In this series of blog posts I would walk you through my learning journey as I create my online portfolio for the first time. From getting the motivation behind it, to setting up the project and learning how to optimise the hell out of it, we’ll leave no leaf unturned 🍀. So, like any other reasonable human being let’s understand why I actually went through with this project, not just watch a 2hr video on YouTube, and why you too should build your portfolio website.
🖼️ Background
Just to give you some background, I am a software developer based in India who graduated from college in 2021 with a CSE degree. In no way, shape, or form was I an ideal student, if anything I was actually the opposite. Anyways, long story short, I have been in tech for almost 3 yrs now (this might change depending on when you read this) and have worked at different companies. One of the companies I worked at was a consulting firm where I was a Business Data Analyst. In a nutshell, I had to manage part of a Big Data pipeline, rewrite complex SQL queries in PySpark while acting as a full-stack developer. All of these responsibilites were on a fresh grad because in 2021 the whole world saw attrition rates go BRRRRR (because of convid ofc) and all of our senior devs had left, except one (who turned out to be my first mentor ❤️). My current employment at the time of writing this blog is in a web3 company for which I develop dApps, and help with their overall online presence. You can check out my LinkedIn profile if you want to know more.
🔫 The Trigger
On a random Saturday, I was scrolling through YouTube on my phone and I came across one of those videos in which a person reviews portfolio websites submitted by their subscribers or patrons. Of course, I clicked on it and started watching it, buuuuut…midway through this video, a weird feeling hit me. I was enjoying watching these amazing websites made by other people, but something was missing. It felt like the joy I was feeling was part of something greater, sort of like a pool of joy, which was made up by everyone who dedicated their precious time into creating something that people around the world can experience. Soon I realised that the reason I felt weird was because I don’t have any contributions to this pool of joy, I am just taking my cup and drinking out of it to my hearts content.
🗣️ Pep Talk
Now, I knew that something needed to be done to address this feeling. And like the lazy human I am, I was still not convinced that I actually needed to do something about it, so I started looking around. I started by opening LinkedIn, terrible place, I know, but what I did was I started sifting through other people’s profiles and realised that most of the people who I looked up to in my field, or batchmates who were actively building stuff in college, had some sort of a website, showcasing their previous work or just a dev blog to keep their thoughts organised. Most of them were not flashy and riddled with 3D animations like I saw in the YouTube video, but each website was a place for the author to showcase their work and thoughts. In that moment I realised a few things:
- A portfolio website is like a developer's self portrait
- These portfolios are not made to be submitted to awwwards.com (generally)
- The content in them is targeted towards a specific group of people with specific interests
- Each site is unique in itself which distinguishes them, but all of them have this sense of giving back to the community
- And, building something from scratch is a great learning opportunity but documenting that process in the very thing that you built is extremely empowering.
🤩 All pepped up
After hours of sifting through websites and having multiple epiphanies inside my head I was now ready to take on this challenge of building a portfolio of my own and showcase my self portrait to the world. In the next part of this series I’ll walk you through the whole process of choosing a design for my website and my thought process while selecting from the bajillion options that the internet gives us. Till then stay motivated, stay curious and keep building! ❤️