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Hacker News Hacker NewsThree years later, I began receiving job offers through my blog, which led me to try freelancing as a web developer. Fast forward seven years, and I've never had to actively seek out projects, because clients have consistently reached out to me via my website. In fact, blogging has allowed me to stay fully booked as a freelance web developer. I had freelance gigs at governments, at a DAO, at enterprise companies and startups which reached from code monkey positions to lead positions.
Would I do it again? Absolutely. But would I start blogging in 2024 just to get job offers? Probably not. The developer content landscape has changed significantly, with many more people now blogging. However, if your goal is personal growth and learning, a well-maintained blog can still be a valuable way to attract clients.
AMA :)
To my surprise, that website got me past pretty much every first round, and within 2 weeks of starting to send applications I had 5 job offers at 2-3 times my current salary.
I relocated to Chicago and the entire trajectory of my career changed. I will always recommend blogging or some form of content creation. Especially for someone thinking of a career pivot.
It keeps you focused on deliverable products from your learning and experience.
Helps keep you consistent if you have a posting schedule.
Creates tangible evidence of your skills and experience.
And perhaps most importantly. It really improves your communication skills around the problem space which is a huge benefit.
A few months ago I wrote a post on the butterfly effect of having a blog for ~9 years, it covers some of the more interesting things: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/the-butterfly-effect-of-havin...
That game and, this "micro SaaS" [2] that I made in 2003, helped me get my first job, at IBM. I was 19 at that time.
[1]: https://www.zebrapuzzles.com/
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20030204164816/http://www.hipert...
If you have a site, and it has content, and shows more about what you are interested in, it counts a lot for me. Extra points if it links to code in GitHub.
But not any website will do, if it feels like an 5-minute thoughtless effort, with an empty template and a single entry dated 4 years ago saying "TODO", then it will count against you.
I'm not a prolific writer and the subjects are just what interested me at that point in time and I feel should be public. Unfortunately, there aren't many companies looking for experts in palindromes.
Looking at the websites shared here, it seems like web development tutorials and tips are the way to go if you want to get hired.
I, however, recommend writing about whatever gets you excited and you want to share with the world. Especially since you're happy in your current place.
As long as one sticks with it, I cannot overstate the power of a good personal website.
> Also I can't decide what to write about, and whether to make it more nerdy or more professional.
As with most decisions, just make one. You can always change your mind later.
But I think blogs mostly help if you write about a very niche topic that might attract the attention of a potential employer. Else Github would be a better source of guidance for the interviewer.
These days you get technical challenges to test if they are what you expect (and many companies overdo this).
if you make a website - you need constant inspiration, and a theme that will be a constant companion, otherwise it will not be a website but just a stillborn plug. serious blogs are created when the author simply does not have a place inside himself, because the information itself spills out, and the blog is just a place where he puts it out. nothing more.
and if you ask for advice on what is best - most likely it is better not to do it. or is it just a rhetorical question to check - how many interesting answers will there be for creating new blog topics? )))
[1] https://gabrielgambetta.com/client-server-game-architecture....
I have an actively maintained website [1], but it never got me anything. In fact, I even removed GA from it, because I don't care whether people read it or not, I do it for my own enjoyment.
Same for conference speaking, I never got a single good ping out of it (in that case, I stopped doing it, I hate flying).
[1] bytepawn.com
In a way my personnal website sells myself.
It did help me get an internship in Hawaii in 2019 for which I am eternally grateful. The website was #1 on YC HN and opened many doors. You can read the entire story here: https://medium.com/startup-frontier/7-686-miles-from-slovaki...
On the other hand, my personal website, https://www.marekdlugos.com/ doesn't have much traffic. It all boils down to standing out from the crowd and having something to offer.
In 2025, I'd like to start blogging. I believe other people could benefit from some of my experiences.
This totally got me my first job - I hadn't mentioned it at all on my CV, but I was able to talk at length about it once I realised it was relevant to the role.
Going forward I blogged and tried various things on social media, again just for fun - but I was regularly able to either apply learnings to my roles, or more likely just have interesting other examples to refer to in interviews. It meant I understood FTP, buying (and selling) domain names, DNS, basic coding and most importantly had a good handle of what could go wrong (e.g. people abusing image hosts and url shorteners that I played with).
Note I am non-technical - I was a moderator>researcher>producer>product owner>Chief Product Manager during this time - but the little amounts I learnt about web technologies in my own time, helped me to better talk with my technical colleagues and to my non-technical ones.
On a side note, I have a photography site that I have rebuilt many times since 1998. Each time I experimented with new design approaches and the underlying tech. Those experiments served as learning experiments I put on my resume. Multiple times I have been hired for languages or frameworks I only learned from using in my photography website.
https://sfc.fm - A website to listen to Super Nintendo music in the browser. Folks usually find this more cool, talk about WASM and covers several common things we can skip over talking about items like RESTful APIs and random JavaScript questions.
https://wiki.superfamicom.org - A website for all things programming the Super Nintendo. This tends to be more interesting to management folk (which is interesting on its own) but tends to be a point in an interview where the "can this person actually program" questions end and culture questions start getting more specific. Recruiters also tend to latch onto this one as well.
No one ever mentions my blog, but I don't post all that much and the content is technical, but usually very niche.
During the interview they asked me lots of technical questions around the website, like why I chose particular solutions, what the trade-offs I made were and how I did certain things. Essentially, I just had to be able to show them I could technically discuss the website in detail and I guess also proving that it was I who did the work.
What I also only realized a bit into the new job was that merely "releasing" a working project is in itself a bit of an accomplishment.
But my personal website probably hurt me more than helped.
Whenever I create something, either for work or personal, I add it to a "Featured" section on my website's homepage. Over time, it became such a nice and comprehensive list that I now use it every time when talking about past projects or whenever a "Can we see some examples of your past work or appearances?" comes up.
It has different types of work and is exhaustive enough that whoever asks, can find what they're looking for. I had a lot of positive comments from prospective employers about it.
What started as a mini project for me to collect all the scattered links for myself so that I don't forget or lose anything, became a great asset that keeps on giving.
Here's the link that I send when asked about "examples of your work": https://www.velvetshark.com/#featured It's an anchor link of my homepage that scrolls straight to the Featured section.
Oh, just to clarify: the "Featured" section is not the only thing that people find interesting. Once they're on the page, they can browse around and find articles that are of interest to them. That helps too.
So I created https://car-viewer.streamlit.app/ and a few others that you may find in contacts link at top.
The idea was to show and keep updated a massive (+250Gb) dataset on map on my own end to end using open source and proprietary tools within free tier limits.
After releasing it I got interview invitations that led me to a new job.
It landed me my first part-time job in the field after I had been in university for around 6 months. At that time I had been really productive with kinda clever and cute projects - for example a desktop app that could search powerpoints and pdf files with keywords and present you the resulting pages in a nice-ish UI. (edit: java to parse the files and an Electron app to orchestrate it and provide an UI. It was shitty but it worked.)
After I had been at uni for 1,5 years and a part-timer for a year I got several offers from some pretty cool IT companies when on job search. I’m sure the site with a decently sized portfolio helped then too: I had some nice-ish projects considering my junioirity and could demo them on the site. I took up one of the offers and still remain there.
Haven’t updated the site once after I got this job, since I haven’t found that much motivation for personal projects anymore. :(
Browse blogs here https://www.personalwebsites.xyz/
Because I write about technical things a lot, it's often been viewed as "evidence" that I'm an experienced technical writer as well as an engineer.
But, it (and my github account) have also been flagged as "risks" by a recruitment agency though: I can be a bit sweary at times and they felt that having a project called F*ckAMP might put off potential employers. No-one else has cared though.
But, to echo the advice that others are giving you - the "power" of my blog lies more in it being stuff that I want to write, rather than stuff that I'm writing because I think that it'll help my career.
Deciding what to write about can be hard, and sometimes you'll find you hit a block and don't write about anything at all. Those are both fine, just write about stuff when you want to and don't pressure yourself to write "just because".
But my overall web presence has been hugely helpful in generating leads of both the personal and the professional sort. Plus, I kind of like being "that guy" who shows up in 7 different Internet niches because he's just always doing things.
Do it!
Blogging is a call one has for sharing his own ideas with the world.
Blogging is where you can share what YOU care about, in the writing and detail style that you like.
That's the only way you have to make it interesting and unique.
Close, got tech interview at least, but they had a req for higher experience.
Nothing fancy, but it's a "terminal" with xterm. Helps keeping "Do you know REST and git?" type of recruiters away at least.
- Making your website more unconventional will result in more variance of opinion. This can be really good if some people especially like it (ofc, others may especially dislike it!).
- I consider my website as controlling the top Google result for my name. Also, my email uses my domain. So people I email will also likely visit my website, which hopefully leaves a better impression than LinkedIn would.
- If I apply to something I care about, I can see in the logs that someone from there likely looked at it. So from that I can say it likely helped with grad school admissions, and certainly most clients have looked at it before hiring me (in fact many have mentioned it positively).
Other than that, I think that in general it implicitly helped me because I’m definitely better at writing technical docs and that’s a nice perk for a software engineer.
During my job search, it was nice to have a portfolio to point to because I didn't have any "official" writing samples from my previous jobs (gov't). I wrote tutorials on some simple tech stuff - e.g., "How to install [this tool] on [whatever OS]" - as well as some thoughts on trying to learn computer science fundamentals as technical writer.
It really helped in the interviews to be able to talk candidly about all the fun I had learning different things, and the process had given me a deeper understanding of the tech related to the job.
> Also I can't decide what to write about, and whether to make it more nerdy or more professional.
Personally, I use my blog to write about:
- Niche things I run into that I want to document for myself
- Things I’m working on that I think are cool
- Opinions on why I do things a certain way
I love reading other blogs that orbit around this type of content. One suggestion I would make is to focus on writing your blog for yourself instead of a fictional audience. That way your blog’s value is self-contained, rather than worrying about the value other people get out of it.
Good luck!
I got my second job because of the forum, my third one because of my website. Not that they contacted me directly but during the technical interview, my interviewer was a reader and pretty excited to get me on the team. With an Ai era, it would have been more difficult I guess. The good side is that writing allows you to make connection in your brain and in the outside world.
All the best
But heck, had my software on the cover of paper magazines and was a recognized expert for a niche field of technology.
Smart companies hire for talent more than academic credentials or "years of experience". If you are unable to show your work portfolio from those years, there is really no evidence for people to judge your work quality in development.
This helps to distinguish between those who are developing software only as a 9 to 5 job, or those who love it and develop code on their free time as well.
I keep mine updated more to have a place to track progress than a portfolio these days https://jarek.lupin.ski
As a JavaScript developer writing open source applications eventually became a problem in regard to hiring. I could easily spin up an original application that does wonderful things, but other JavaScript developers can’t. I was no longer compatible to the employment.
For freelancing, my good old website, https://srirangan.net - which has seen several incarnations, has been a tremendous asset.
I stopped blogging, writing essays. Rather, it's a statement for who I am, my values and work-ethic.
Website born in 2003. :)
The YouTube channel seems to have helped quite a bit there too. Some companies see the sub count and are instantly intrigued lol.
I know many of the opportunities I have today are a direct result of starting that blog.
My tip is to lean nerdy. At the end of the day you’re going to have a better time with a group of attracted nerds than professionals.
I guess it was a great learning tool.
In one of my interviews for a job I will start soon, I mentioned a side project and one interviewer pulled up my site there and then to look at it.
I don't know that it made the difference, but I'm sure it helped!
I myself blog as well but haven't had any opportunities that led to hiring
As an argentinean a way to stand out and have US companies look at me is through my dev blog
Turns out I like teaching MUCH more than I like fixing prod.
Edit: it is perhaps worth mentioning that my blog looks like absolute shit. It is literally a stock ghost.org blog with the vanilla theme and fuckall customization.
As a solo consultant back in the 2010's, I created a website and blog for personal branding purpose.
* Blog articles about engineering, got well indexed on Google, getting me thousands of monthly visitors. * Articles about business / functional aspects never really got any visibility nor engagement.
So in the end my content has been mostly helpful to peer developers (mostly in India and the US), and did not reach my potential clients / employers in Western Europe where I am located...
I do not know how much effect the website had to recruiters, perhaps it still gave me extra points sometimes...
with my website [1] I found investors, I was contacted by a highly sought after silicon valley startup, moved to the US and got my visa sponsored, I even found friends here to get my network going and a professional network much more significant than anything I could ever have on linkedin
the only downside is that writing on your blog takes a long time to become clearly worth it (read: years), so most people don't stick to it and never find out -- do it!
I demo'd it while being interviewed for a software role at an NPR station. They were impressed because my project added pre-roll audio to every clip and supported scrubbing, which are features they worked on for their site and app.
So yeah, I'm pretty sure that helped me get hired.
Back in 2006, I started my own little consultancy - I focused on Ruby on Rails (I was very early in that game - to my knowledge the first in the UK to specialise in it as a tech stack), had a lot of opinions on the Web 2.0 and tech scene more broadly, and very little cash to spend on marketing or any serious sales efforts. In short, my only option really was blogging.
My company website was basically my tech blog. Whenever people googled me or my company name (I had business cards, I did a lot of free networking events too), the blog would come up. Every piece of work I got came from that blog or word of mouth. Kept me going for 4 years until it was time to go do something else.
I think having a "personal website" in the form of a portfolio you add to and just link to from your CV might help more if you're a designer.
A blog, or at least a set of articles/editorials/deeper thinking pieces, will help if you want to showcase you're not just another monkey in a seat at a future employer as a senior developer. It will pay a lot more dividends if you want to go free-lance.
In terms of finding topics to write about, well, that's simpler than a lot of people make it. Whenever you're coding a side project, reading something on HN or elsewhere or watching a dev YT or whatever, ask yourself "what do I think about this?" and make a note in a dedicated note for ideas on your phone or in a notepad you keep nearby. If you consistently do this, after a week you'll have a list of lots of things you have thoughts about. Spot a pattern or theme? Cool, go write a blog post. Or two. Or five.
A slightly more formal method for this is called a Zettelkasten. A lot of nonsense has been written about this (and as a method, it's produced some awful writing from people who didn't understand how to use it well), but I think a good primer for this is Bob Doto's "A System for Writing" - it breaks down how to capture ideas, thread them together into something to write about, and how to then produce some good writing. It's quite lightweight once you make it a small habit, and I've been reading this recently and found it a lot more helpful than other books on the method.
In terms of tone - nerdy or professional - I would suggest you need to keep it authentic. Be you. However, be you in the context of you wanting to get hired, not you in the context of being out on a Saturday night with your friends.
The tone should not be interview formal where you're trying to be the most professional you that you can ever be, but the you where you are in the office talking about the thing you're talking about to a colleague. In fact, just imagine you're talking to some of your existing colleagues: what would you say to them about this idea? Perhaps get some of them to proof read your drafts before you post. Try not to be too negative, cynical or sarcastic (not just on your blog, in life in general), and you'll find people out there thinking "hmmm, maybe I'd like to work with this person some day".
Nothing over the top just "I took a look at your site and loved X" "Nice portfolio!" "You have a good eye for design"
But I never got any comments on anything super creative and flashy. When I was exclusively looking for work in games my site was a game, but nobody cared. To game people it wasn't AAA and to tech people it wasn't Apple.
Seems like simple and easy is best.
When I have hired designers or FE devs I don't even interview them if they don't have a personal site.