stumbled upon open source and linux in 1999, I was contributing to projects within a year. I strongly believe that finding open source early on opened up a lot of opportunities for me.
here, it’s probably the best job I’ve ever had. A lot of my open source work and enjoying what I do led to me landing the job i wanted. We build software collaboration tools.
The majority of college graduates I meet aren’t ready for “the real world” when it comes to software development today’s talk is enabling students to be ready for real software jobs after graduation. Here’s what it was like for me...
I bummed around for two years after high school, went to a local college, graduated in 4 years. I did not program before college, most of my classmates had. So I had to work hard.
library management, release cycles, collaboration, design discussions We were all passionate about making pretty things for Linux workstations. My formal education was complemented by this participation
for theory, hacked on open source projects as practice, i got better. i debated grad school but decided to find real work, a lot of that drive came from real world stresses i decided it was time to find a job.
that employers typically want N years of experience 6-7 years ago, open source didn’t count, so you couldn’t even get your foot in the door “We’re sorry but I just can’t put someone without experience into this position.”
sorry but I just can’t put someone without experience into this position.” Unfortunately experience means, years of “professional” work. Even if your professional work is complete crap.
of opportunities here to help with researchers and their grants. As an undergrad I was lucky enough to have two, much more challenging than my normal curriculum. Buuuuuut, employers don’t care.
It wasn’t just my school, almost everyone I meet had similar experiences Or they just dropped out because they found an opportunity w/o the degree Did I only go to make my mom proud?
After a depressing 3-4 months, someone hired me in an area that I didn’t really enjoy. I was underpaid and contracting for a fortune 5 company. Normal corporate ladder bullshit, I didn’t find this fulfilling.
I couldn’t help but wonder why I’d worked so hard but found a job that was unsatisfying. Looking back, I realize I understood what was necessary, the market didn’t yet. It does now, and a lot of that can be achieved by participation.
development that doesn’t happen enough in education. The days of the wizard in the basement building everything himself are over. Collaboration is a day to day thing in every shop out there right now.
what modern software is about. Peer review of patches and design decisions, testing and deployment involve the whole team. Exposure to new things through working with others.
becoming more and more geographically distributed. People need to have good communication skills in order to be effective. I remote pair programmed with a co-worker in NZ for almost 2 years, very rewarding.
projects are using it with a lot of success, Rails, Jquery, Node. Users begin to interact with each other and in a lot of cases it’s a meritocracy. The picture is a lot of early adopters to rails, we built projects, but the first time we’d all met in person.
crazy culture we’ve seen develop over the past few years, hackers need a rep. Students/Graduates need a way to stand out when they go looking for jobs. It’s not just what you know, sometimes it’s who you know too.
encourage involvement. Have them create a GitHub or BitBucket in some of their early labs. I’m still unsure about how to do labs, my CS labs were nothing like real software development. Help your students understand that reading source code is invaluable.
put you in a great place to meet other passionate people. There are free conferences available and often student discounts. You can learn about emerging tech as well as meet people who might need employees. Let them know that the job they want, might not be in the town they’re from.
Code and Ruby Summer of Code offer students money to improve the ecosystem. They have mentors and are required to explain their efforts over the summer. Looks good on a resume.
you can do is tell your students that they need to make it happen. Recommendations are nice but they don’t help if people are basing employment solely on years experience. It’s basically collegiate or extra-curricular activities, and they need to practice. It can be really rewarding.
surge in businesses being created by talented open source hackers. we’re professionals in probably the most exciting time in computing. the work that we do can directly impact our friends and family, great ideas are adopted.
inept nerd stereotype is slowly going away, normal people are computer savvy. Often start as boutique consultancies, move on to create products with recurring income. You don’t need mega global partnerships to make good money and have fun.
businesses end up hiring friends from projects, because you know their friends skill-sets. This is fun because it tends to be a flat organization and everyone’s opinions are equal. These are my friends, coworkers, and my “bosses” are in there too.
corporate ladder is of no interest to me. The likelihood that you’ll become an exec at some fortune 50 is pretty low. If I’m going to spend much of my adult life working, I want to enjoy it.
higher quality of life than a lot of other people. The difference comes from people finding jobs they’re passionate about. I think happiness is undervalued and often overlooked in employment.
2011 There is a shortage of talented people in technology. The job you want exists in mobile/web/media, but you need to make it happen. Find work that’s rewarding because you spend so much of your life doing it.
can’t think of anything more fulfilling than helping people live wonderful lives. If 5% of your students are successful w/o OSS, what if you could get them to 50% w/ OSS involvement. Think of how amazing all of those “thank you for helping me” emails will feel.
of my friends/coworkers went to school, some didn’t. You can survive in this industry without a formal degree. I’m glad I got one, but I think that a CS degree alone isn’t enough.
think the lessons learned in open source give students a competitive advantage in the job market. I also think it gives them a competitive advantage in life.
most fulfilling part of my job is putting smiles on people’s faces. Students, if you hustle, I swear that fulfilling work is out there. Educators please motivate your students to work on things outside of the classroom.
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