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How To Get Hired As An Open Source Developer
An anonymous reader writes "Todd Cranston-Cuebas, tech recruiter for Ticketmaster, offers
insider tips and tricks for landing an open-source job -- or for recruiting new talent to your IT staff." Make yourself googleable.
My experience is this:
Sex - Find It
Have skills applicable to the job and a few others that might come in handy.
Be flexabile on salary, understand that pay has come down in a lot of markets.
Interview well when it gets to that point.
Get lucky.
How is any of this different than getting any job?
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
I find it almost funny to hear Ticketmaster being associated with free software since they provide a service that adds almost no value and charges a boatload. Good thing they are saving so much money on software systems.
Here's a free insider tip, here's another.. do something to get noticed. A CV with something concrete in it looks much better than one without.
We see this issue from a slightly different angle -- open source coders for LimeWire offer us an extended "interview" period where we can truly judge the value of their code. This lets us make hiring decisions easily. There's no interview that can substitute for months of open source code. Interestingly, we've seen that one of the primary attributes of people who write good code is also one of the primary attributes that involves them in open source to begin with -- passion for the project. The best coders often don't have the most impressive degrees. Rather, the best coders are the ones who care enough about the project to write good code for it. Experience and training help, but it's passion for the project that makes average code good, or good code great.
Adam Fisk
As a manager with no degree, I am in a position to comment.
I give careful consideration to all applicants, but I take a sceptical view of those people whose only claim to fame is a degree or certification. I want experience, or concrete evidence that the candidate is prepared to do the job with minimal babysitting. Another thing I want is some longevity. If I'm hiring for a full-time position, I view it as a purchase as opposed to a rental. You would be amazed to see how many people have years of experience, but never more than 12 months at any one place. What assurances do I have that such people are not simply hopping from one contract to the next, leaving behind a trail of destruction?
My hires have ranged from a high school dropout [long story omitted], to an MSCS. I'm quite proud of my people; all except one have worked out well. I don't actively seek to avoid hiring people with degrees, I'm just not convinced that the credential means much. This means I'm tough on recent grads, but who isn't? For the record, I hired a recent grad after he spent some time in my department as a temp -- another success story.
I believe that managers will repeat any behavior that works, and abandon that which does not work. After you get burned on a few bad hires, you will seek to avoid whatever led you down that path.
Even with a College/Uni degree, or diploma, nobody should really expect to get out and immediately get a $75000/yr+superduperbenefits job. Really, what you should look for is a job that you would like, make you enough income to survive the first year, and looks really good on a resume.
Barring that, you can also spot the companies you'd wish to work for that do pay the big bucks, and try getting in on one of the lesser positions.
It's 100% easier to climb a ladder when you're already working in a company. It's also (ironically) very often easier to get a job when you've already got a job. You don't have to mention on your resume that you're "undervalued and underpaid", just list what you're capable of, and the fact that you are currently doing it helps prove so.
There are a lot of small/starter companies who need computer support that frankly can't afford to pay big bucks in the beginning. They do look good on a resume though, and the work generally isn't too hard. Oftimes if you are lucky, said companies can end up growing, and as they grow - so often does your paycheque.
It's hard to think of with the cost of living nowadays, but sometimes the value of a position is not in the paycheque, but in the respect, references, and experience it gains.
Oh, and a big problem with small companies is that it gets really hard to leave when you're ready to move on... they tend to grow on you.
There are 3 distinct major groups of developers:
1 - people who earn money developing software for sale as a product: to them, open source generally != good
2 - people who earn money developing software (embedded, hardware device drivers, etc.) to support another product that is sold: to them open source: sometimes == good and sometimes != good (gives away, architectures, secrets)
3 - people who earn money developing software for IT purposes and/or in-house use: to them, open source generally == good
Of course, there are many other groups of developers (academic, recreational, etc.) and there is intermingling, so the above is not a hard and fast rule.
I also think that this is also one of the reasons that you often see acrimonious debate here at /. - each group has a different set of objectives and priorities.
Sigs are bad for your health.
I spend a lot of time dealing with hiring for the IT staff at my company. These days, I pretty much instantly trash any resume doesn't include some sort of background with creating or maintaining an Open Source projust of reasonable size. It may be an unfair bias, but experience has shown me that OSS developers are almost always an order of magnitude more skilled and more responsible than applicants from other backgrounds.
The self-motivation, self-discipline, organizational skills, and willingness to write code that the author isnt ashamed to display to the whole world are exactly the sort of traits that employers look for (or should be, anyway).
I've never been turned down for a job I interviewed for, and I dont have a degree, and I've never been fired. My skill sets are sparse: PHP, Postgresql Perl, MySQL, Apache, Linux etc... Here's what I did:
1. Went into detail what I did in the last 3 jobs, I mean serious detail. It means that the people that I'll work well with, will appreciate my resume instead of some PHB looking for acronyms.
2. Include links to articles I wrote, and postings I made in forums for all the above technologies. The last job I got was because they received help from some silly posting I made and forgot about years ago.
3. Include links to interactive sites that you helped build. Forget the pretty stuff, the fancy HTML, that's not what you will be hired for, instead, link to the interactive portions of the site that actually do something.
4. Always have some code samples handy with lots of comments. Include some OOP examples along with traditional procedural code.Even if they dont use OOP, at least they know that you can.
5. Make sure that you will have lots of hits in google, which will turn up all your online activity.
6. Dont bring your resume to the interview. Instead, when they ask for it, give them the URL where they can view it.
7. Refuse a job where they require your resume in Microsoft Word format. It means that they are not really an open source shop, and the PHB's probably use Outlook, Exchange, Office and IE. Tell them that you are refusing the job because of that reason. They will respect you for having the balls to do it, and in the same vein, always submit your resume in text format in the email to the recruiter (not as an attachment).
8. Be assertive in your resume, tell them exactly what you want to do. Dont be vague about what you want to do. Tell them how you can help them, and that you will make a great fit in their org. If possible, tailor your resume for each job you are applying for.
9. Don't mention that you can use a word processor, browser, or spreadsheet. That's passe, everybody's expected to do that. Don't mention that you can admin an NT/2000 box (even if you can), instead, tell them in the interview.
I guess there are more tips out there, but for last 2 jobs and 4 interviews in 6 years, those have worked well for me.
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