Commits and PRs an Interviewer Will Read
Your GitHub gets scrolled before you get interviewed. Commit messages and PR descriptions are the writing sample you didn't know you submitted.
Commit messages
Subject line: what changed and why, imperative, under ~70 characters. Add a body only when the why isn't obvious from the diff. The test: could a stranger pick your commit out of git log and know what it did without opening it?
▸ The difference, in four commits
# reads as rushed or copied
fix
final fix
now working
solution
# reads as an engineer
Add smoke tests for guest checkout
Wait for cart total before asserting — kills the flaky pass
Extract login steps into a fixture
Document the two skipped edge cases in the READMEThe PR description is the reviewer's README
- What + why in two sentences.
- How to test it — commands, data, anything non-obvious.
- What you're unsure about — asking in the description reads as senior, not weak.
Grounded in the git documentation and what reviewers actually scroll
All lessons in Working Like an Engineer: Git, PRs & Code Review
- The Loop: Branch, Commit, PR, Merge
- Your First Merge Conflict
- Reading Code You Didn't Write
- Receiving a Review Without Taking It Personally
- Giving a Review as the Quality Person
- Commits and PRs an Interviewer Will Read