Warning: I almost lost a job because my portfolio site loaded way too slow

I was applying for a UI role at a startup in Austin and the hiring manager told me my site took over 8 seconds to load on his phone. I was using huge image files for my project mockups. I ran everything through a free tool called Squoosh, compressed the images, and switched to WebP format. The load time dropped to under 2 seconds. Has anyone else had a client or recruiter mention site speed as a dealbreaker?

3 comments

3 Comments

lucas9721mo ago

I used to think image size didn't matter much, but a similar experience made me a total convert to compression.

ivancoleman1mo ago

Right, @lucas972, what changed your mind?

robinmason6d ago

Ran across a talk by Harry Roberts about this exact thing where he showed how sites that take more than 3 seconds to load lose like half their mobile visitors. That stuck with me because it's not just about losing a job interview, it's about losing real users every single day. I had my own rude awakening when I checked my analytics and saw people bouncing from my portfolio in under 4 seconds on phones. Squoosh is great but I also use the Lighthouse audit in Chrome DevTools to spot other stuff blocking the load, like render-blocking CSS or unoptimized fonts. WebP is a lifesaver for real, and I even started using lazy loading on my project images so they only load when someone scrolls to them. Speed really becomes one of those things you can't ignore once you actually see the numbers.