Only if you believe software development is neither engineering nor science, and is purely creative.
It isn't, though, and demanding a portfolio is almost as terrible a practice as Cracking the Coding Interview style interviews.
It isn't, though, and demanding a portfolio is almost as terrible a practice as Cracking the Coding Interview style interviews.
I have to believe it "is neither engineering nor science, and is purely creative"? Only those extremes? I believe it is some of all 3 and I don't think requesting (i.e. not "demanding") a portfolio or prior work is any more unreasonable than not asking for it.
Demanding a portfolio isn't a great hiring strategy simply because a lot of people's best work isn't out in the open. Who would demand a portfolio from someone like Mike Acton? It'd be enough to know what he's worked on and talk to him. And at the same time requiring a licensing proxy is no help either, he never went to college AFAIK and that'd probably be a minimum requirement for most actual licensing proposals.
On top of that, many electrical and mechanical engineers are not licensed because they don't need to be. (Everybody likes to jump to the civils in these discussions and forget about us, since civils are basically required to be licensed.). EEs and MEs don't get put through the same bullshit that this industry puts developers through.
Is your "portfolio piece" spaghetti code or well-thought-out modules? Is it doing something recursively that shouldn't be? Do you have elegant code or brute-force solutions? Is it write-only?
All of these can be seen in a portfolio or side project if you choose to look.
It's certainly not a science, and it's very rarely engineering. About the creativity, it's a craft. There is some creativity baked in, but about the same amount as for mechanics or carpentry.