The advice is the same to everyone. Work hard on personal projects, get them online and live and running and impressive. Join a well known open source project and do 200 commits. Tweet, blog regularly. Prove you know your stuff.
Same advice for everyone. Almost no one does this stuff and those that do greatly increase their chance of getting work.
People sit around hoping not to have to do the hard yards, hoping they'll somehow be given a job. In 2014 you have to make it happen through active, public work.
If you build enough of an online reputation then you'll get work without even meeting people and they wouldn't know if you were an 80 year old giraffe.
The thing is, if I have some interesting personal project that is useful for some group of people - I'd make a small business from it rather than dumping it online and just mentioning it on my CV ;)
god, the things Ashe Dryden writes are toxic, regardless of her popularity (or , perhaps, vocal-ity).
> "So that we're all on the same page, let's take a look at what the landscape of open source contribution looks like. Someone's made a handy gist of the most active GitHub users (from Nov 10, 2012 through Nov 10, 2013) (thanks to @jclermont for the link). A quick glance through the list shows that the overwhelming majority of these users are white men."
Just to clarify, these are pictures of users she's looking at.
meanwhile at the bottom of the page..
> "I hesitate to break down actual percentages because attempting to discern someone's race or gender identity from their photo and name is dodgy business."
Ugghh, I wish she'd write honestly: "I know that I can't reliably estimate things by eyeballing them, but I will anyway. As long as I cite my indiscretion later on, I can write whatever the fuck I want to."
Europe is very conservative: Standing out might be even a downer.
But generally good public (e.g. on github) standing should justifiy you a job (maybe even a highly paid one)
EDIT: Wow, thanks for the downvotes: Just to let you know: I LIVE (and work since almost 10 years) IN Europe! I have 2 (relevant!) projects on github and usually don't talk about them at hiring situations (though they are mentioned in my CV and are actually used (and appreciated) by people out there)
But look... you may just know better (and I am eager to hear your reply) !
I didn't downvote you, but I found some of those statements odd. What exactly did you mean by "Europe is very conservative: Standing out might be even a downer."?
I live in Europe too, in the UK, and know it's important to talk about personal projects if you're not entering a super-corporate environment. That you choose to downplay your experience is up to you, but I wouldn't say it was sound advice for others.
Same advice for everyone. Almost no one does this stuff and those that do greatly increase their chance of getting work.
People sit around hoping not to have to do the hard yards, hoping they'll somehow be given a job. In 2014 you have to make it happen through active, public work.
If you build enough of an online reputation then you'll get work without even meeting people and they wouldn't know if you were an 80 year old giraffe.