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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

Let me show you the backdoor:

Find a company whose open source projects you are interested in. Dive in and and start fixing things. Then if you really like it after a couple weeks start nudging around for a job. If you do good work they'll just give it to you, no bullshit funnel required.

I like this method because you aren't just doing l33t coding exercises to work on some sight unseen codebase that makes you suicidal and throw you into existential crisis.

In this modality you are test driving each other.

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This 1 weird trick of doing free work and hoping they 1) have headcount 2) pay attention / see value in your free work.

> … you are test driving each other.

Unless you think the way they run their open source projects is the way their entire company works, you’re really not.

If you need to practice leetcode like things for interviews, aren’t you also doing free ‘work’? Only in that case it’s more proof-of-work than something actually useful. Perhaps one could point at the openly viewable results when talking to other companies.

The strategy strikes me as a little weird but not crazy. If you like open source already, it might make a lot of sense.

> If you need to practice leetcode like things for interviews, aren’t you also doing free ‘work’? Only in that case it’s more proof-of-work than something actually useful.

This might be true, but at least the skills are easy to show off on a resume and will help you with other interviews. Open-source contributions might vary drastically in nature and might be harder to leverage as experience/proof of skill

Many tech interviews at startups are simply: "talk about a project you once did :)"

Where do you find these startups? My experience with startup interviews is FAANGesque leetcode + system design questions.

Not all is lost if you don't end up getting a job with them. Open source work makes for great resume bullets.

Yes, this is all a good disclaimer. YMMV like with everything else.

There's no guarantees anywhere in this strategy. But there's nice correlations

This is exactly what my gardener did. One day someone went to my home and started mowing it. I watched. After 4 months of free mowing, he started doing my hedges. I started to talk to other people in my house: "hey we should hire this guy". My wife said "wtf for, he is free? right?" Eventually, I was worried he would start doing free work somewhere else so we hired him - but not for much. He is a great gardener. /s

The parable of Linus the Gardener.

Im not sure why you are getting so many negative comments. For those that are interested in open source, and would be contributing to projects regardless, I think this is a great idea. Also, it sounds like a good way to distract oneself from the normal expectations/disappointment cycle of interviewing

"Doing work for free", as some others have pointed out in a negative light, is fundamental to how modern software works. If you're not contributing then you're profiting off of the minority that does...

This sounds like you're suggesting people work for free for the hope of potentially being hired by an employer. I think that is pretty pathetic.

I mean, even if they don’t get hired they’re still contributing to open-source. Seems like a good outcome either way

Incorrect.

You are making sure your passions align with your work.

If you can find motivation beyond a paycheck and do it then you're more confident you'll enjoy it for the long haul.

Jobs are easy. Satisfaction is the hard thing.

Strictly speaking yes this is uncompensated labor but if that's all you see, let me help a bit.

What if the target is NASA, Wikimedia foundation, maybe some software for Doctors without borders? They all have salaried positions and volunteering is probably a solid way to know if it's a good fit

Why must passion be involved in work? Why can't it just be a profession?

Some people have passions that are not monetizable.

It doesn’t have to, but there is a good overlap of the vent diagram of engineers who open source their work with engineers who have a passion directly related to that work.

I can see both sides of the argument, some people want to just do their stuff and leave, whereas others might wholly devote themselves to the problem.

Can confirm, this is how i got my current job. Its a great path, especially for those with no experience and straight out of university

What did you contribute to? And how substantial were your contributions?

Yup can confirm, after a decent contribution to a known apache project, had three well known companies reach out, two of which the engineering manager was the one reaching out.

Would love to know more. What project was it? Did you contribute wanting a job or was interested any way? Did you get a job through this strategy?

I contributed because the company I worked for needed new functionality, then I decided it was interesting to make it generic enough to release to everyone. I did it a little bit as something to throw on the resume, but no idea if it helped to get my current job.

I have started using dapr by Microsoft which has a very active small community and increasing adoption. Becoming proficient in using a tool like this and also becoming a contributor is an example of being in demand for the companies that might be using it if it doesn't mean working specifically for MSFT or one of the other corporate sponsors.

Another strategy for getting intro to users of OSS software is to join discord and start offering help and then possibly leveraging that to mention the help could be more permanent.

Do be careful though not to be explicitly soliciting since that is usually against the community policies so a little bit of a needle to thread.

Please don’t do this. We don’t need workers to do our work for free. It will make it harder for the rest of us to find jobs (or even getting paid for our current one).

If you want to contribute to open source, do so with the mind that you are helping a shared community (or maybe just for fun). Don’t do it because you think it will help you get a job (I’m not even sure parent is correct that it will).

>Don’t do it because you think it will help you get a job (I’m not even sure parent is correct that it will).

As a hiring manager, the open source projects and blogs people sell on their CVs is impressive if it looks like self-motivated interest, and annoying if it looks thinly self-promotive. The two inherently intersect but when it skews to the extreme of self-selling it isn't taken as seriously from what I observe.

Curious if you have done this yourself

Not GP, but I have and it worked. Pretty happy of the job I have, working of free software in a great environment.

Yep. More than once.

I got frustrated by interviews where I told them I've been doing this for over 25 years and they're like "ok how do you show the list of files in this directory at the bash prompt"

I've had the "what the hell job are you hiring for?" response in my head many times

I've got no interest groveling my way up some kind of hierarchy to eventually get to a position I thought I was coming in to do in the first place.

This has turned out to be a perfectly acceptable shortcut.

You could say it's more like petitioning for a job as opposed to applying for one

This is definitely one way to get job, but in my experience watching others do it, a "couple of weeks" is more on the timeframe of a "couple of years" when someone else leaves to make a position available.

I always wondered, if you hate leet code - wouldn't you just reject the next step of the interview if the company suggested it?

I totally love this suggestion btw, but I think it serves when you are doing this continuously rather than when you are pressed for the job asap.

Interesting, I've seen one guy used the similar method to get a remote job.

Willing to try this. Know any open source projects that people are hiring for?

I think you misunderstand

Real world example: my company has our react UI library open sourced. I don’t think outside the org uses it, but it’s an open source project “owned” by a company. Another example would be something like React.

I would also look for projects that are being majorly run by a number of large organizations, and see how you could be of help. Look at the CNCF project list and take your pick!

Indeed, this l33t code thing leads to bullcrap jobs more often than not.

I actively hire this way.

Do you give the newhires backpay?

Mostly joking but I don't think such a bonus is a crazy idea

thanks. i might try this

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