Ask HN: As a contractor can I list projects I've worked on on my resume?

The answer is, it depends on what the NDA & your contract says. Generally in my contracts I used to always have a clause that allowed me to say who and what project I was working on, and it overrode the NDA for that sole purpose. There were a few exceptions when a project was stealth of course which is fine.

Mine basically spelled out what I could say, basically it was generally: who, what, when and basic goals. Outside of that and you have to get permission usually. I also still to this day don't list them on my resume by name, but instead by basic details. When I talk with people I will say who/what and that lets them know I have the chops which can be validated through contracts or references in certain cases. To be fair, usually the talks come first then if they need further due diligence they see my resume. When I was contracting it was super rare anyone on my team had to produce a resume for clients, except for the largest of clients who wanted more to vet and frankly to get them in their contact list to try and poach them later. No matter what was in the contract about anti poaching, every person who produced a resume would suddenly find themselves in headhunters sites or in corporate recruiting systems (mine included sometimes).

If someone violates an NDA to tout their contribution on a project it is an immediate turn off as it shows a breach of trust before we even have had a conversation.

It's likely that over the course of n projects, a contractor was 'over hired' and 'under hired' some amount of times. Seeing a trend of consistent placement in their past work helps me know that they have an area of focus and expertise that I can capitalize on as well. This means they will have a high level of efficiency in the work that I need them to do. Given this, seeing that narrative played out in the resume is important.