[scarface74]

That's just outright factually inaccurate. Are you expecting employers to hire on blind faith? If employers are hiring without evidence to support your skill-set, then their hiring process is broken.

I haven't had any publicly accessible work to show off since I posted a HyperCard stack on AOL and freeware FTP sites while I was in college in 1995. I've been working as a professional developer since 1996, have never been asked to show code and have a pretty good track record for getting jobs based on solely my interview skills and knowledge.

At this point in my career, few companies waste time even asking me about technical trivia. I talk about the projects of the teams I've been on and led. I've gotten jobs over the past 10 years where I didn't meet half of the requirements going in.

[always_good]

Surely the argument isn't that a portfolio is a necessary positive signal, but rather that it's just a positive signal.

In other words, would you take the stance that having some quality work on Github can never work in your favor?

What about other positive-but-not-guaranteed signals like having a quality blog where you cover technical topics? Can that ever work in your favor? Or is it pure noise that can never demonstrate value?

[scarface74]

I have to admit my own bias against actually doing side projects. While I will read technical books dealing with high level concepts, I've never done a side project outside of work.

I'd rather try to champion technology at my job and do a proof of concept or if that isn't possible, change jobs.

I've been able to find jobs where what I am good at is a "requirement" and where what I want to learn is a "nice to have" and learn the nice to have.

I find it carries a lot more weight to be able to talk about how you have used technology at work than a side project unless the side project was a really popular open source project.

Then again, I never work for companies with a large development team where I can't have a large, resume building impact.