Are my portfolio projects worth it?

[stuckrabbit]

Hi,

I started learning full stack development few months back, and now I have worked in vanilla JS, react, angular, next.js, mongodb. I have plans for a PERN stack app as well.

now I have few projects to showcase.I made sure that all projects are screen responsive.I have all the designs on figma so these are as close to as real websites are:

1. An ecommerce app/web in next.js with lambda functions and mongodb atlas as database and with everything functioning like cart,user management etc. (to be completed in a few days). utilizing react context, zustand as well. Used kaggle datasets for products and reviews etc with some random generated data for product’s variations.

2. A frontend design of a bank with all pages(6) on website in react typescript.

3. A frontend design of a school with all pages(6) on website in react typescript.

4. A frontend design of a online course institute with all pages(5) in react JS.

5. A streaming company website frontend in Angular.

6. A Transport company design in plain HTML and CSS (single homepage).

I would like to know your thoughts about that whether this would be beneficial or will satisfy the employer in securing a remote(it’s imperative) junior fullstack or frontend role ? Or should improve more before starting applying to jobs ?

I also have a little bit knack of DSA on leetcode(solved around 150 q’s and beat 90%), and I am confident that if I prepare for it then I can crack DSA questions as well when necessary.

[stuckrabbit]

bringing this up to see

[jwilkins.oboe]

Hi @stuckrabbit !

Welcome to the forum!

@stuckrabbit

I would like to know your thoughts about that whether this would be beneficial or will satisfy the employer

You will get more responses to this question once the projects are complete and people can see the final product.
Right now, it is hard to gauge how good these projects are based on descriptions alone.
I would suggest just building them out, then sharing them with the forum in your portfolio when you are done

@stuckrabbit

securing a remote(it’s imperative) junior fullstack or frontend role

the job market for juniors is very competitive and the market for remote jobs is even more competitive.
While it is still possible to get remote jobs, it will be a lot harder of a path then trying to go for local jobs.

Remote junior jobs get hundreds if not close to a thousand applications.
So you will need to do an incredible job of standing out from the crowd.
Not only will your project and overall skills need to be better than average, but also you will need to be good at networking to increase your chances of getting noticed by these remote companies.
Otherwise, you will just be another application to them.
But if you have taken the time to build real relationships with these remote companies and they can see your work, then you are not longer just a number or another applicant.
That will increase your chances of getting the interview and getting the job.

@stuckrabbit

Or should improve more before starting applying to jobs ?

it’s hard to know without seeing your work.
once you post your project here, then you will receive more answers to this question.

hope that helps

[DanielHuebschmann]

Hello,

I agree that a few live projects for us to check and a personal portfolio site would be great!

For now I recommend you to do maybe three projects like the first one. It reflects what makes you a good candidate in today’s market: Full stack developer with cloud engineering skills.

You can still focus on front-end, but you will often find yourself in teams where everyone covers all roles (UI, app, databases) and they might even be on rotation with SREs.

If you go that way with your projects, make sure that you understand AWS free tier models, or you might end up with unwanted bills.

[stuckrabbit]

Thanks for coming here.

Off course, if its okay to share links here then I will share my portfolio links here in 3-4 days.

You are right about more projects idea as well,anyways I shall share the current projects first and then based on feedback I will decide next project to work on.

Thanks again everyone for participating. It means a lot to me.

[DanielHuebschmann]

Looking forward to seeing your work.

Just let me clarify that I’m proposing less, but high quality projects in your portfolio.

If you have three like the first one that cover full stack development and cloud development/ engineering, you are covering big parts of what is making you employable in today’s market.

Your free tier of the cloud provider of your choice will limit the number of projects anyway.

[stuckrabbit]

Sure, I will share in next week.

Yes, I understand and that’s the point I had in my mind as well to create more quality projects focusing on broader scope and utilizing multiple stacks.

Anyways, will share the completed projects in next week.

Thanks for your time.

[stuckrabbit]

Hi @jwilkins.oboe @DanielHuebschmann

This is the link to my portfolio, I was caught up in few issues but here it is

https://sajidmunir.netlify.app/

Please point out any issues, P.S the luminae store is not live right now

[DanielHuebschmann]

Welcome back!

That’s a nice start for a start, especially that you are not assaulting the user with ugly colors or wannabe awwwards effects (which have their place in front-end projects, but not in dev portfolios themselves).

I will list the good and still to be improved when my time allows it.

[DanielHuebschmann]

Like i said in my first post, nice start for a start. You have the front-end game covered, though some projects including your portfolio needs better responsiveness.

However, there’s an army of people with your current skills, some as a side effect of bootcamps and self-taught, many laid off. Please follow my advice and level up:

• Add back-ends to some of your projects (three should be enough).

• Deploy on Netlify or Vercel using their CI/CD services.
  OR

• Deploy on AWS/Azure/GCP when you can provide a credit or debit card (important: set spending alarms and limits!).

• Document what you are doing

• Knowing how software is built, tested and delivered today will go a long way. Knowing how to build and deploy Docker images from your projects will leave an impression in interviews. There are free courses about DevOps engineering that will help you widen your knowledge.

I know this is a lot to take in and I don’t want to be Debby Downer, but everyone has to skill up given the competition they are facing in the current market.

[stuckrabbit]

Thanks for your suggestions.

These are the most sincere and beneficial, I have come across in this line of field. I appreciate this.

Yes, I am sorting out bugs on as I revisit my projects, and Sorry for inconvenience on my portfolio, as I still have to finish that.

1- You are right on, I have finalized designs for two new projects, one on django and one on express, and want to try different databases as well, one is PSQL for sure, and other one is still to be finalized.

2- I have deployed on netlify, considering AWS for my next project. (Thanks for the tip regarding spending).

3- How to document a specific project ? Like maintain a Trello board for it ? I am already using JIRA for my projects, please guide me in that area.

4- Yes, you are right, as micro services architecture is the standard now, I am now considering using containers for my different components on next project to gain exposure in this area as well.

I will keep going as I proceed to level up my skills, as I acknowledge that I have to stand out in today’s market to be noticed.

I wanted to ask something that is there something I have not planned,focusing on regarding today’s standard ?

Again, many thanks for your constructive feedback, it means a lot to me.

[DanielHuebschmann]

I have to balance out encouraging talented devs like yourself, and at the same time pointing at the current state of the job market. Would be unfair to sugarcoat anything.

The fixes are not that difficult: Take a DevOps course and learn how software is built nowadays. Try some of the concepts like TDD/BDD or containers you are learning out, take screenshots and document it in your portfolio.

Example:
Turning one of your projects into a Docker file and then storing it as a container image takes just a few minutes once you have learnt the basics. That’s generally all you have to do as a dev with Docker, the rest will be done by operations. Knowing this is already making you a valuable candidate for a team.

I want to encourage everyone reading this to consider my suggestion. Adding a short document on how you were experimenting with test driven development or writing a short automation script takes less time than writing another todo app.

[jwilkins.oboe]

HI @stuckrabbit !

I also think your projects are off to a good start.
Keep working on them to add some more complexity to help you stand out in today’s market.
But you are doing well so far.

While you are working on the projects, you will also want to learn about other side of the equation which is how to actually apply and get noticed.
Because you can have the best portfolio in the world and still struggle to find a job if you don’t have a good strategy going into it.

I highly suggest watching this video on get a developer job

How to Get a Developer Job – Even in This Economy [Full Course]

it has tons of great advice and practice advice for today’s market.

Good luck

[stuckrabbit]

Thanks @DanielHuebschmann

I understand your point of view, I will share further progress as I go.

Sure, the documentation sounds like a cool addon for my projects, I will create documentation for one of my projects, and share it here for feedback.

[stuckrabbit]

Thanks @jwilkins.oboe

I appreciate that, and yes your suggestions are right on, I will be focusing on full stack projects from now on.

Yes, art of applying to jobs takes highest percentage in job searching, I will watch this video and share my comments.

[Guided]

How would you suggest learning how to write documentation?
I presume you’d write it differently depending on who you expect the reader to be?

What would you add to documentation to go into a portfolio, compared to documentation you’d write for collaborators?

Is there anything you’d not include in documentation?

[DanielHuebschmann]

Hi

For simple projects one or two sentences about the project and the tech stack are enough.

For larger projects you can add parts of commercial documentation:

• Description
• Instructions for developers/ops etc like libraries involved etc
• License - Open source or not
• User stories (who is this for and what does the user gain)
• Current version number
• Tech stack
• Change log - document changes/ progress
• Future enhancements

Note that there’s no one solution that fits all. Most important is who is this for and what purpose has it, instructions for the technical side. Anything that helps users and cooperators know what they have in front of them.

[stuckrabbit]

Hi @jwilkins.oboe @jwilkins.oboe

How have you been ?

I have finished few things, please criticize my portfolio so I can improve. Please check luminae project particularly.

https://sajidmunir.netlify.app/

However, I wanted to ask for your opinions on next projects,please give them score of (1-10) according to current industry trends ?

1- AI related projects aslike AI Image editing tools, such as background removal, auto enhancer? basically a digital handyman with all tools in one place.

2- Something like pinterest ?

3- Stocks trading app, with forecasting based on current data.

4- Project management tool with communication/messaging on tickets, (consider mixing slack and JIRA tickets)

[jwilkins.oboe]

@stuckrabbit

I have finished few things, please criticize my portfolio so I can improve. Please check luminae project particularly.

Here are some things I have noticed when clicking around in the app

When I click on the some of the buttons like shop now, it takes a really long time for me to load. So I would look into that because it makes it look broken.

For the search, it looks like there are some broken images. But also, it would look better to have some more padding for the results

For some of the individual pages it doesn’t look like some of the content is loading

As for your github, I like how to wrote up a documentation for your project.

I think the next step would be to make these changes you mentioned in your README here

What could be improved in this project ?

1- The design and user experience could be improved for sure. 2- There are no unit tests as of now, so everything is manually tested by me, so it would be beneficial to use unit tests. Which I have plans for. 3- The mobile responsiveness for mobiles is bit shaky for users, and for admins there is no screen responsiveness at all on phones, as I am still figuring out how to fit that much information in one place.

Remember that the market is really competitive right now. So you want to make your projects the best you can possibly make it so you can stand out from the crowd.

So, I think you are on the right track, but there is still some cleanup that needs to happen to make it stronger.

@stuckrabbit

1- AI related projects aslike AI Image editing tools, such as background removal, auto enhancer? basically a digital handyman with all tools in one place.

2- Something like pinterest ?

3- Stocks trading app, with forecasting based on current data.

4- Project management tool with communication/messaging on tickets, (consider mixing slack and JIRA tickets)

The project management tool sounds the most interesting to me and there is a lot you can do with that and talk about in interviews.

[stuckrabbit]

Thanks @jwilkins.oboe for your feedback.

Your suggestions look good and I will add them, as I work on it.

Yeah, the project management solution is also something I am inclined too, but for now I working on a different product.

The product I am working on is Form Creating App, where users can create forms/quizzes with any types of questions like fill in blanks, multiple choice questions, true/false, and share with potential responders and display results in graphs etc.

The form creator can also ask for specific info if its for his class students etc.

Though there is a lot to talk about, but I will share the finished product when ready, and will list it on product hunt etc for free, and I am sure I would be getting few users on this one as well.