“But my friend got hired because of their portfolio!”

That’s great for them. I would still caution the majority of developers from spending too much time on a site that:

• No one will really look at
• Becomes immediately irrelevant after your first job as a developer
• Takes time away from preparing for technical interviews

You’ve heard it’s the golden ticket for junior devs to land a dream job. But let’s be real: your portfolio probably won’t be the reason you get hired. You should absolutely still make one.

You’re Not a Designer… and you shouldn’t become one

Most junior developer portfolios are not visually stunning. They’re not going to win any design awards, and that’s okay.

You’re a developer, not a designer.

Even on small teams, it’s likely you will have someone who provides the designs for the dev team to implement. Otherwise, every site would look like Craigslist… and probably wouldn’t require 10^10 npm packages.

The Real Value of a Portfolio

So, if your portfolio isn’t going to be the pièce de résistance of your job application, what’s the point? The value lies elsewhere:

Learning New Technologies

Building a portfolio is your sandbox for learning new technologies. Want to get your hands dirty with NextJS or dabble in GraphQL? Your portfolio is the perfect playground. You’re not just building a website; you’re building your skill set.

Perhaps your bootcamp taught you an outdated stack or didn’t cover unit testing (PS. I got you covered in that case. You should join Parsity) - this is the time to incorporate those missing pieces.

Now when your next interviewer inevitably asks

“So what’s an interesting or technically challenging project you’ve worked on?” You can have an interesting answer.

There’s another important experience your portfolio offers:

Your First Deployment

Struggling with a deployment, pulling out your hair and scouring the internet for answers is a rite of passage, my friend.

Why does it work on my machine but not on the web?

A tale as old as time.

Environment variables.

Domain names.

Module bundling.

Oh you’re using React Router? This will be even more fun 😅.

(BTW - I just experimented with a few services and I recommend Render.com for Node/Express, Vercel for Next.JS (duh) and AWS Amplify for most front end sites using a popular framework)

If You’re Going to Do It, Do It Right

I can’t tell you how many people have sent me links to their portfolios over the years.

The first thing I do is look at it in mobile view. About 25% of sites break at this point.

Next, I open the browser tools. Wait, they logged my password to the console?

Really, they used an alert?

If you’re hell-bent on creating a portfolio, consider using a template. Like, strongly consider it.

Why? Because it’ll look more professional and it’s closer to the experience of working in a real job setting. You’ll be refactoring an existing codebase, which is a skill you’ll use daily in a professional environment.

Also, your site will look a hell of a lot better. You chose Comic Sans for the font and a color scheme which should come with a warning. Hey, not like I’m any better 😅

Your FREE Mini-LinkedIn Course

I honestly appreciate you for reading this far. I enjoy writing this newsletter and as a thank you, I’m gonna give you access to a set of videos I made about LinkedIn to help you

• Optimize your profile
• Search for jobs and people that are hiring
• Grow your following and influence without posting
• Develop a content strategy

Lastly, use these templates to get started writing on LinkedIn. If they work - tag me! If they don’t… I take no credit 😅.

Your learning in public templates here