001 - a portfolio shouldn't be a résumé

I’ve made a few portfolios at this point and, looking back, they all kinda did the same thing.

here’s my name.
here’s where I went to school.
here’s where I’ve worked.
here are some projects.
here are 14 technology logos so you know I’ve opened PostgreSQL before.

which is fine.

that’s what a portfolio is supposed to do, right?

but while rebuilding this site I kept running into the same problem:

I already have a résumé.

you already know what I can do

If you’re actually looking at this site for professional reasons, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve already seen my résumé.

Maybe you’ve looked at my GitHub. Maybe we’ve already talked. Maybe you’ve talked to somebody I’ve worked with.

You probably already know I’m a software developer.

I don’t think you need another page telling you I know TypeScript.

That wasn’t always true.

Earlier in my career, my portfolio absolutely needed to be a giant LOOK I CAN MAKE THINGS sign.

I didn’t have years of experience to point at. Projects were the experience. If I wanted somebody to know I could build something, the easiest answer was basically:

here. I built this.

And honestly, I still like that. It’s why there’s still a Work page on this site.

But I don’t think proving I can make software needs to be the entire website anymore.

At some point I started caring about a different question:

what am I actually like to work with?

because you don’t work with a résumé

This is probably one of the bigger things I’ve learned from actually working with other developers.

Two people can look almost identical on paper and be completely different people to work with.

Same degree. Same stack. Similar experience.

Both can probably close the ticket.

but that’s such a tiny part of working with somebody.

Who’s going to see something weird and spend 20 minutes figuring out how it works just because they want to know?

Who’s willing to go “yeah I have no fucking idea” instead of bullshitting their way through it?

Who’s gonna notice someone else has been stuck on something and go look at it with them?

Who’s going to spend three hours polishing something nobody asked them to polish because it feels wrong?

More importantly, who’s able to realize this absolutely does not need another three hours and ship the damn thing?

That stuff is hard to put on a résumé without sounding like you’re writing LinkedIn fanfiction about yourself.

But it matters.

You’re not spending eight hours a day with someone’s skills section.

You’re spending it with some dude.

so anyways, I put my desk on the internet

yeah.

That’s partially how we got here.

Instead of making the homepage another wall of projects and experience, I put a big ass interactive desk on it.

The keyboard is based on one I’d actually use.

The weird trackball is intentional.

There are computers I like. Japanese is everywhere. There’s a chair with wheels. I’m apparently standing next to the desk.

none of this is particularly useful information.

but it kinda is?

You can learn a lot about someone from the things they choose to care about when nobody is requiring them to care.

Nobody told me this portfolio needed a 3D desk.

It definitely did not need lighting that changes as it moves.

Nobody required me to make the site properly bilingual.

Nobody was going to reject my application because the tiny interaction I was staring at at 1am didn’t feel quite right.

I just wanted to make those things.

Partially because I thought they’d be cool.

Partially because apparently this is how I choose to spend my free time.

And I think that tells you more about me than putting React • TypeScript • Node.js underneath my name again.

maybe optimizing everything is boring

There’s a ton of advice about how a developer portfolio is supposed to work.

Projects above the fold. Recruiter sees experience immediately. Clear CTA. Tech stack visible within five seconds. Don’t make people look for things.

and like…

yeah.

that’s probably good advice.

If the sole purpose of this website was converting page views into interviews, I could probably make something much more efficient.

But I already have the boring document for that.

It’s called my résumé.

I don’t really want the other thing that’s supposed to represent me to be optimized until there’s nothing left of me in it.

Maybe somebody sees the desk and thinks it’s unnecessary.

It is.

Maybe somebody doesn’t care what keyboard I use.

Fair enough.

Maybe making someone click Work instead of immediately dumping twelve project cards in their face costs me something according to whatever the current portfolio meta is.

that’s fine.

I’d rather you leave this site knowing slightly more about me than knowing slightly more about my ability to arrange cards in a responsive grid.

which is probably why this page exists too

I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do with Writing at first.

I knew I wanted it.

I just don’t particularly want to become a guy who posts:

How I Increased My React App Performance by 37%

There are people much smarter than me writing genuinely good technical material.

There are also approximately nine billion articles explaining how to set up Vite.

We’re good.

I think I’d rather put stuff here that I just…think is worth writing down.

Software, probably.

Weird hardware, definitely.

Working with people. Design. Japan. Tools. Things I built because I wanted them to exist. Things that worked. Things that absolutely did not work.

Maybe I’ll write something here that I read three years later and think:

what the fuck was I talking about

honestly, good.

I’d rather this be a record of how I thought at different points in my life than a collection of things carefully written to make me look correct forever.

So that’s what this section is.

No real schedule. No content strategy.

Just stuff I thought was worth writing down.

And I don’t know if this version of my portfolio is better at getting me hired.

but I think it’s much better at showing you who you’d be hiring.

I like that more.