What should I put in my portfolio in 2026?
Short answer
Not more finished projects — anyone can generate those now, so they no longer prove anything. Put in the decisions. For each piece of work write what you chose, what you rejected, and why. A reviewer can tell from a single entry whether you understood the problem or prompted your way past it.
How it works
Stopped working
A repo of polished projects.
indistinguishable from a generated one
↓
Still works
A dated record of the choices inside the work.
the tradeoff you named, the option you dropped
↓
The strongest entry
“I was wrong about X, and here is what changed it.”
most people bury this; it reads best
A showcase→A record
On Proof today
4,100+
logs written
900+
engineers writing them
Counted live, and excluding one account that flooded the platform with automated rows in July–August 2026. Every public number on Proof excludes it.
What this does not do
A record is worth reading only if it is true. Written to impress, it reads like everything else, and the person reading it has seen a lot of everything else.
Has this actually worked for anyone? One hire, every step, with the denominator — including what it does not prove.
Related questions
Published
September 2026
Made by
Radhakrishnan Selvaraj
Candor and Innovation
PROOF.ZEROMAINTENANCEENGINEER.IN