[pdimitar]

I have 23 years of experience and I am almost invisible on GitHub, and for all those years I've been fired from 4 contracts due to various disconnects (one culture mis-fit and two under-performances due to illness I wasn't aware of at the time, and one because the company literally restructured over the weekend and fired 80% of all engineers), and I have been contracting a lot in the last 10 years (we're talking 17-19 gigs).

If you look solely at my GitHub you'd likely reject me right away.

I wish I had the time and energy for passion projects in programming. I so wish it was so. But commercial work has all but destroyed my passion for programming, though I know it can be rekindled if I can ever afford to take a properly long sabbatical (at least 2 years).

I'll more agree with your parent / sibling comments: take a look at the resume and look for bad signs like too vanilla / AI language, too grandiose claims (though when you are experienced you might come across as such so 50/50), or almost no details, general tone etc.

And the best indicator is a video call conversation, I found as a candidate. I am confident in what I can do (and have done), I am energetic and love to go for the throat of the problems on my first day (provided the onboarding process allows for it) and it shows -- people have told me that and liked it.

If we're talking passion, I am more passionate about taking a walk with my wife and discussing the current book we're reading, or getting to know new people, or going to the sauna, or wondering what's the next meetup we should be going to, stuff like that. But passion + work, I stand apart by being casual and not afraid of any tech problems, and by prioritizing being a good teammate first and foremost (several GitHub-centric items come to mind: meaningful PR comments and no minutiae, good commit messages, proper textual comment updates in the PR when f.ex. requirements change a bit, editing and re-editing a list of tasks in the PR description).

I already do too much programming. Don't hold it against me if I don't live on the computer and thus have no good GitHub open projects. Talk to me. You'll get much better info.

[johnnyanmac]

Iroincally I'd probably have more github projects if I didn't spend 20 months looking for a full-time job.

And tbh, at the senior level they rarely care about personal projects. I must have had 60+ interviews and I feel a lack of a github cost me maybe 2 positions. When you job is getting a job, you rarely have the time for passion.I'm doing contract work in the meantime; prevents gaps from showing, more appealing than a personal project, and I can talk about that to the extent of my NDA (plenty of tech to talk about without revealing the project)

[pdimitar]

> Iroincally I'd probably have more github projects if I didn't spend 20 months looking for a full-time job.

Same. I could afford not working throughout most of 2023 but I had to deal with ruined health + my leeway didn't last as long as I hoped so I was back on the treadmill just when I was starting to enjoy some freedom and a peace of mind.

> And tbh, at the senior level they rarely care about personal projects. I must have had 60+ interviews and I feel a lack of a github cost me maybe 2 positions.

I have no idea how much it costed me but I was told in no uncertain terms 10+ times that having a GitHub portfolio would have meant no take-home assignment, and skipping parts of the interview I already attended. So it definitely carries weight _and_ can help shorten hiring processes.

So I don't feel it was a deal-breaker for the people who interviewed me either but I think it would have netted me more points, so to speak.

Assuming you are graded and are the same person:

Without portfolio: 7/10

With portfolio: 8/10

...for example.

> I'm doing contract work in the meantime

Same x2, but it's mentally draining. No stability. That removes future bandwidth that would have been used for those passion projects.

TL;DR a lot of things conspire to rob you of your creative potential. :(

[aakresearch]

Brilliantly put! Upvoted and "favorited".

I would also add meticulous attention to documenting requirements and decisions taken along the development process, especially where compromises were made. All the "why's", so to speak.

But yes, commercial development, capital-A "Agile" absolutely kills the drive.

[pdimitar]

Thank you. <3

And yep I didn't want to make my comment too big. I make double sure to document any step-by-step processes on "how to make X or Y work", especially when I stumble upon a confusing bug in a feature branch. I go out of my way to devise a 100% reproducible process and document it.

Those, plus yours, and even others, are what makes a truly good programmer IMO.

[dennis_jeeves2]

>I am energetic and love to go for the throat of the problems on my first day

The long term goal should be that you should NOT be energetic, yet be able to pretend that you are. We'll see where you are at the 33 year mark :)