Open Source Helps New IT Grads Get Foot in the Door

Yes, some US IT jobs are disappearing, but Linux.com (which shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot) has a recent story emphasizing the job advantage that involvement in open source projects can give young programmers who aren't planning to ditch their dreams of making a living in the field. The article focuses on one programmer's experience with Google's Summer of Code, which led directly to her job working on the Drupal content-management system. But the underlying message (that involvement in open source projects provides a background of experience otherwise difficult to obtain because of the chicken-and-egg problem of "experience required" job opportunities) is generalizable to many other forms of open-source involvement. Do you have a job that you landed because of your unpaid open-source programming?

Comments

Doesn't work for me

[4D6963]

I've been working on my open source project for three years and that doesn't help me a bit when looking for a job in Dublin (Ireland, not Ohio). Basically there's a very few jobs out there in which you can program in C or anything vaguely signal processing-related and they all want you to have at least three years of commercial experience, don't care if you've got the snazziest open source project out there.

And I've been looking for a job for over 5 months now, and mainly in tech support and system administration because really, no one wants to hire me for a coding job.

Re:Doesn't work for me

[epiphani]

I've been working on my open source project for about ten years now, and it has played a major role in every single job that I've held.

I got my present job through someone I worked on the project with. I've been there 4.5 years.

I also got involved in a local unix users group by way of hearing about it from some friends of the open source project. The connections I made at that users group have gotten me the job I will be starting in one month.

My open source project, however idle it has been for the last several years, has contributed significantly and directly to my career.

And I've been looking for a job for over 5 months now, and mainly in tech support and system administration because really, no one wants to hire me for a coding job.

Get used to it. Unless you want to crank out business rules written in Java, systems administration/engineering/architecture is the place to be, IMHO. In those teams you can actually do work in C, mess around inside the kernel, and actually make use of all your skills. "Programmers" these days actually seem pretty boring unless you're working for a tech company that has an exceptional software engineering department doing something interesting.

Re:Doesn't work for me

[Lumpy]

Because you are doing it wrong, marketing yourself wrong.

I trot out my OSS projects not as "I work on this free thing on the side" but as "I invented and designed product X, I am a volunteer lead developer for Project Y, and I saved project Z and single handed brought it from a failure to a viable product.

You need to take marketing classes, you gotta market yourself and network hard with people in the field. Hell get an article published in Dr Dobbs or another programming rag and your value goes up even farther.

You market yourself as a one trick pony. you gotta have a list of tricks to dazzle them.

Re:Doesn't work for me

[Splab]

So you have been working for 3 years on the project, but hasn't managed to get it into a first version yet? No wonder you can't get a job if you can't show ability to get stuff out the door.

Also, ARSS? In the beginning you called it ARSE - Yes that might be tong in cheek and kind of fun, but for a company hiring it doesn't exactly signal maturity.

Remember you are pointing them to this project saying "this is what I can do!" and when they go there you show them that you are a lazy guy who doesn't get his things done. It might not be who you are, but those are the signals, and they are what count.

Re:Doesn't work for me

[DrgnDancer]

I hate to say it, but that's a pretty arcane bit of coding you've done there. Having taken a sound processing class at university, I'd probably hire you on the spot if the damn thing works like you say it does. Purely on the "If he can figure out how to do this on his own, he'll probably figure out whatever I set him" theory. On the other hand, a lot of people are going to look at this like it's an impractical exercise outside of a few very specific applications.

You might try volunteering some time on a larger project with a more understandable goal. This gives you a) practical experience working with a team (usually pretty important in development work), b) something that an average manager will understand when you show them what you did, and c) a potential reference from someone else in the team who is already in industry and thus has standing to recommend you.

Your personal project has two thing working against it as useful "experience". First, few people are going to really understand what you did, or how difficult it was. Second, you're not actually getting what they would consider useful professional experience. "Real" projects are developed by teams, with schedules, check-ins and outs, a team leader that everyone else reports to, and some sort of hierarchical development plan. This is often more than half of what companies want to see when they ask for "experience". They assume people learned how to pound code into an IDE in in university, they want to see that you can fit into a dev team and do your part.

Re:Doesn't work for me

[Brandybuck]

There is no ticket to a free job. If you can't sell yourself, it doesn't matter how great your experience is. But even if you're the greatest self-promoter in the world, you still have to bust your ass for that job. That's life.

Re:Doesn't work for me

[Glonoinha]

You have the answer right there in black and white - and it's not the answer you thought it was ...

I got my present job through someone ...
The connections I made at that users group have gotten me the job ...

Sitting at home haxoring F/OSS in your underware isn't going to help anyone's long term career.
Interacting with other people, contributing to a common goal in a collaborative fashion where you establish yourself in the minds of influential people as someone that delivers quality work - THIS is what opens up long term career options and opportunities.

As much as it has been forever - it's not what you know. It's who you know. So get out there and meet some people.

Re:Doesn't work for me

[Splab]

Then don't use the acronym, name it! If the name is too long, then rename it to something shorter and easier to remember.

And just because someone else hasn't released "full" version doesn't make it right. You are the one searching for a job, what count is peoples view of your project(s).

And don't get jumpy about it, I work for an IT company and we do hire C/C++ programmers, and I am one of those sitting across the table. I checked out your site and my response is the same as if you would have applied where I work - granted you wouldn't have been told, but would just have ended up in the bottom of the pile.

Also, you are getting criticism, it sucks, but you need to suck it in and learn from peoples input - a Google search would now turn up this thread (somewhere) when searching for your project; how you handle yourself here will also impact your future applications.

Worked for me

[goofy183]

I was working for my university as a student in the IT department and implementing an open-source portal. Ended up getting a job offer with a company that provided consulting for said project. Now that I'm four years into working with the project and on my second employer (voluntary change) having open-source project experience while in college and after opens a lot of doors. Beyond just the development experience if you become heavily involved in a project it can also speak volumes about your interpersonal and team skills.

Its all about networking and communication

[mjhuot]

I work on the OpenNMS project and we have been participating in the GSoC. I have not been directly involved but I have seen some of the work done by our participants. It is interesting to watch them learn about how to interact and contribute to the project. Some of them had to learn some of the basics of the "work" environment like meetings, status reports, and meaningful commit messages, as well as how best to present their ideas. I watched one presentation by a student and it was better than most I have seen in my professional life. If this student was to ask me for a recommendation I would have no problem giving it based on the coding and communications skills he has demonstrated. I think that is where the real value.
Going and starting your own open source project is one thing, but you need to show how you work with others. I think there is more value in working on an existing project, showing how well you can work with others within a team. Plus you have an opportunity of networking with other developers.
For non-programmers, there are other ways to contribute to open source projects, through documentation, IRC, mailing lists, forum participation, and testing. Again you get a chance to interact and network with people. You never know when one of the people that you wrote documentation for or helped out on a mailing list might be your next boss or co-worker.

Re:But how does it help non programmers and PHB wh

[Lumpy]

only if the office PHB is not a moron.

If the PHB discounts your OSS work, you REALLY DO NOT want to work there.

Consider it a "has a clue" flag in the database. If they dont like the OSS work, the OSS flag is not set and you should exclude that place from your dataset.

That's besides the point

[HalAtWork]

The point here is that it's easier in a field where open source software is used, because the barrier of entry for actual hands on experience is lowered significantly. You can just download it and submit patches and participate in the actual development from your own home, and nobody has to know anything about you, so there are even no prejudices working against you which you may often encounter in a job environment, even if it's just people scrutinizing your age or what you wear.

Experience

[Brandybuck]

Some of you younglings may think experience is overrated, that your degree from a party university should give you a free entry into an immediately high paying job. But this is the real world. Degrees are a dime a dozen and most resumes are padded. You need to prove to us old fogeys not just that you can code, but that you can code well, know how to design, now how to work in teams, won't go on a three month drinking binge the first time you get a bug logged against your software.

We want experience!

That's what internships are for. But getting an internship is almost as difficult as getting a regular position. Open Source Software lets you create your own internship. It lets you put down real experience on your resume. Even if you have real world experience, a lot of your code won't be public. But your Open Source Software will be, and interviewers can see your actual code.

If you use or develop open source...

[zogger]

..you are never "unpaid". Never. The immediate and primary currency -your pay- you receive at all times and in as large of amounts as you wish is other peoples code they freely share. You can take this huge amount that is out there and use it for any purpose you want, including engaging in this thing called "business" where you can get paid in another form of currency if you desire. If you want to know where computers and code are used so you can "get paid" in central bankers currency while working "a job", here is a handy reference to start your search from. The vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of listings in this reference manual all use computers and code in some fashion now-a-days, and most of them all will pay you in central bankers currency if you work a job with them. So you not only get paid, you get paid twice if you use open source. Kinda nifty.

Open Source Projects

[xquiky]

I know that the open source community has given a lot to me. I have been able to tackle some difficult coding tasks by being able to reference works already done by some different open source iniatives. I think the chicken-and-egg issue about the developers not having experience but needing it to get a job, is definitely something that if the developer could show they contributed meaningfully to an open source project would help there case trying to get a job. It looks good on the resume. I decided to try and give back to the open source community, and released one of my products as open source now. I am looking for anyone that wants to work on it, or just enjoy using it. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pop3wizardnet/ I hope it helps someone save a few hours of headaches, considering it has weeks of work in it.

Re:What about PHB in HR as well the other HR peopl

[MBGMorden]

Agreed. For my last promotion HR didn't consider me "qualified enough" even though my boss assured them that I was more than capable of taking on the increased responsibilities. In the end the job posting had to be retracted, and the job description/requirements rewritten in order to fit my paper credentials more closely.

Now, this was for an existing employee (me) that was already known to the people who would do the final hiring. If you were some unknown applicant out of college however, you'd get tossed in the circular file and nobody would ever know any different.

As to the "you don't want to work there" part stated by the GP - be real. The economy is on the way to tanking. People have bills to pay. If it's the difference between living on the street and a roof over my head I'd be willing to dig shit all day - programming for clueless people is one heck of a step up from that.