Is the Era of Personal Software Portfolios Over?

>Is the value of a portfolio decreasing?

Partially, yes. If your portfolio is 5 small web applications or Python scripts that AI can make in half an hour, their weight as a “demonstration of skills” drops.So, the fact that you can do it manually is no longer impressive.

What becomes important now: Architecture at scale — AI does not yet know all the nuances of large systems, distributed services, performance optimization, and security.

Business logic integration — understanding how the business actually works, where the pain points are, how users interact with the product.

Creativity and unique concepts — AI can create boilerplate, but it doesn't always understand that it is creating something fundamentally new.

Moral: AI takes away the “simple feats” but opens up new space for true engineering mavens. If you can do something that AI can’t easily replicate, your portfolio gets even cooler.

Depends on what you show in your portfolio? I never understood devs that show half baked and simple web apps in their portfolios. What’s the point? To show your have commitment? To show that you have passion? Because those apps don’t usually show quality or challenging design topics.

I keep all my half baked apps to myself.

IMO not significantly. Prior to AI the bulk were tutorial based to-do apps or simple crud things anyway, its still easy to tell the difference between those and something more complex (where AI is less useful - or at least requires more skill to use successfully).

But I don't think the projects themselves really mattered all that much anyway - its the conversations you can have about them. Understanding the driving factors, whether it was solving a problem they have or just working on something they are passionate about, the challenges they overcame in the development process and the considerations/decisions they made along the way.

I think the opposite: it raises the value of personal portfolios, assuming the portfolios are actually good and representative to begin with. Most aren't, and those ones are likely to be of less value.

This is an interesting question. I work with students (older teens/young adults) and they are dealing with similar issues. It seems like the world's expectations shifted very quickly under their feet.

I don't think anyone knows the answer. As a hiring manager, I definitely put less weight on generic CRUD apps etc nowadays. You can argue that people can actually just copy and paste from SO before, and that's true, but even with that you had to have some knowledge so integrate what you've copied. With AI assist, the process is orders of magnitude easier, as you can just re-try prompts etc.

What I look for instead is more information on the process of creation, which usually means examining their writing. How did they get the idea? how did they think about what features to build? But even this is not immune to AI contamination.

Overall, I think we're likely to move towards more reliance on verifiable longitudinal data rather than "spot checks". It's much more difficult/challenging to re-create for "portfolio cheaters", and easier for authentic applicants. I get my students to write a dev journal which I verify, and use that as part of a private portfolio that we can share with potential employers.

Overall, I'd say the vetting process is much more onerous on both sides and portfolios will now need proof-of-authenticity.

agree with most of the comments here that generic software projects are becoming less valuable from a hiring standpoint

perhaps im of the view that since software building will continue to be democratized, i think it becomes about creating more technically challenging projects with the aid of AI, or creating external impact with the software that you create, e.g., making something people care about or want to pay for (partially the quality and execution of your software idea beyond the ide and github). but potentially this is "founder" heavy mindset to this