[abstractcontrol]

> The PRs are really good but there's no way to talk to the actual developer working behind those PRs.

I'd really like an avenue to get into the US market as a remote worker, but am being unfairly treated by this job market. It is a pity as I am both a highly skilled programmer and have nearly a decade of experience. I'd consider this service if it could serve to showcase my skills, but if I am not going to get any credit for doing the work personally, there doesn't seem to be much point to it.

[morgante]

If you are a highly skilled programmer, why not just start contributing to open source repos yourself? You don't need to go through GitStart to get there.

Many companies, including my own and the commercial open source companies mentioned in this post, consider open source contributions a major factor in hiring remote talent.

[myk9001]

If you're comfortable sharing, could you elaborate on how a transition from unpaid contributions to some kind of paid work arrangement typically happens.

In your experience, is there usually a more or less deterministic path to a stage where the question of starting to get paid usually comes up? Who initiates it?

The result of this discussion may very well be that the company isn't interested in this kind of relationship for any number of good reasons. But what's important, I think, is for a contributor to be able to have the right expectations coming in. As in:

- Should I join on a purely for fun basis and see where it goes from there, keeping in mind things most likely will stay this way going forward.

- Or if everyone is happy with the quality of code, communication, etc across a number of pull requests, then it's definitely OK and expected to bring up the question of payment/employment.

Thank you.

[wavesquid]

Often if you send 3 large useful PRS to a corporate open source product you will find an email in your inbox asking to connect.

Send a couple more high quality PRs and you can likely leverage that into a job.

[hcks]

So ”3 large useful PRs” have the same expectancy as connecting with a recruiter on LinkedIn ?

[completeshock]

Your public contributions are a showcase of your alleged skills, in most cases.

There is no deterministic way to transition from unpaid to paid. It's just one signal among many that a recruiter or company looking for services would look into.

[comprev]

I don’t think you’re being treated any more unfairly than anyone else trying to break into the US market. It’s simply a case that a decade of experience and being a skilled programmer are not enough to stand out from the crowd.

Depending on your location there may be legal restrictions preventing from US companies hiring you - even through a B2B contract.

[hzia]

Unless there is a strong regulation like HIPAA, I have seen setting up a US based company (through Stripe Atlas) take care of most legal woes.

But ultimately it depends on the motivation of the company itself, and they use all sorts of excuses to not work with non-US staff

[completeshock]

Most companies hiring remotely don't have if your 1-person company is US-based or not.

The ones that care to hiring within vetted countries for $reasons usually will not accept exceptions. Notable example is GitHub which has a list of countries they hire from (even though they're owned by MSFT and could hire on the Moon if they wanted).

Having a company is mostly for tax purposes. It makes everything easier. I think the hiring company doesn't care if the contract is done with a business or an individual. Both are usually limited liability and offer no advantage in case of contract breaches.

[theptip]

If you are highly skilled already, it should be very viable to just work with OSS projects directly. For example in Python, the Django & DRF projects are always looking for contributors (though Django can take a long time to land substantial features).

In my experience as a hiring manager it was quite rare to see lots of OSS work in candidates’ GitHub accounts, but I’d absolutely prioritize those that had good work in OSS. (Also worth emphasizing that technical design, collaboration, and documentation are important and underrated, and can also be showcased in an OSS project. If you can demonstrate good communications in an async OSS environment, that would probably reflect well on your ability to contribute as a remote employee.)

All that said I’m not sure that OSS is the best resume builder. For big companies you need to drill LeetCode and system design. Perhaps for startups it is not the worst use of your time.

[completeshock]

> For big companies you need to drill LeetCode and system design. Perhaps for startups it is not the worst use of your time.

Exactly. Any hiring manager with a brain and not bound my clueless corporate processes would use OSS contributions are a decent signal for proficiency and social skills.

That means nothing in a big corp though. The hiring panel will never accept a candidate that fails the Leetc0d3 test because that means other panels could do the same and then it all falls apart for them. Status quo and all.

[theptip]

To be fair, it’s a hard optimization problem. If you are trying to remove bias from your hiring process then it is difficult to objectively score things like OSS contributions. (I do agree it’s something most bigcorps could do better.)

As a small company you don’t need to try to remove bias with objective metrics (indeed, “culture fit” and “thinks like me” can be good heuristics for building a small tight-knit and high-performing team) but when you hit the company size where you must introduce multiple layers of management, then fully trusting each line manager’s subjective judgements can lead to very disparate quality and other political/organizational issues.

[hzia]

We currently attribute commits back to every single dev involved in a PR (including reviewers) as co-authors. We also actively work with our customers to allow devs to mention their contributions in their CV publicly. And you can always reach out to them directly if they have an open position (especially mentioning your experience working with them through GitStart)

What would be an ideal way to attribute the hard work back to the devs in our case?