Building a Portfolio: Showcasing Development Skills
A strong developer portfolio highlights 3-5 exceptional projects with live links and clear code to demonstrate expertise.
Page Summary
A guide to building a technical portfolio, defined as the deliberate selection and presentation of work samples that prove capability independent of credentials, opening with three developers whose portfolios reveal why curation matters. It covers what hiring managers actually evaluate, the quality-over-quantity curation principle, project-selection criteria and ideas by technical area, optimizing a GitHub profile, building the portfolio site and its common mistakes, documentation as a differentiator (the README as narrative and a technical-decisions section), and demonstrating growth.
Contributions
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Paul Sieminski's role at Automattic was General Counsel, not Head of Engineering.
BeforeHead of Engineering at Automattic Paul Sieminski described in a 2020 podcast interview
AfterGeneral Counsel at Automattic Paul Sieminski described in a 2020 podcast interview
Why: Paul Sieminski's role at Automattic is General Counsel, not Head of Engineering. Verified the live article body already reflects the correct title. The faq field does not mention Sieminski at all, so no secondary fix was needed there.
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