[WalterBright]

Programmers can do very well by becoming contributors to high profile open source projects and standards committees. Post pull requests on github, write tech articles, answer tech questions on reddit and hacker news, and do it under your own name. Register yourname.com and put your resume there. Essentially, make a name for yourself instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you.

[anonymous41]

Open source involvement is overrated. Yes, companies say they value it, but you can't listen to what they say; instead, you must look at what they actually do.

Are candidates with copious open source contributions getting hired primarily because of those contributions, or at the very least being spared the indignity of the white board and trivia questions during interviews? In my experience, no. Interviewers generally don't care, or perhaps their process is too rigid to admit the deviation that caring would require. In fact, when pressed, many will even admit outright that they don't care, claiming (as I've seen here on HN) that they have no way of knowing for certain that you're the true author of your purported contributions or that your contributions alone can't really demonstrate how you write code (like a white board presumably can).

The only reason they value open source contributions is that it amounts to free labor, and it demonstrates "passion"--a quality that they associate with susceptibility to exploitation.

[dkersten]

The way I see it is that its about exposure.

If you contribute to open source, your name and work are out there. People can find out about you and see some of your work.

There are other ways than contributing to open source too. For example, I've got a number of offers because I run a local programming language meetup.

Basically anything that puts your name out there will help get offers. If nobody knows you exist, they can't offer you jobs. That, I think, is where open source can help a lot.

[kod]

The job I'm at currently, the CTO skipped standard technical interviewing and went right to culture fit. He said explicitly that was because he had seen me giving a technical talk and read through my Github.

Some of that may depend on company size, but in my experience (mostly small startups) it has been a huge benefit.

[WalterBright]

I'm reminded of the old joke of the advertising executive who said: "I know I'm wasting half the money I spend on advertising, the trouble is I don't know which half."

[gaius]

Can you think of any other profession that does anything like this? No doctors or lawyers or accountants or civil engineers or pastry chefs find work by posting on Reddit.

And besides, that is very specific to web jobs. There's an awful lot more to the industry besides.

[prions]

As a non software person (civil engineer but going in for a CS masters), this is my biggest gripe when it comes to speaking with developers about their jobs: they lack perspective.

I can assure you that the bar for entry into my field is much higher than software. Like medicine and law, engineering requirements are strictly set by state law and professional boards. You need at minimum a bachelors in engineering to get a foot in the door. There is no self studying or civil engineering bootcamps. Afterwards, you need to become an engineer in training (EIT) by taking an entrance exam. Four years of experience later, you can sit for your professional engineers exam to become a licensed PE.

So now you're 8 years down the hole, finally licensed and ready to actually practice in a professional role. The kicker is that you're still probably making less than a fresh CS bachelors student working at <foo> corp in a tech hub.

I'll stick to posting on Reddit and contributing to projects.

[krolley]

If I am looking for a surgeon for an operation, it's enough for me to know that he was trained at a good school and has enough experience -- for that a bio online is already decent. I trust his education, after all the field of medicine is one of the oldest in existence.

There is no such trust in the education of software developers, perhaps because software development is such a new field. I've worked with great ones without a formal education and terrible ones that graduated from good schools. The way to 'prove' yourself to someone when they can't work with you (e.g. first stages of a hiring process) is to demonstrate your work by using technical articles, GitHub commits etc. Also, that stuff is not specific to web devs, I'm sure you can find every kind of project under the sun on GitHub.

[davidsong]

> Can you think of any other profession that does anything like this?

Photographers, graphic designers and musicians.

[nommm-nommm]

Photographers, graphic designers, and musicians are expected to work for free in order to get hired?

[klibertp]

Aren't they? I don't know much about musicians, but graphic designers are expected to bring their portfolio with them to the interview. There's no interview at all without the portfolio... and you're not always lucky enough to have all your best works paid for by someone, especially if you're just starting.

EDIT: and, come to think of it, don't musicians need to practice for a long time before even getting a chance to perform for pay?

[WalterBright]

They sure do, and they often play for years for free in the hope of building a brand and being discovered. Like The Beatles.

[jwdunne]

Hrm. Musicians play because they enjoy it. Know many a people who, despite or regardless of success, will play just for the enjoyment of it.

Programming is similar. You hear the stories about how some tech founders focused their energy on programming, it took off and they dropped out of wherever.

I'd argue that for every one of those, there are scores of people who do it just for fun like they did, get nowhere but do it anyway because they like it. Just like there are scores of guitarists for your Clapton, Hendrix, etc.

Open source contributions to me look a lot like people, for the most part, enjoying themselves and getting better at a hobby.

[dkersten]

Having family members who are all three of those... yes. They, unfortunately perhaps, are. They all have to have portfolios of some kind to prove their ability.

It perhaps depends on the specifics of the jobs you go for. For example, if you're a musician producing audio for eg film, then you definitely are expected to have a portfolio, but if you go out and play for an audience, then you probably don't.

[WalterBright]

Any business that spends $0 on marketing will likely reap $0 in sales. Think of it like marketing.

[eitally]

I can't think of any profession where this kind of personal brand management and contributions to the public corpus of [whatever domain] knowledge wouldn't be a boon.

[howeyc]

Perhaps not by posting on reddit, but they have other ways to raise their profile.

Doctors have conferences, Chefs have "Chopped", and those are only the "mainstream" ways the general public knows about. Most others you mentioned have industry/trade magazines for example.

[WalterBright]

I've seen a lot of artists and craftsmen post their work on Reddit, and they're clearly marketing their names.

I suspect the other professions would benefit as well, it probably simply hasn't occurred to them yet. It reminds me of when I was watching a bodybuilding competition in the 80's and thought the posers could really use some advice from a professional dancer. Sure enough, this occurred to one of them, they did a routine that blew away the others, and then the rest of them did.

[TheCoelacanth]

I think you are just not very familiar with some of those professions. Lawyers frequently take on pro bono cases to get themselves publicity. Pastry chefs give out free samples of their work all the time to get customers. In basically any competitive profession some people will take on some non-paying work if they think it will benefit their career.

[gaius]

But there is not the expectation in those professions that they will give up all their free time to it. No lawyers are suing people on their own time just for their own entertainment, I guarantee it. But programmers are expected to do their day jobs then go home and do more programming...

[WalterBright]

In any profession, to rise to the top tiers of pay, it is necessary to devote yourself to it.

[gaius]

You're not comparing like with like, partner in a law firm vs someone whose actual job it is just to crank out CRUD websites.

[klibertp]

You can land a job in cranking out CRUD websites without any kind of side-projects. Hell, with just a little bit of luck you can land such a job without any kind of experience or education.

[TheCoelacanth]

If lawyers want to rise to anywhere near the top they need to meet such stringent billable hours requirements that they will have essentially no free time in which they could sue people.

[klibertp]

> No doctors or lawyers or accountants or civil engineers or pastry chefs find work by posting on Reddit.

Is it good (for lawyers, accountants, etc.) or bad in your opinion?

It's true that the widespread expectation that a programmer will be programming (or doing related things) in his spare time is slightly unusual compared to other professions. Personally, however, I find that expectation natural and I would do it - write code in my spare time - anyway.

[WalterBright]

I also know for a fact that many companies go to programming conferences to look for people to hire. Attending those conferences is a great way to network. Even better is to present at a conference.

[bcook]

You seem to be well aware of this aspect of the job market; do you have blog or something with more in-depth musings on this topic?

If not, then can you share some tips on how to concisely include a job applicant's open-source contributions in their resume?

[JanezStupar]

Just list them under your projects category on your website.

Also that is what your github account is for.

[d2p]

I've also seen a lot of recruiters going through GitHub and contacting people that way lately. People with public source on GH tend to be really passionate devs because they're frequently spending time outside work doing dev.

[jwdunne]

Thank you. This is perhaps the most succinct guide to marketing your skills I've read.

[petra]

Maybe the difference is between just contributing to open-source, and contributing highly-differentiated stuff to open-source, such that your name(or your creation's name, and not something that you just helped in a bit) gets passed around ?