Code ‘samples’ will misrepresent you

Thanks for your application. We’d like to talk further, but would you kindly send over a code sample for us to look at first?

The above is a common email to receive when applying for tech jobs. Understandably, the company you’re applying for wants to get an idea of your technical proficiency before dedicating more time to you.

When receiving a request like this, a lot of candidates go through their previous projects to find their ‘best code’. Maybe it’s a database adapter from a web service, or the UI layer from a desktop app. They pull out the relevant file, attach it to an email, and send it off. Done. Right?

Wrong.

Sample (noun): A small part or quantity intended to show what the whole is like.

Imagine you were applying for a position as a journalist at a newspaper. Would you take a single paragraph of text from a 5 page article and submit that as an example of your best work? Of course not. You’d give them the entire thing.

Code is no different. A single file of code is but a small part of a much larger whole.

It’s impossible to judge a journalist from one paragraph, and it’s similarly impossible to judge a developer by a handful of lines of code.

When asked for code during a job application, always provide as much as possible. My personal recommedation is to have a nicely populated GitHub profile and send the link to that. If asked to narrow it down, pick a project that you’re proud of and submit it in its entirety.