How to Build a Portfolio That Travels
Hireable evidence on the road is a README, a writing sample, and one honest sentence about timezone reality, not a page of passport stamps.
[ journal ]
A hiring manager asked where I would be during overlap, not which countries I had collected. I had a map. They wanted a sentence. The portfolio that travels is evidence you can work async from a moving room. Stamps do not ship software.
I keep three artifacts current. A README on something I actually maintain: how to run it, what is broken, how to talk to me. A writing sample that is not a cover letter, a real page with a thesis and a date. One line in the bio that states timezone reality without theatre. Mine has been some version of: based in Tāmaki Makaurau, overlap with US hours by arrangement, async by default. If that line is a lie, the rest of the page is a lie.
What I stopped putting on the public page: airport counts, “open to anywhere,” a gallery of laptops with views. Anyone can photograph a harbor. Fewer people can show how they leave a decision in a ticket so a teammate eight hours away can pick it up. I link to issues and pull requests the way other people link to mood boards. If the work is private, I describe the shape without inventing an employer or a metric. Dark Heart Labs is the studio name. The repos that are public are the proof. The ones that are not stay off the internet.
Timezone honesty is the part people skip. “I can do any hours” lasts until the first week of 11pm standups. I would rather lose a role than take one that requires a circadian injury as a default. Relocation from Louisiana toward Aotearoa made that line sharper. The clock is a constraint I put in writing so nobody is surprised.
The portfolio fails when it is only a travel blog with a GitHub footer. It also fails when it is only code with no human sentence. I reread the three artifacts when I change cities, the way I reread a visa. If the README is stale, I am presenting a ghost. If the writing sample is three years old, I am presenting someone I no longer am.
You do not need a lifestyle label. You need a trail a stranger can follow at 2am their time: how you think, how you document, when you are actually awake. That is the kit. The rest is decoration.
— JV · Dark Heart Labs.