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by theptip 1046 days ago
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.
1 comments
completeshock 1046 days ago
> 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.

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theptip 1046 days ago
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.

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