Growing your career via open source contributions
summary
Practical playbook for turning open source work into hireable evidence: get visible contributions (documentation PRs, bug triage, code review, maintainer duties), summarize them on your CV as experience (e.g. “OpenStack contributor; 2+ years; code review and release management”), and illustrate with links and stories (link to specific PRs, conference talks, or a GitHub repo). Emphasize concrete skills—cross-cultural collaboration, stakeholder negotiation, time management, mentoring—and follow simple rules: put OSS in the experience section, don’t inflate roles, and include a link to GitHub and 2–3 vetted examples.
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chapters (29)
- 0:00Intro
- 1:20About me
- 2:57Climbing the ladder
- 3:58Email the entire company
- 4:25The response
- 5:09What are your skills
- 6:28Adam Williamson
- 7:31Felipe
- 9:04What stories are examples
- 9:34Three basic steps
- 10:31Open source skills
- 14:56Tailoring your CV
- 16:41Skills
- 23:35Tips Tricks
- 27:51QA
- 28:05Getting started
- 29:45Bug reports
- 30:30Looking for projects
- 32:30Is it worth mentioning you contribute
- 32:45Its okay to ask questions
- 35:20Showing you know your code
- 36:12More chances to speak
- 38:55Other questions
- 39:25Summary
- 40:35Github
- 41:05What makes a difference
- 42:35Practice
- 48:05One shift
- 49:00acknowledgments
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