Do Back-End Developers Even Have Portfolios? | Hacker News Reader

Do Back-End Developers Even Have Portfolios?

17 pointsjtrevdev18 comments

For ~3 months now, I have been building https://www.webportfolios.dev - a place for showcasing developer portfolios.

Within this amount of time, I have occasionally tried to find portfolios from back end developers to reach out to, but I've noticed that they are surprisingly rare compared to front-end or full-stack portfolios. This got me wondering—do back-end developers even bother creating portfolios?

If you’re a back-end dev, do you have one? If not, do you feel like it’s unnecessary for your career? Would a well-structured portfolio actually help in job searches, or is LinkedIn and GitHub enough?

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War-stories yes, portfolios no.

For example, how am I supposed to show off the OS build system for a proprietary rackmount widget that goes in a large airplane, where its chief achievement is seamlessly running patched and cross-compiled code that I didn't make which is also proprietary?

Or an internal ERP system that doesn't exist anymore for company which been acquired and digested by a bigger one.

I can't show off the code I'm proud of, I don't have permission or infrastructure to run it on my own... At best I might be able to make some sort of video in advance, but that won't tell you anything about the pieces I really worked on. It is both frustrating and freeing.

8 YoE checking in. I have a github, but that's about it and even that is mostly geared toward my endeavors to go full-stack. The fact is that no one cares. In my area of expertise (restful web apps with a spring-java-jpa stack) you don't really need to look at someone's whole project in order to tell if they're experienced and knowledgable. Often it's just a matter of a quick conversation or some pair coding. "Build me a ReSTful API using spring that takes in a string and returns the reverse", and we sit on a call together while you do that, followed by "describe to me a piece of functionality that you built that you're proud of, and another one that you were frustrated by" with some followup questions for each. It's how every interview I've ever participated in, on either side, worked.

I bothered creating a back-end dev portfolio. I have web pages that describe things I worked on. Some contain working software.

I feel it's necessary for my career. It explains to a potential employer or interviewer or recruiter the depth of my skills.

I'm highly confident a well-structured portfolio doesn't actually help in today's job search. In past job search efforts maybe it helped.

I don't know if LinkedIn and GitHub are enough. I have neither.

My back-end portfolio shows about 20% of the backend projects I worked on. When a project I launch doesn't get adopted and shows no interest from users I shut it down, often within a month. Some of my best work won't be seen by anyone.

Back end coder for about 18 years.

I don't have one, and no employer in an interview has ever really expressed interest in something like that.

In the interview that got me my current job, the manager brought in two developers I would be working with. One of them had found my GitHub repos where I had some small personal projects, so he was able to see some evidence that I knew what I was doing.

So that was useful, but I don't think it would have helped to have had anything more portfolio-ish than that.

If I was a backend developer (and I am not one FWIW), I imagine I can't point at the back end of production systems that I've worked on because the internals are covered by an NDA, some legal intellectual property restriction, or I'm barred from doing it under some information security policy.

I.e., it may be impossible to create a portfolio for the majority of things you work on as a backend developer. Front-end developers work a lot on public-facing things that lack any of these restrictions, and so it is likely much easier to create a portfolio website. Screenshots of the back-end may land someone in court.

I'm a still relatively early career back end developer, and github basically acts as a portfolio for anything that potential companies would want to see.

Think about what a portfolio site demonstrates. For a front end developer, these sites provide an opportunity to flex your design intuition and raw development skills by putting something flashy together. Your site could make a difference because it's demonstrating that you can do the day-to-day tasks you're being hired to do.

For a back end developer, the results of our work are less immediately obvious for someone who isn't already technically inclined, and by the time you talk to someone like that, you've already cleared the initial screening bar that a portfolio site would get a front end dev past. There's no real visual component to the work I do, so a site doesn't demonstrate anything related to my job. I still maintain a personal site with some rough details, but I don't think it's really helpful for my career.

I would also consider that front end devs generally enjoy working on the front end, while back end devs generally enjoy their work on the back end. So I'm way less likely to do web dev in my spare time, especially since 90% of portfolio sites have no back end whatsoever.

I think this is a disadvantage many developers face. Their entire life's work is tied to some proprietary product and when they leave their company (or get laid off), they effectively have nothing to show for it. Sure, you have the experience and the knowledge gained, but nothing material. This is why I encourage devs to turn proprietary work into something that's "theirs." For example, writing blog posts about your work, contributing to open source (or convincing your company to opensource something you worked on), side projects, etc.

It's unfortunate that we have to do this extra work, compared to, for instance, researchers in academia or, say, a Linux maintainer, who "own" their work (or at least get credit for it).

Isn't a portfolio basically a visual-arts thing? It had never before occurred to me that any kind of developer would have one, though now you mention it I can see how front-end web design could have enough overlap with graphic design that it would make sense for them.

I definitely see your point, it's basically just a flashier resume.

Typically web developers, front end, and full stack have a portfolio. Where most of the reasoning behind it is simply influence from social media where people mention it's a good way to stand out.

From the amount of research I've done trying to find portfolios from back end developers it seems like they don't share the ideology that it's a good thing to have.

I think it might boil down to the possibility that they typically don't have an option to include a "personal website" on a lot of their job applications, that's my reasoning for having a portfolio.

I think it's simpler than that: the profession of software development had already been around for many years by the time the web came along, and it never had any culture of portfolios. Most of what most devs do has no visual aspect. It makes sense that a culture of portfolio-making would arise within visually-focused specialties like frontend web development or game development, but the reason backend devs don't do that is probably just that devs in general don't do that.

I don't have a portfolio for my professional work, but I have a personal GitHub account I can point to for a number of topics (osdev, embedded, reverse-engineering...). I've started a blog to document some of my personal work, which can be politely summarized as the kind of computer engineering which is not taught in class.

Both have proven useful to help nail my latest job as a demonstration of various skill sets they were looking for. I do not think making a portfolio would be that useful in my case over the resources I've already put out there.

I'm a journeyman back end programmer. I've kept up a GitHub account full of explorations of various topics for years. I've had maybe 2 potential employers check it out.

I have a blog with lots of homelab and programming related writing on it.

I'm not sure what a "portfolio" would do differently, other than create more work.

I am not a full back-end developer, more full stack currently. I do not have a portfolio. Linking to github and highlighting projects is usually enough for prospective employers and gets me into interviews.

That's good, having a portfolio could be a bit of a rabbit hole.

It's easy to get distracted tweaking it and having it take the blame for why you might not be having more interviews.

I only have a portfolio because there has been a good handful of job applications that HAVE required a "personal website / portfolio".

I can see that not everyone needs a portfolio.

No.

I don’t spend time after work coding and I never have. No one is going to take time looking at a portfolio when every job opening gets hundreds of applications. Your resume barely gets looked at.

its called a resume?

You know what I was saying ;)

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