There seems to be a lot of push-back around here on the basis that nobody asks for it/cares/looks at it. I agree that would be annoying if that's your experience. But, speaking as a hiring manager, I can say that I won't even grant you a phone screen without a code sample. And do not be surprised if I ask questions about it (I don't always, but depending upon the nature of the resume and position, I do probably about half the time). I read every sample and assess it for competence, quality of construction, style and...unfortunately these days...whether it was plagiarized.

I just have to know that you can write decent code. I don't want to waste my time or yours if your code in the language we need is not up to a minimum standard. When I have to train a new candidate on a million line code base, I cannot afford to spend time also training them to be competent in the native language of that code base.

This is not about "coding passion" or notches on some Github post...this is about whether you can do the job. Although one advantage to a Github profile is I can look at your repos and see whether you understand the basics of using git as well (yet another requirement of the position).

I, for one, think your 15 hours was well-invested.

Counterpoint: In 10 years I have never had an employer ask to see a code sample so that 15 hours was better spent by doing pretty much anything else.

Nevertheless, 15 hours seems like good insurance for the time spent.

Maybe, but if I had spent 15 hours 10 years ago it is doubtful that it would still be relevant or useful now. If I come to the point where I need some code to show for a job that I really want I'll just spend the 15 hours then.

When I vet resumes, I most definitely look at any code their provide, but I don't always ask them about it. If they didn't put it on their resume, I don't specifically ask them about it either because they should have put it on the resume. If you put it on your resume, you can't say for sure they didn't look at it and factor that in when reviewing candidates.

I'm planning to look for a new position in about 6 months and that's what I was thinking to do also. Build a sample application, maybe something useful I wish I had anyway (a very simplistic budgeting app with no external data access/storage was what I was planning on). Maybe even ask my employer if I could take some code of my last projects and re-work it into a semi-independet component.

I think this is a good piece of advice here, no need to call other people dumb and lazy.

Sheesh, I'd love this. I wanted to use Quicken, but it seems that it requires some sort of "external data access/storage".

I'm not calling a person dumb and lazy, I'm just calling a particular behavior dumb and lazy.

> I at one point spent maybe about 15 hours putting together a small project

Inventing a project interesting enough to focus on for 15 hours can be difficult. Just like learning SQL without a dataset.

Inventing a project also isn't likely what you want to be hired for, so it's reasonable to have that low on your priority list.

Free software is constantly filling the gaps that I would want to create a "side-project" to fill. I'm not saying it's particularly difficult to find something to work on, but it certainly isn't trivial.

This is great advice. I would recommend that you do it any time you're trying to get a job so that you have a "fresh" repository but I'll spend 15-20 hours just watching algorithm videos when I'm getting my resume prepped so that I can answer the ridiculous question of how does bubble sort work. No it is not ridiculous to know that but I graduated almost 10 years ago and I only look that up when I encounter a situation that needs sorting and I don't want to use the built in sort functions.

Couldn't agree more. If you can't put in one weekend of hard work to give you a leg up on the competition for something as important as _your career_ you are just being dumb and lazy.