How detailed should a portfolio site be regarding your project input?

Question

I am currently putting together a portfolio in order to get more freelance work on the side- and I am unsure about how descriptive I need to be regarding the projects I have worked on and my input.

I have been working for a web agency for about 3 years now as a web developer and have contributed to a great number of projects during my time there.

My Question: Since some of my projects might have only internal consulting or a relatively small amount of work, is it unethical or deceitful to include them in my portfolio next to the longer projects? And is it normal or welcomed to have descriptive text alongside?

Answer 1

I am not a lawyer, but if you were an employee of the web agency, then it's likely they retain copyright for all of the work you did for them. That is, you cannot (legally) advertise the fact that it's your work, because in fact the work is owned by your company. There will typically be a clause in your work agreement that you hand over the copyright to all works that you produce as part of your job there. The exact nature of this will depend on your location/region.

So you have to be very careful what you put in your portfolio in the first place. You should talk to your boss/manager and ask them permission first.

Answer 2

I suggest asking your agency to check your portfolio and make a formal approval. There are 2 alternatives you may want to try which won't have copyright issues. One is write high quality tutorials so that prospects will know your skills. The other is build open source projects.

Answer 3

It's not unethical to say "I worked on this, and this is what I did", even if what you did was as minimal as fetch coffee. As someone interviewing, I'd be much more interested in what you did significant work on. I don't need a comprehensive list of everything you worked on - give me an interesting subset and make it clear that I'm looking at a subset.