2 ms·

You are the one who said body of work, the other person said portfolio. Stuff that you can't share isn't a portfolio.

• lmeyerov 6y ago
  most students don't work on classified fbi projects, see in the thread on some of the projects I've seen undergrads involved in that are more demonstrative than grades. a project portfolio is just a cv section that focuses on the projects and your involvement, and hopefully ways for the interviewer to see it and the code, but even descriptions and screenshots go far for the interview conversation. most good cs programs have significant project components, and students not putting in their project time there are often doing so elsewhere. if not, they may have the potential to be good at projects, but tbd. without other strong signals, probably fewer startups are in a good position to take that bet. also, going beyond students, the top programmers I've worked with have a history of great public and private projects - papers, $100B companies, top frameworks, launched top products, record breaking results, news articles around their impact, etc. The main exceptions are 'lifer at apple' types and 'works at secret bank', but most hop jobs enough that it's not an issue. A top group I see that really struggle a lot are 'lifer at secret gov agency x', which gets many of them stuck in the defense contractor round door. we may have different experiences for what top means and what they help achieve. Who is this silent majority of top 1% programmers that don't have any referenceable projects? And more to the point, top intern candidates?
  • jfrunyon 6y ago
    Many of the best programmers I know never went to school for programming.