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As a software engineering student having secured my first internship, I'm trying to be a little more ambitious in applying for my second one. As such, it's a given that I present some of my code I've worked on on my Github profile.

However, I've spent nearly all of my coding time working on my startup (of which I own and am the sole developer of), which is a web application in the private sector. While I'd love to show it off, a demo of the app is not something I'd like to be public. How can I position this to both show off the app/code to potential employers and increase my candidacy?

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Even if you own the code, not your client, and no signed NDA you should still seek their permission to show it to others. Especially if there is sensitive data. You can also ask potential employers to sign an NDA to cover yourself and give reviewers read only access to a private repository.

Nevertheless passion and business acumen are very desirable and rare traits. I would advise you on emphasising this, that you are a go getter, and how you have gone about achieving a successful paid app/product. You can talk about the product in a general sense, how you handle feature requests, draw architectural diagrams, and how you deliver tested updates, etc. This shows you can be trusted to manage a professional project.

In your app you will have some sort of framework, UX, State management, advanced CSS, etc. All of these features can be prototyped into smaller demos. Therefor you can quickly build up a nice portfolio of smaller and well executed pieces of work with technologies you already know well. This shows you can technically execute a project.

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If you wish to show a demo of the app, but you don't want it to become public domain.

I would advise you to create a private portfolio showcasing your web application that is either not searchable from the outside, requires a password to enter or simply offline only.

You can pick and choose code samples, features, screenshots or a simple business proposal document showcasing the problems your trying to solve and how you plan to solve it that you can take to the interview or attach to a CV. Anything showcases doesn't have to be complete as long as you can talk about why you choose this design, how you plan to implement and as many interviewers will ask... any problems you have come across with implementation of the solution.

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You can not because that code does not belong to you (unless it's an open source project then you gotta fork it)

In this case you need to describe your tasks in your cv/resume and do a description of what your work did inside the application but you cannot disclouse that code to others you might get in big time trouble. It is important to show your skills with a github account but you need to work in your own projects, though you don't need whole projects to showcase your skills right now since you're at entry level you can just make small snippets or exercises that accomplish certain features

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  • I should have been more specific - I own the startup and am the sole developer
    – cameraguy258
    Commented Mar 20, 2019 at 17:39
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    Well in that case if you really believe that your app has some real value and no other project has done the same functionality then the only thing you could do is host the app in a server and show it to whoever interviews you, of course this might raise a red flag to the recruiter because he would ask himself why would this guy want to work with us if he got an startup? what if he just works on his own app the whole time?
    – user86742
    Commented Mar 20, 2019 at 18:00

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