This is a 'Thank HN' post from a developer who landed a job by consistently showcasing their personal projects on GitHub and sharing them on Show HN. The core idea is that actively demonstrating coding skills through public projects can significantly boost career prospects and attract job offers, especially for developers struggling to gain traction through traditional applications.
A starter prompt for Claude Code, what you'll need, and how to reach them.
You are a senior full-stack developer. I need to build an MVP of a 'Developer Project Showcase' platform, inspired by the 'Thank HN' story where a developer used public projects to get hired. The platform should allow developers to create profiles, upload details and links for their small, AI-buildable personal projects (GitHub repo, live demo URL), and get them featured. Recruiters should be able to browse projects and contact developers. Focus on the core 'Show HN' like functionality. Use Next.js 16 App Router, React 19, Tailwind v4, and Neon Postgres on Vercel. For the MVP, implement: 1) Developer signup/login. 2) Project submission form (title, description, GitHub URL, Live Demo URL, tags). 3) A public 'Showcase' feed displaying projects, sortable by 'newest' and 'trending' (based on view counts, initially mock these). 4) A project detail page for each project. Skip recruiter login for now; assume public visibility and contact via external links. The build/verify gate is a functional platform where a developer can register, submit a project, and see it listed on the main showcase feed and its own detail page.
Reach indie hackers and solo founders who are building projects and looking for ways to get noticed, showing them how indie-radar and forge-kit can help them build and ship more effectively, which in turn boosts their portfolio and career.
I remember like it was yesterday: I applied to a job overseas through a job platform and didn't get hired. People from the platform contacted me telling me one of the possible reasons was that I didn't have any code on GitHub. After that I started uploading all my code as open source projects and began to search places to tell people about it. Soon I learned about Hackernews and made a post that got 1 vote. I then decided to contact HN to ask how can I get more traction to my projects and they told me about the Show HN, a tag design to share small and even unfinished projects. Soon I was posting every idea I ever had made into a project. After InvaderZ - a space invaders clone that uses genetic algorithm ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21577659 ) - people started liking my projects and I started to gain some attention. That was very important cause I was being approached by some companies. I don't do projects to gather attention, I do cause I have fun doing them. I already had a lot of things done when I decided to upload them to GitHub. Well, in one of those times when my post was in top 10, a cool company from São Paulo saw me and called me fo
No clear channel, as this is a 'Thank HN' post about a personal experience, not a request for a tool or service.
“No clear fit.”
Open the original ↗