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The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
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"Zahid has successfully delivered and deployed HCM within our company."
That's from the client review that landed on my profile this week, for OneHub — the payroll and people-operations platform I built for TechFoundry. Monthly payroll with fiscal-year tax withholding, payslips and tax certificates on demand, expense reports read line by line by Claude, and one reporting layer so the dashboard, the payslip and the certificate always agree.
The word I care about in that review is "deployed". Delivered means the code works. Deployed means payroll runs on it every month, people are paid the right amount, and nobody has to call me.
The thing I'd do differently: the tax rules started out hard-coded. Fine for one country, one fiscal year — until it wasn't. We later pulled them out into a rules engine so the same payroll runs across countries without touching the code. Next time that's day one, not a refactor.
It's also a Contra-verified project — the work was paid through Contra, so the review and the case study are tied to the same engagement. Case study: https://contra.com/p/Y3EgrEUc-payroll-and-people-operations-platform
What matters more when hiring a designer: years of experience or the work itself?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately while rebuilding my portfolio and applying for new roles. Design is one of those fields where a number on a CV can say very little. Someone can have five years of experience and a weak portfolio, while another person may have fewer years in a formal design role but much stronger visual thinking, range and execution.
In my own process, I’ve been focusing much more on how I present the work itself: the decisions behind it, the systems I build, the way a project develops across brand, editorial, digital or UI. I’m trying to make the portfolio show not just what I made, but how I think.
Curious what other designers and hiring managers think: when you review a designer, what matters more to you, years of experience or the actual portfolio?
#DesignCareers #HiringDesigners #VisualDesign #Portfolio #DesignProcess
My face while waiting
