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5 Things I Learned by Asking Developers One Question

Shaundai Person on December 07, 2020

Breaking into engineering is no easy task. Over the past year, I’d gradually built the skills needed to transition from the only career I’ve ever ...
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Christopher Lien

Great tips & advice! The only thing I would waver from is using a generator to set up your portfolio. Wix and SquareSpace don't really speak to your engineering skills so I would suggest rather than using a CMS app, build from scratch. If you're not much of a UI designer you can use websites like html5up.net for some inspiration. Not only will building from scratch allow you to tighten up your programming skills but you'll also be able to play with new technologies and libraries you otherwise wouldn't use very often.

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Shaundai Person

Thanks so much, Christopher!

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z2lai

Holy smokes, just looking at all the designs on that landing page gave me so many ideas for my own portfolio website. Thank you so much, I've been stuck on design for far too long!

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Madza

All the business world is based on CRUD apps, so learn that 😉

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Robert Myers

In both the abbreviation and word definition.

During the interview for my first professional gig, they showed me some code, "Can you work with this codebase?". Looked at it and was "Yeah, sure. Did you know there's a bug here and here?". Hired on the spot, started fixing those bugs right after the interview.

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Shaundai Person

Providing value before you even get the job! Love to see it 😃

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Shaundai Person

ooooh..this is a good one!

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Danny Seymour

Awesome advice! Especially with being strategic about the types of projects and identifying key projects!

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Shaundai Person

Thank you so much Danny! This was huge for me because I kept wanting to build the funny random stuff because it was...funny and random! The project that got me my interview was a project where I connected to my company's open API and built an extension of our platform that I wanted to use. I used their styles by inspecting our platform with devtools and made a video about why it was going to be a key feature for our customers and the rest is history!

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Kristian Thy

This may of course vary by culture, but you might want to include a single quirky/twee project with all the enterprisey stuff in your portfolio. I've done hiring and if I'm looking at two portfolios, one with five enterprisey polished web apps and one with four enterprisey polished web apps and a catch-the-unicorn game with rainbow fart effects, guess which one is going to leave a lasting impression? As long as it's something you enjoy building and have executed well, it can go in your portfolio (but yes, keep the portfolio short and focused). A little personality goes a long way with me at least.

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Shaundai Person

Yup, I'm in favor of adding personality where you can and I don't think you need to abandon your unicorn farts completely. But most of your projects in the portfolio should be corporate-style unless the job posting specifically says that we want to see how fun and creative you are (or, of course, if the listing is for the junior unicorn fart generator role at the org). I 100% agree that this varies from company to company to pay attention to the culture (look on company page or on glassdoor) to get an idea before applying.

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Christopher Wray

I just have to say this thread is hilarious. thank you. 😂

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thandekaleo

🤣🤣🤣 abandon the unicorn farts.

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Shwetabh Shekhar

Great tips!

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Shaundai Person

thank you Shwetabh!

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🎧Cirphrank👣

Beautiful takes

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Jacqueline Binya

Thank you for the tips Shaundai. I am polishing up my portfolio this December. Starting job seeking next year.

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Shaundai Person

Best of luck, Jacqueline! You've got this :)

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z2lai

Very inspirational that you were able to make the switch in just one year as a full-time working mom. Thank you for sharing!

Do you have a portfolio website that I could look at?

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Shaundai Person

It's in the works! I started and was able to get away without finishing it because I switched to the engineering team at a company that I was already at. I made projects using my company's open API so a lot of the stuff I was building displays private info that I had access to but can't share publicly. That being said, all of the code for my personal projects are available on my github page (github.com/shaundai) and I'll be making another post when I finish and publish my polished portfolio

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Vitaly Shchurov • Edited

As someone who has come the same way, I totally agree with the article. Nice piece of advice!

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Shaundai Person

congratulations on making the switch :) Thank you, Vitaly!

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Afshar

My vote goes for #5

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Phong Duong

Thank you is the easiest response to everything. Great tips. Thank you for sharing

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Shaundai Person

Thank you, Phong

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Maxi Contieri

Great advices!

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Shaundai Person

thank you, Maxi! :)

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Mohammed Fellak

What do you think about this python one line piece of code?
value: query.lower() in (query for query in query.lower()
or
x if x % 2 else x * 100 for x in range(1, 10)

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Mayank Kumar

Great stuff dude !

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Shaundai Person

thank you!