Depends on the company type. Seems like FAANG and companies trying to act like FAANG just follow a strict formulaic process and your portfolio or blog is kinda irrelevant there.
For startups and small companies I think it makes a huge difference.
At one job I was told explicitly I was hired mostly because the hiring manager liked my website - I wasn't the only one that passed the interview process and so my website was why I was chosen. He liked how minimalist it was.
At another, one of the engineers found a bug on my website and my interview was to pair program a fix with him.
When I'm in charge of hiring I strongly prefer candidates that have some kind of web presence that lets me structure the interview more towards what they've presented about themselves.
Also I have gotten clients that originally found me because they googled "how to rent a motorcycle in Taiwan" and I rank #1 for that search apparently.
> At one job I was told explicitly I was hired mostly because the hiring manager liked my website - I wasn't the only one that passed the interview process and so my website was why I was chosen. He liked how minimalist it was.
I intentionally made my website very minimalistic, using only HTML and CSS. Also fully responsive using modern CSS layouts and even made everything composable, avoiding media queries for specific widths. Kind of an experiment, but very minimalistic. So what you write makes me think: "If only someone took a look at my website and had that mindset!!"
Well, I will keep my website, maybe one day it will amount to something.
For startups and small companies I think it makes a huge difference.
At one job I was told explicitly I was hired mostly because the hiring manager liked my website - I wasn't the only one that passed the interview process and so my website was why I was chosen. He liked how minimalist it was.
At another, one of the engineers found a bug on my website and my interview was to pair program a fix with him.
When I'm in charge of hiring I strongly prefer candidates that have some kind of web presence that lets me structure the interview more towards what they've presented about themselves.
Also I have gotten clients that originally found me because they googled "how to rent a motorcycle in Taiwan" and I rank #1 for that search apparently.