Comment by sireat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sireat | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

#2 is indeed a mixed bag. Hopefully the interviewer realized that only source code samples are a good positive indicator of programming prowess, the rest are fluff, nice to have, but fluff none the less.

The best programmer (I estimate he is the 10x at least) that I know, has no SO profile, no tumblr, no twitter. Pretty sure, he has not committed any patches to open source projects in recent years. He comes at work, gets more done in 5 hours than a team of 4-5 people, then he leaves to go home to his family. He is the one who can handle 100k project with ease (and probably 1million project). His knowledge of code and the ability to travel move up/down abstraction chain is astounding, he knows more about my source code than me, and he only has glanced on it a few times.

If he was looking for a new job, he would not be able to show the closed source he is working on, as it is a large embedded project.

Granted this is an edge case, but there are programmers like him out there.

Actually there are a lot of programmers like these. I have a relative of mine, who has around 20+ experience in embedded software/hardware areas.

He has made tons of cash, built amazing stuff. Run and sold a start up and is currently running a small company. He has enough cash to retire, but he is one of the folks to whom retirement doesn't mean not working. He doesn't have a blog, his idea of social network is probably his linkedin profile, nothing more. And he doesn't harp and tweet about every single discovery he is making every two hours(which is pretty common today). He just works like crazy, gets work done, makes his money as silently as he can.

There are a lot of folks like these, but they are hidden, they keep to themselves. Make enough money doing what they like. And are generally at places they want to work at. You can't really interview such people. Because they choose you, you don't get to choose them.

So clearly common interviewing techniques are not for guys like these. And most of these guys don't work at big Web giants.

He has a portfolio, then. For example, here's my portfolio from 2002-2006: http://www.lumenera.com/products/surveillance-cameras/index..... I was solely responsible for version 1.0 of the software and led the team that did version 2.0.

Sorry, we are now stretching the term "portfolio". Your link is what I would call an item in your resume, with a quick summary about which you would be ready to talk during the interview.

I think when Jeff Atwood says "portfolio" he means not just things you'd put on your resume, but source code and publicly available articles you've written, and for some reason a twitter account.

But not just "I developed that closed source project, over there." That's what everyone has on their resume.

-- Ninja Edit---

Actually I just looked at Jeff's other article, and apparently what he calls a "portfolio", is what I call a well written resume.

I think the point is: portfolio = "what did you do?", whereas resume = "where did you work?"

If all your resume contains is a list of previous employers, that is a horrible resume!

Where/when you worked should be just a company name and a date. That's it. It should be followed by a very brief description of what you did there.

So OP's resume would contain something like:

- Lumera (2002-2006):

I was solely responsible for version 1.0 of the software and led the team that did version 2.0.

I have a relative of mine, who has around 20+ experience in embedded software/hardware areas

How exactly is he going to put up an online portfolio, or a link to a website, when he works in embedded software/hardware. Not everything programming related is done for the web!

Besides, your link that you have provided means nothing since I can't see your source code... unless you are going for a job as a front end coder of course.

Sounds exactly like a senior sw engineer I work with. The guy is incredibly productive and an excellent mentor. He hates social networks, doesn't have a github account, and all his best code (and mine) are locked up in private IP that can't be thrown into a portfolio.

I'd hope that not having a portfolio isn't a deal breaker in Jeff's hiring approach. My co-worker would be able to give any interviewer a very interesting and detailed discussion about past projects.

Absolutely there are competent programmers with no hobby code out there. I know, I was one of them when I applied for my current gig.

But if a candidate with the skills for the job really wants it very much, then merely not having any dusty code laying around readily at had should do absolutely nothing to prevent them from being able to deliver a sample, given a few days' notice.

For my part, when they asked for sample code, I said, "Hey, I usually leave my work at work, but if you give me a day I can whip something up for you." And I spent the evening grinding out code, and was able to deliver a tarball the next day.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com