Hiring developers across the years
How the signals that reveal a developer's value have shifted from credentials to visible engineering work.
1970s: Know computers? Hired.
1980s: You’re a programmer? Hired.
1990s: Show me your degree.
2000s: Pass this coding test.
2010s: Show me your GitHub.
2020s: Show me the numbers your code moved.
2025: How much of that did AI write?
2026: Walk me through your AI coding pipeline.
The next strong engineering portfolio may not be a repository full of code.
It may be the system you built to produce that code.
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