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Comment by 7Figures2Commas | Hacker News Reader

It seems to me that software engineering is one of the only fields with people arrogant enough to assume that employers should hire folks without being able to see what they've actually accomplished.

A "portfolio" does not have to, and should not, consist of side projects. Don't have any real code that you are allowed to share? Obviously, many employers won't hire engineers without reviewing existing code or having you engage in a coding exercise, but here's an idea: take a bunch of screenshots of public-facing applications/functionality you've built for your current and/or past employers. With WordPress and a $25 portfolio theme, you can have a decent-looking showcase of your work product up and running in a matter of hours.

If you have absolutely nothing that you can share (code, screenshots, a URL, a "case study") with a prospective employer, it's not the prospective employer that has a problem.

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What? Not everyone works on front-facing, UI applications. What if I contributed a good amount of code to a large tech company's networking infrastructure. What do you want me to show you? A picture of the servers? A picture of Amazon's homepage or google.com, if those are the companies I'm working for?

Not being able to show "code" or "screenshots" is not the fault of the prospective employee (as you "oh so subtly" implied with your last sentence).

If you're concerned about your ability to convince a prospective employer that you're the real deal, that's for you to figure out, isn't it?

The point here is not what you share, but that you have something to share and can present it in a manner that's compelling to your prospective employer. In some cases, that might be nothing more than a well-written, detailed description of what you developed. In others, a picture is worth a thousand words and can a preferable format for somebody who isn't a great writer.

And finally, while I wouldn't be so naive as to argue that "engineering" equals "working on public-facing applications", engineers should consider the risks of roles that do not enable them to work on systems that are "visible" or "close to the money". Obviously, there are some industries and specializations that provide lucrative opportunities that don't do this, so there are exceptions. Not every young engineer, however, can realistically count on being able to build a decades-long career in these industries/roles.

> A "portfolio" does not have to, and should not, consist of side projects.

I agree with this

> If you have absolutely nothing that you can share (code, screenshots, a URL, a "case study") with a prospective employer, it's not the prospective employer that has a problem.

I disagree with this. If you require this to be true, you've instantly excluded everyone's experience in either government (particularly defense), or industry when you work on internal services. There's a huge number of enterprise developers at my current company who will never be able to show you their work because they're all internal applications. Maybe a "case study" would work, but you have to be real careful of not to cover anything that doesn't fall into the trade secret category.

If you're in an industry where it's typical for candidates to be limited in what they can share, then ostensibly the hiring criteria and process would reflect this.

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