Unleash your potential with GitHub Octernships: a path to a thriving tech career

github.blog

18 points·todsacerdoti··5 comments

What “octernship” means: https://education.github.com/students/octernships

Basically a GitHub built a platform for students to get paid to do contract projects with mentorship attached. I think it’s interesting.

I read most of the way down the post waiting for any sort of explanation of what an “octernship” is, but the post mostly just says the word a lot and sings praises. In fairness it links to the explanation page, but I would hope a launch post has even the barest of short introductions of the platform.

So similar to GSoC, but limited to some countries which I guess have been under-represented to date?

Of note is that it's only offered in LCOL countries. It doesn't look like Americans can participate in this, so the advertised default of "$500/mo" is really fairly significant in most of the participating countries.

> Enrolled in an institution with work eligibility in one of the ten countries: India, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand, Mexico, Nigeria, and Colombia.

Feels wrong to limit like this. Yeah GH/MS you care so much about people, definitely not a way to encourage outsourcing.

And there are many many low income students attending community colleges who would benefit tremendously from a program like this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com