[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.