Is the era of personal software portfolios over? | Hacker News Reader

Is the era of personal software portfolios over?

12 pointsjustanotherunit11 comments

Since the launch of AI agents it has become significant easier to develop prototypes and smaller software applications (of the most common like web and python apps) through Agent CLIs.

I personally view software a bit different now than I did over 3 years ago. The technical or architectural aspects is not as interesting to me anymore, since they could have been generated with the help of AI. This does not tell me that the person actually knows what is happening beneath the business layer, since the person might not have been the one who actually wrote it. Yeah that was doable before too with the help of almighty CTRL-C CTRL-V, but now we have an automated CTRL-C CTRL-V which rarely pastes the code in the wrong location.

Although I feel that when a specific scale is reached for an application, AI does not suffice anyway. That means the person actually requires to have deep architectural understandings of the concepts required to solve these problems, which was kind of the requirement before AI era. But does that just means I now value more ambitious software lower?

The current era of software development is quite shaky and weird IMO, and no one actually knows, everything is just an opinion-war.

So here goes my opinion. Has the rise of these tools lowered the value of personal software portfolios? What do you think?

I think the opposite: it raises the value of personal portfolios, assuming the portfolios are actually good and representative to begin with. Most aren't, and those ones are likely to be of less value.

This is an interesting question. I work with students (older teens/young adults) and they are dealing with similar issues. It seems like the world's expectations shifted very quickly under their feet.

I don't think anyone knows the answer. As a hiring manager, I definitely put less weight on generic CRUD apps etc nowadays. You can argue that people can actually just copy and paste from SO before, and that's true, but even with that you had to have some knowledge so integrate what you've copied. With AI assist, the process is orders of magnitude easier, as you can just re-try prompts etc.

What I look for instead is more information on the process of creation, which usually means examining their writing. How did they get the idea? how did they think about what features to build? But even this is not immune to AI contamination.

Overall, I think we're likely to move towards more reliance on verifiable longitudinal data rather than "spot checks". It's much more difficult/challenging to re-create for "portfolio cheaters", and easier for authentic applicants. I get my students to write a dev journal which I verify, and use that as part of a private portfolio that we can share with potential employers.

Overall, I'd say the vetting process is much more onerous on both sides and portfolios will now need proof-of-authenticity.

IMO not significantly. Prior to AI the bulk were tutorial based to-do apps or simple crud things anyway, its still easy to tell the difference between those and something more complex (where AI is less useful - or at least requires more skill to use successfully).

But I don't think the projects themselves really mattered all that much anyway - its the conversations you can have about them. Understanding the driving factors, whether it was solving a problem they have or just working on something they are passionate about, the challenges they overcame in the development process and the considerations/decisions they made along the way.

Yes, I agree totally. But portfolios served a great purpose to expose what you can and what you know to the world and recruiters. Which would then lead to a opportunity to talk about the projects.

We might be going back to a more oldschool approach where talking directly and presenting themselves would be more of a value again. It have always been an higher value, but now it will be kinda more forced I believe.

Another route would be that portfolios become more blog-based, talking about different solutions and problems for each project, as you are saying.

agree with most of the comments here that generic software projects are becoming less valuable from a hiring standpoint

perhaps im of the view that since software building will continue to be democratized, i think it becomes about creating more technically challenging projects with the aid of AI, or creating external impact with the software that you create, e.g., making something people care about or want to pay for (partially the quality and execution of your software idea beyond the ide and github). but potentially this is "founder" heavy mindset to this

Depends on what you show in your portfolio? I never understood devs that show half baked and simple web apps in their portfolios. What’s the point? To show your have commitment? To show that you have passion? Because those apps don’t usually show quality or challenging design topics.

I keep all my half baked apps to myself.

Agreed. When I was involved on the interviewing side, it was not uncommon for applicants to prominently list their Github URL on their resume - only for it to be filled create-react-app web app tutorials. I'm not sure what kind of signal they're trying to send...

>Is the value of a portfolio decreasing?

Partially, yes. If your portfolio is 5 small web applications or Python scripts that AI can make in half an hour, their weight as a “demonstration of skills” drops.So, the fact that you can do it manually is no longer impressive.

What becomes important now: Architecture at scale — AI does not yet know all the nuances of large systems, distributed services, performance optimization, and security.

Business logic integration — understanding how the business actually works, where the pain points are, how users interact with the product.

Creativity and unique concepts — AI can create boilerplate, but it doesn't always understand that it is creating something fundamentally new.

Moral: AI takes away the “simple feats” but opens up new space for true engineering mavens. If you can do something that AI can’t easily replicate, your portfolio gets even cooler.

I agree, that would also require engineers to become more invested into core domain problems, which would then lead to more specialised skills (deeper, not broader). My guess is that not everyone actually likes this, but as for now most of the current state points to that direction.

I wonder whats business integration covers in personal portofolios looks like. As far as I know I only seen articles and self contained project.

> AI does not yet know all the nuances of large systems, distributed services, performance optimization, and security.

I'd say guess again. The chamber in the revolver of the russian roulette that is our careers just got infinitely larger, bets are off.

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