
Does contributing to open-source companies increase chance of a job there? - evex
As the title says, Does contributing to open-source companies such as:<p>- Gitlab<p>- Ghost<p>- Discourse<p>- Edx<p>- Google(Angular, Flutter, Tenserflow)<p>- Facebook(React, React Native, Jest)<p>Increases (Dramatically) Chances of getting a job at said companies? to a point where said companies reach out to the contributor?
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tucaz
I’m going to reply to this just based on (my) logic and zero experience.

The question is: does it increase my chances dramatically?

I believe the answer is: if your contributions are dramatic I believe it does
increase your chances.

How dramatic it needs to be is another discussion.

If you can make significant contributions to a certain community or company,
so much that they can see the difference, how can it not help you?

~~~
evex
That's what first came to my mind as well.

I would like to hear from someone with experience just to rest my mind and go
ALL IN contributing :D

~~~
jolmg
Also based on my own logic and zero experience on the matter, why should they
hire you when you would work so much for them for free? What would be your
standing in a job negotiation?

Not to say it can't happen. For example, if you make cool features for Gitlab,
they may want to reserve it for the paid version but they won't be able to (I
hope) unless you were an employee, causing you to surrender your copyright for
said developments to them.

Still, I think you'd be setting yourself up for disappointment, if you only do
that work with the expectation that they would eventually hire you, when they
have given no indication that they would even consider it. It's too much
investment with little to no guarantee of returns, and most benefit of the
work is gratuitously given to someone else.

It might be better to spend that free time to build a portfolio of independent
projects to showcase to potential employers. Those projects would have your
name on them instead of some company's, and they make it easier to judge the
quality of your work by potential employers. It's easier to judge the quality
of a complete project, as opposed to a few commits here and there in a project
that's been worked on by many people.

~~~
evex
> when they have given no indication that they would even consider it.

That's exactly why I'm asking this question,

> It might be better to spend that free time to build a portfolio of
> independent projects to showcase to potential employers.

I already have a couple(wordhunt.xyz, getquoter.app), but they do not seem
enough to land me a job somehow, and I don't want to apply to 100+ companies
to get someone to hire me.

I would like to choose a company that I like and believe are doing a good
thing, and then apply and get accepted instead of randomly applying to any
company with good pay.

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DoreenMichele
It seems to me this is kind of how Linus Torvalds got his job. I could be
wrong there, though.

HN comment:

"I've known many more or less unemployable people who started contributing to
significant open source projects, and based on that got hired to well paid
positions."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18378267](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18378267)

~~~
evex
I see, thanks for your input.

I would like to know for sure if it is good investment to contribute to the
companies that I like :)

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arduinomancer
Just a theory but I’d bet, for companies like Google and Facebook, grinding
leetcode would be less work and more efficient if your only end goal is to
work there.

~~~
evex
It would be a bit hard for me to get an interview in the first place, I'm not
a US citizen.

~~~
jolmg
They have offices in many parts of the world, I believe. Also, I imagine
sponsoring employment visas is probably something routine for them.

But yes, it's probably harder.

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em-bee
this is based on my gut feeling, as someone who is hiring and has FOSS
projects we use for work.

first of all, there are multiple factors at play:

does contributing to FOSS projects increase your chances at getting any job?

does it make a difference to which projects you contribute to?

both these can be answered with yes.

having a portfolio of public contributions is helpful. (personally i think it
is unfair to those who can't afford the free time to spend coding, so i try to
reduce the effect, but even then the ability to look at your code will give me
insights that i'd otherwise not get)

if i am looking for a webdeveloper, i probably won't care so much about your
kernel contributions, other than as a general indicator of your skills. at the
worst i might fear that your career interests don't align with the job i can
offer.

so working on a company's codebase is likely going to help make sure that your
interests are aligned with the work i want you to do. but only if the job you
apply for is actually in that very area.

most of googles jobs for example are not angular, flutter or tensorflow.
contributing there will probably not make a difference because you likely
won't be hired to work on those.

it is more likely to matter for smaller projects/companies.

however on your last point, as mentioned by others, unless your contribution
is so significant that you already know the core developers on a first name
basis (like you are in the top 10% of non-core contributors) they won't reach
out to you. bigger companies won't because it's not enough to stand out, and
smaller companies rarely have the funds to hire people on a whim.

what contributing may help you with is to be the first to hear when new
positions open up.

if you are in the inner circle of angular developers, you may find out sooner
if a new position in the angular team opens up. and you may have a chance, not
because you contributed, but because they already know you and because you
were able to submit an application earlier. (they know you because you
contributed, but if you keep a stealth appearance while contributing, so that
you never interact with other developers then that probably won't help)

i have been in that group in one project, and while i didn't get an offer from
the company behind the project, job offers that targeted the experience were
usually posted first on the core developer list, and so i knew about them
early. my actual code contributions though weren't really that significant but
being on the inner circle helped (i organized conferences for the community
and helped edit a book for example).

~~~
evex
Hey, thanks for your input.

So can I conclude from what you said, that I should have my contributions
profile ready for when an opportunity is open at a company I'm contributing
to, I have a higher chance to get the opportunity compared to non-
contributors?

~~~
em-bee
no, the conclusion actually is to make friends with the core developers.
contributing good code is one way to do that, but writing excellent
documentation, or filling some other need in the community can also work.

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codegladiator
No

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throwaway2021
No, I've contributed to the Linux kernel more than once and never received a
job offer from Red Hat, SUSE or Canonical.

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evex
I don't think "more than once" can get you a job, my goal was to contribute a
LOT, like full-time for 3-6 months on issues that no one wants to work on so I
actually impress.

~~~
awaywopassd
That is a lot of time to work for free. Why not get a regular job and convince
your employer to let you contribute to Open Source project they use.

~~~
evex
"regular jobs" where I live, offer very bad compensation packages. I see a lot
of remote companies offering good pay along with a good environment and good
benefits.

