The real life state of things is that most of students don't have personal portfolios. They get hired by companies that do not require them and work with them as with juniors.

They are also likely getting salary according to what their advisers or statistics tell.

Also, real life state of things is that for non-juniors, most companies dont actually care about side projects. And overwhelming majority of developers dont have them. It is meme on hacker news that it matters, but I think that is some bias here.