As an aspiring developer, it is good to have a portfolio of projects to not only build knowledge and experience with the technology you’re using but to use as code examples for when applying for a job as a programmer.
But I wonder whether potential employers actually look at these projects? (Genuine question)
If I were in the shoes of an employer or responsible for hiring a developer, will I really look at all of the projects in a programmers portfolio?
Maybe I’ll randomly select a few however, but even then I probably will skim through the logic or check for things like unit tests. I probably wouldn’t pull it down onto my local machine to run or even check that the tests even pass.
I myself have a portfolio of projects in my github profile, I doubt employers look at each individual projects in any detail at all.
My point is, is there really that much value creating a large number of projects for your portfolio? They can take a lot of time depending on what your project is and having too many will decrease the chances of a potential employer to look at them.
My Personal Experience 🧔
As mentioned earlier, I have a Github profile where I place all of my personal projects. When attending job interviews, the only time somebody had mentioned it was when they saw a repository called project_euler.
However, as of 18th June 2020, I only have a single completed code challenge in there. Had I had more code challenges in there I think the interviewer/developer would’ve been more impressed.
I do have a repo called csharp_projects which has a variety of code challenges as well as personal projects (specifically written in C#) all within the same repo.
(The reason I had organized it this way was because I wanted to branch off from PHP to C# professionally which was difficult to do without taking a pay cut, so this repo was the one I sent to potential employers to boost my chances.)
In hindsight, I think having the csharp_projects repo helped, but the amount of time it had taken to build all of these was very costly.
If I had a single solid project with all of the bells and whistles, deployed for the interviewer to demo, I think that would’ve had a greater impact than all of those smaller projects. Also, having a repo for code challenges would’ve gotten more attention more so than the others.
Summary 📝
Having built many projects and having a sizable portfolio, from a job hunting perspective, I think it actually deters interviewers from actually looking at them at all. I think it would be better to have only 1-2 great (sizable) projects and a repo dedicated to solving programming problems i.e. project_euler.
The projects you build should be built with the technology you’re applying with. For example, if I were to apply for ASP.Net Core roles, then ideally that project should be built with ASP.Net Core.
Having fewer projects will increase likelihood that the potential employer will actually look at your projects. Then having the coding problem repo will be the one where you can demonstrate how you solve programming challenges.