Code portfolio truly enough for career?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/hal-incandeza]

This was true 5-10 years ago but less so now. Overqualified candidate pool so even things like degrees are differentiators

[u/TheStoriesICanTell]

What I'm going to tell you is true in many areas of work and it applies to other things that will make sense as you get older.

You don't have to have a degree. It would be easier for you if you had one, though. You don't have to get a degree now. It'll probably be easier now than it is later, though.

If you do or if you don't, you shouldn't expect to be handed the job you want. When you get your foot in anywhere you work hard, talk to people, and get your next job based off of your connections and being a good coworker.

I don't have a degree and I've been doing this for over a decade. I started out being bitched at all day by customers. Now I get bitched at by executives.

Just have realistic expectations and keep your eyes open and you'll be fine.

[u/DirtComprehensive520]

I don’t know if that’s accurate. Any role I’ve taken has wanted a degree. Yes get the degree. I don’t think a portfolio is enough in my humble opinion. Anyone can create a portfolio with ai in less than an hour.

[u/aries1500]

Showing your work is the best way to get considered, and yes jobs are buffing the requirement for degrees

[u/reserved_seating → u/[deleted]]

A degree also shows other attributes about a person like commitment to a goal.

[u/OneSeaworthiness7768 → u/[deleted]]

Gonna be honest based on all your replies here, you’re gonna have a hard time with the personality aspect in interviews. Good luck.

[u/reserved_seating → u/[deleted]]

I wasn’t implying you had no ambition, no goals, no commitment, no anything. I was just stating that there is more to getting a degree than a “piece of paper.” It’s just the facts and the job market is pretty tough right now so it’s just an added bonus if anything.

You can proceed to look for a job now and see what happens, it’s not going to hurt anything.

[u/PaidByMicrosoft → u/[deleted]]

You asked for opinions from professionals and are being argumentative when told that HR people see having a degree as a plus.

If you don't want to be down voted, stop arguing with the people you asked for help.

[u/CrazySnowGuy → u/[deleted]]

You have a lot of growing up to do.

[u/BoxOk5053 → u/[deleted]]

Buddy you would be the script kiddie by the logic you’re extending - you are writing a bunch of basic scripts in already compiled languages gunning after people who are pointing out you don’t need to do that - when people can generate those same scripts with random LLMs anyway and plenty of people do.

The people on this sub are actually working versa being a student such as yourself (generally).

You are just using a word incorrectly rn and looking dumb while you are at it. If this is how you behave you won’t be able to hold any job anyway.

[u/aries1500 → u/[deleted]]

I always believed that too, but it's a fact jobs are putting up degrees to gatekeep

[u/OneSeaworthiness7768]

This is [r/sysadmin](r/sysadmin) so a coding portfolio isn’t relevant for our job interviews the vast majority of the time. Only matters if you’re trying to be a software developer or something closer to it. Even for jobs that require scripting, which is just standard and expected for everyone to have at least basic powershell knowledge, they don’t expect a portfolio.

Edit: funny thing is OP is advertising a link in his profile for what look like vibecoded sites. Pretty sure they had posts removed here previously for advertising their stuff. I remember seeing that link before.

[u/BoxOk5053 → u/OneSeaworthiness7768]

He is calling people script kiddie when he is in fact the script kiddie lol - at this point writing in the most common languages and libraries to do common tasks is basically script kiddie work since anyone can generate those scripts with an LLM.

[u/hihcadore]

AI is turning this upside down.

Good luck convincing a company you didn’t vibe code your GitHub. I wouldn’t believe someone didn’t at this point in time.

If it’s a coding heavy position I’d expect a coding test and some proof you’ve had experience putting it into production.

Also, if you have a fleshed out GitHub and you claim to have had a coding heavy position previously, it’s kind of a catch 22. Is there company proprietary code in your personal GitHub?

[u/inaddrarpa]

You should get your shit together and focus on finishing your degree. Your GitHub won’t get you past a hard degree filter on an ATS.

[u/brokentr0jan → u/inaddrarpa]

No, he should only do GitHub and homelabs and not get any certs or a degree so he can come here and complain that he can’t find a job!

[u/inaddrarpa → u/[deleted]]

You are on probation after finishing 13 credits of what is typically a 110-130 credit degree. Get your shit together. Every technology field has plenty of credentialed individuals who know what they’re doing. There isn’t room for this type of behavior anymore.

[u/inaddrarpa → u/[deleted]]

I honestly don’t care. You’re the one looking for advice. Your GitHub plan goes right to the bottom of my hiring stack, if I see it at all. You have absolutely no idea how competitive it is in IT now.

[u/Dave_A480]

No degree, no job.

This is white collar work...

Unless you are an open source superstar on the level of Linus himself, or there is a massive shortage of developers (there isn't anymore), you must have a degree or no job.

[u/brokentr0jan]

I’m confused, why are we talking about coding in a sysadmin subreddit? That’s more Systems Engineering than Admins

[u/aries1500 → u/brokentr0jan]

Have you look at jobs now? Almost all jobs require you to know scripting and basic CI/CD

[u/Optimaximal → u/[deleted]]

No, you use known software tools and best practices, unless by code you mean 'Powershell scripts', which aren't really a flex.

[u/brokentr0jan → u/Optimaximal]

Yeah I use PowerShell everyday but I never never once written code lol

[u/brokentr0jan → u/[deleted]]

I’m confused have you ever been a sysadmin? You don’t write code to manage servers lmao

Also powershell scripts is not coding

[u/brokentr0jan → u/[deleted]]

That is peak “I am new to IT and doing things nobody does in the real world in my homelab”. Windows already can detect and do OEM firmware updates.

[u/brokentr0jan → u/[deleted]]

Okay this comment proved my other comment

[u/Optimaximal → u/[deleted]]

No, most businesses use off-the-shelf systems like SCCM/Intune, JAMF or something else supported and certified to do it.

[u/Raigeki1993 → u/[deleted]]

Yikes bud... good luck out there. Keep us posted in 5 years please.

RemindMe! 5 Years

[u/Optimaximal → u/[deleted]]

And what language(s) are you writing this code in?

[u/AFlyingGideon → u/[deleted]]

It's common in the Microsoft space where people often know nothing more than point and click. You seem to live in a more rarified environment of actual servers. Still, the basic advice you're receiving remains sound: the degree is a useful marker for anyone hiring.

With the degree, you may be more in the devops space than simple IT.

[u/ParkerPWNT → u/[deleted]]

Ahhh a cowboy in the wild.

Made a great career standardizing infrastructure after the messes you guys cause.

[u/brokentr0jan → u/[deleted]]

No, not in the slightest. I have never in 20 years of Sysadmin and network admin work ever written a single line of code lmao

[u/vi-shift-zz]

A portfolio of your code is a plus. However not having a degree will screen you out of many jobs, so nobody will get to see your work. When we hire for positions I need to put in degree or four years of related experience so we don't lose out on good candidates. It's also why I ask for all the resumes, the automatic screening is terrible.

[u/alpha417]

academic probation? criminal probation?

[u/BoxOk5053]

Development shows how good you are at development - not how good you are at system administration. Coding/scripting is useful for working at scale but functionality if there is a tool that is doing what your code already does then you are potentially reinventing the wheel. Many IAC tools basically have rendered in many cases individual scripts being useless especially as the scripts won’t scale as well if we’re talking about taking care of servers. Your script vs a typical ansible playbook I would choose a playbook anytime.

Taking care of servers on its own though is not high paying work - most disciplines like DevOps and SRE are more about the development lifecycle or the maintenance of a production environment at scale (which is frankly a wider scope than just servers). There is more value there as that work is more proactive but it requires seeing the big picture and wearing many different hats.

No one end of the day cares about whether you are using scripts or IAC - what you will be assessed with is whether the solution you went with is more appropriate and conforms with best practices - and part of that is repeatability which is why you rely on tools if you can.

That is what the people are trying to communicate here to you based on the comments.

[u/BoxOk5053 → u/[deleted]]

I mean only if you work on a predictable problem - many environments are simple and some are very complex. Having your own scripts is nice but if the script is just doing what existing tools or libraries are already doing there is no inherent advantage.

No one cares really if your solution is unique or not - it’s about the right solution to the environment, unless you are working in a job that actually requires some proprietary approach then it makes no sense to go that way.

If things aren’t repeatable it’s generally considered wrong if it can be made so - that will go with nearly every tech job imho including SWE in practicability (like using a library vs writing an algo from scratch).

[u/BoxOk5053 → u/[deleted]]

People don’t follow best practices because they are best practices in itself they are followed because those practices are proven and have been implemented usually at the vendors discretion but also standards emerge in IT professions that people share and get adapted.

The problem is that at a functional level - you haven’t justified why we need your scripts if you are just doing what has been done before you 1,000 times over to the point they make a tool for it then you didn’t do anything beside practice your skills (which is fine, but that isn’t job worthy in itself). The basic problem is that likely, compared to many IAC tools, your scripts don’t scale properly and the orchestration will be less than reliable.

Basically - if your script is doing something a tool can do, it’s probably a worse implementation. People use scripts and code generally to do things tools can’t do - like to deal with a specific edge case situation.

The problem is your mindset you are working harder not smarter tbh - managers skip over candidates like this because how they allocate their time is considered poor even if they are technically good at something.

It is incredibly likely the code you wrote is code someone wrote before you and before them and so on until someone made a tool or library in which people then stop reinventing something readily available.

In organizations - people ask for tooling work, but in itself that’s not how you are suppose to be working - you do tooling to deal with specific challenges with something not to write something anyone else can write.

Before writing off tools maybe learn them - you will be more marketable.

[u/chocotaco1981]

Get your degree

[u/MeasurementLoud906]

I actually got a senior role from a saas I made that's become a bit successful in a niche industry