I recently shared my GitHub profile with someone and realized I have 330 repos. Most of them are from my time at Flatiron, working on class assignments. But some are code challenges, leetcode problems, forked repos, and random things I've tried over the past few months.
Since Github doesn't allow you to group repos, organizing would be a time-consuming exercise.
Is it worth the time investment? Do recruiters expect your GitHub to be easy to navigate? Do you regularly review and purge your inactive repos?
Oldest comments (14)
A while ago I went back and added Readme’s using readme-md-generator. I’ve been meaning to added my twitter and screenshots to all my repos. I just need to find the time.
Thanks for the tip! I'll definitely checkout readme-md-generator
Have you looked at GitHub's archive feature? It lets you mark repos you don't intend to maintain anymore as archived. I believe this also prevents pushing new commits to them.
If I remember correctly, there's also a way to choose up to 6 repos to highlight on your GitHub profile. That could be helpful if there are particular projects you want to display up front.
Thanks, I'm definitely highlighting my best projects, but unfortunately, Github doesn't seem to allow mass updates for repos. So will just have to set the time to go through them one by one
What if you make a portfolio website with links to your favorite projects
This is a great solution. My initial thought was that I didn't have enough projects to warrant an online portfolio, but working on one now
After doing an Ironhack bootcamp, I noticed I had some 140 repos and things were a bit messy. I deleted a few with things that never materialized and also archived some. The fact that you cannot put repos in folders is something I have seen raised by many people. It would help a lot. For me, changing some of the repo names helped (and yes, that means you have to make sure you change the names of your local repos accordingly). All the repos linked to the Ironhack bootcamp now start with ironhack, all my projects start with project, all my tutorials start with tutorial, etc. It makes a difference, also for myself when I want to have a look at, for example, the projects I have on GitHub.
The recommendation to put the repos that you want recruiters to see up in the six spots you have in your profile is a good one. Make sure you update these by moving a more recent and interesting project in these six now and then.
Good idea. Did you have to rename the repos one by one?
Yes, afraid so.
You have to change the repo name (under Settings) and also change the name of the repo locally on your computer. But it is a good way to go through your repos one by one, see if they still have value. I can archive quite a few after I have digested the bootcamp stuff and that will clean up even more.
Yes! Whenever it starts to bother me, I'll go through and delete unused forks, archive old projects, etc.
Probably not 😂 but it makes me feel better 🤷♀️
When I've been on hiring committees, I've mostly paid attention to if there are any pinned repos and look through those. So I'd recommend making sure those are up-to-date/cleaned up a bit 😊
Thanks for the inside tip lol I'll be sure to review my pinned projects
I regularly review my repos and organize the house. Sometimes I delete things that are not important anymore, such as, classes exercises or some challenges, for these ones, there should be a folder in my computer to store that.
I think GitHub must be your Dev portfolio to the world, so I think it`s good to keep just what you judge really important for people to see =D
If you don`t want to delete a repo, just put it on private, so it will be always there but people wont see it.
Thanks, Luiz! I honestly hadn't considered doing that, but have since gone through and made a few things private. Great tip
You're probably right about recruiters not combing through your repos, but this is a point that Flatiron often stressed. I already have some repos pinned, but good point about the repose being in reverse chronological order