Applying for an entry-level backend role: what should I include in my portfolio?

Agreed, troubleshooting is much better. If it's just CRUD, there's nothing for the interviewer to see.

I also came from a non-CS bootcamp and got a job last year, and what helped me most was a document that explained why I chose each technology, including the reasoning behind the decision. For example, when a concurrency issue hit, I wrote up in the README the process of applying a lock and then switching to a Redis distributed lock due to performance issues, the alternatives I compared at the time, and the reasons I abandoned them, and my application pass rate went up significantly. I think the key is showing how this person defines and validates problems rather than flashy features. It doesn't matter at all if the project was small.

Well, that's a bit... If you only dig into troubleshooting, you might just come across as someone who writes a good blog. These days, the resume screening stage is mostly keyword filters, so quantitative indicators like tech stack, scale, and traffic numbers need to hit first before anyone actually reads it. If you've been getting rejected for 3 months, it's more likely a resume structure issue or a mismatch with the job posting than a problem with your project content. First check whether you concluded it's a “common project” without evidence.

Scaling things up a bit is also an option. Attach a concurrent-connection test to a single board, run load with nGrinder, and log the bottlenecks you catch—that'll give you plenty of material.