
How to become successful Rubyist - icey
http://belitsky.info/freelance/successful-ruby-freelancer/
======
patio11
So many folks suggest "If you don't have anything you can show, start by
contributing to OSS work!" that I sort of have the urge to be contrarian:

1) The professional degree for software engineers is a BS. You might not be
great shakes when you get out of school, but you're still a professional. You
know what professional means? That when you're the least experienced person in
the room doing barely serviceable work, _you're still getting paid_.

2) Extended unpaid apprenticeships are a feature of the guild system and their
modern analogues, used specifically because they make it harder to get into
the field rather than easier, despite the outward appearance of offering a
ladder into the field. Is that who we really want to be?

3) Every programmer you admire sucked once and almost all of them got paid
back when they sucked. They often got paid in a variety of eccentric fashions,
but they got paid.

You know that ubermench coding for a local company when he was 14 who, hah,
had to have his mom cash his paychecks because he didn't have a checking
account? _His code sucked, too._ It just did something that solved a problem
for the business. You know what businesses do for people who solve them
problems? That's right, pay them money.

I have nothing against OSS. By all means, write OSS. Get paid to do it,
though. Can you FizzBuzz? Good, you're hireable by somebody. Get hired. Write
code. Learn to write code better. Career path goes up and to the right from
here.

~~~
delano
_So many folks suggest "If you don't have anything you can show, start by
contributing to OSS work!" that I sort of have the urge to be contrarian_

Many interesting companies prefer to hire (and in some cases hire only) people
who have or have contributed to opensource projects.

 _By all means, write OSS. Get paid to do it, though._

Is it really that bad to work on opensource software solely because you want
to? Do we really need to get paid for everything we do?

~~~
gloob
_Is it really that bad to work on opensource software solely because you want
to?_

Of course not. But there's a difference between "I work on OSS because I want
to" and "I work on OSS because someone said I should". I believe patio11 is
speaking about the latter, mostly.

------
duck
It seems like he is asking the wrong people these questions since there is a
lot of "I can't really answer that because I don't need to do that". I would
rather know the answers to these questions from random folks on the Ruby
mailing list that I haven't heard of since their experiences would probably be
more fitting for me.

~~~
jamesbritt
"I would rather know the answers to these questions from random folks on the
Ruby mailing list that I haven't heard of since their experiences would
probably be more fitting for me."

I'd want to hear from people who tried and failed and learn what didn't work
for them. Did they do the same things as the successful people? What were the
differences?

What things actually make a difference, and what things are largely
coincidental.

------
rick_2047
I have not read all the articles fully so I cannot comment on the content, but
I found that the way the articles were written was interesting. I mean this
guy just emailed all these questions to all these people and they just
replied?

~~~
belitsky
Yes, i write down some questions, which was interesting and useful for me on
that time, and send about 70 emails. You can read all comments i got, only one
guy write that he can't publish any interviews cause his contract. Some of
guys write me that they will answer later, but i think they forgot about this.
Anyway, i'm happy that i was able to get answers from those "cool guys" ;)

