7y ago
    As a frontend developer, I've gotten by with this as my one and only webpage for almost ten years now: https://stefanfisk.com https://stefanfisk.com
    - onion2k 7y ago
      What I find interesting about your site is that you've updated it at least once to use more modern web standards - that <main> tag was introduced in HTML5 in 2014, and before that you had a PNG image for your name (https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://stefanfisk.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://stefanfisk.com/). Updating a site to give the user a better experience (eg to use semantic tags) is great.
      - stefanfisk 7y ago
        Yeah, it’s gotten some love every now and then. In the beginning I felt like I would need a portfolio and all that, so this minimal thing was supposed to be super temporary. But it turned out that actually talking to customers about their needs and what I could do for them was a quite reliable way to land projects. If anyone asks to see prior projects I send them a selected list that seems appropriate in that context.
userbinator 7y ago
I'm curious to hear how this factors into your views on what to look for when hiring people? Having a WordPress blog is generic enough that it alone won't really sway any opinion, but the content you have on it can. The same goes for a GitHub account. It's really the "I copied someone else's work and made it look like it's mine" type of thing that gives a bad impression.

cortesoft 7y ago

Once you have a certain amount of experience, I don't think a person's website is going to matter anymore.

onion2k 7y ago
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.
- lazyasciiart 7y ago
  I am a web dev and I hire web devs. It's never crossed my mind to evaluate them based on personal sites. (My own personal sites are unstyled html!)
- JDiculous 7y ago
  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 simple WordPress site.)
  - onion2k 7y ago
    Otherwise for any dev with experience, this is a dumb expectation. 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.
    - JDiculous 7y ago
      Personally I place more weight on their professional experience / portfolio and don't feel that having a pretty or flashy site is a good predictor of a developer's ability, especially when most devs are using templates anyways. But yea, all else equal a nicer site is an advantage even if a minimal one at that, not going to disagree with you there.
      - onion2k 7y ago
        While it's nice for someone to have a public portfolio of URLs they've worked on you can't really rely on that so much now. 15 years ago sure, everyone made websites so you just asked to see what site's the candidate had built. Over the past 10 years I've found it increasingly common that developers working with front end tech are building things they can't show off - SaaS, internal apps, etc. That's one of the reasons I like to see a personal site or a side project - often that's the only publicly visible code they have.
        JDiculous 7y ago
        Ok sure, if you have nothing to show off and no publicly visible code, then sure a nice site might help. My last two companies I worked at have publicly visible websites that I worked on that I can point to, so I don't see why that would matter in my case.
    - hombre_fatal 7y ago
- stefanfisk 7y ago
  As a frontend developer, I've gotten by with this as my one and only webpage for almost ten years now: https://stefanfisk.com https://stefanfisk.com
  - onion2k 7y ago
    What I find interesting about your site is that you've updated it at least once to use more modern web standards - that <main> tag was introduced in HTML5 in 2014, and before that you had a PNG image for your name (https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://stefanfisk.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://stefanfisk.com/). Updating a site to give the user a better experience (eg to use semantic tags) is great.
    - stefanfisk 7y ago
      Yeah, it’s gotten some love every now and then. In the beginning I felt like I would need a portfolio and all that, so this minimal thing was supposed to be super temporary. But it turned out that actually talking to customers about their needs and what I could do for them was a quite reliable way to land projects. If anyone asks to see prior projects I send them a selected list that seems appropriate in that context.

userbinator 7y ago

I'm curious to hear how this factors into your views on what to look for when hiring people? Having a WordPress blog is generic enough that it alone won't really sway any opinion, but the content you have on it can. The same goes for a GitHub account. It's really the "I copied someone else's work and made it look like it's mine" type of thing that gives a bad impression.