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Ask HN: Does contributing to open source, increase job offers chances?

3 points by evex ↗ HN
I saw a company that basically run like Gitlab in a sense that they're code is open source and any oninge can contribute,

So this company opened a job offering that I want to get, I know there are +200 developers that applied for the job.

Will contributing heavily to their project for 1 month, help land me a job there?

Do you have any advice on how I can increase my chances of getting the team's attention or get noticed by who's responsible there?

5 comments

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ozten
Completely depends on the job and the interviewers.

For me personally, it is a big plus.

Aside from the obvious reasons:

* I can see candidates code quality

  * I don't penalize for sloppy code, but looks for examples of solid code / architecture / technical aptitude / comments
I've had interviews where the candidate froze up and so I couldn't get enough data points, but I was able to use commits or blog posts from their open source history to augment by evaluation.

I also double-check for copy/pasta to avoid giving them credit for code that is actually just a fork of another codebase.

evex
Aha, so how much do you think is good contribution to proceed to apply to the job, or to contact HR?
ozten
This is really hard to answer. Just make it part of your process and don't block on it for that first batch of applications to jobs.
__d
In the general circumstance, when I'm hiring, I like to understand candidates' skills and experience. Looking at their contributions to open source I can see how they code, how they behave in code reviews, how they behave in email discussions, etc -- all directly relevant to what I'd be hiring them to do.

So ... yes, having a history of open source contributions can demonstrate your abilities, which can help get you hired.

In this specific instance, I suspect it's too late. If the position is already advertised, and there's already 200 applicants ... I don't think contributions now are going to help much.

evex
> I don't think contributions now are going to help much

Makes sense, thanks man!