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Using F/OSS and Unpaid Experience to Find a Job? 46

Posted by Cliff from the make-sure-it's-on-your-résumé dept.
andphi asks: "How has volunteer F/OSS experience helped or hindered Slashdot readers in finding paid programming jobs? I have been involved with a F/OSS game engine development project (Adonthell) for a few years now. I've become the primary story and plot developer for the project. I hardly even look at the code, though I do try to follow the traffic on the developer's list. I've learned C++, VB6, Perl, IA32 Assembler, and exposed myself to a great many other languages (JavaScript, HTML, XML, SQL, C, awk, sed, bash, etc.). But I wonder, what can I do to sell myself using my post-graduate project involvement?"
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Using F/OSS and Unpaid Experience to Find a Job? More

Using F/OSS and Unpaid Experience to Find a Job?

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  • Sorry, kiddo (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's a VisualBasic.NET world if you want to get paid.
    • It probably varies a little the farther you get from Redmond, but sadly the parent has some truth to it, especially here in Western Washington.

      • It probably varies a little the farther you get from Redmond, but sadly the parent has some truth to it, especially here in Western Washington.

        Come across the lake - we have lots of Linux/C++/Perl jobs.

    • Re:Sorry, kiddo (Score:3, Informative)

      by trompete ( 651953 )
      Yeah, in addition to the parent: You're probably guaranteed to be doing something with a website, a database, and XML being exchanged and parsed. That sums up 80% of the new jobs out there. Learn Java and C#.

      • Re:Sorry, kiddo (Score:2, Insightful)

        by oliverthered ( 187439 )
        I don't know, I'd say work out what you want to do and go for that. It usually works, even if you have to wait a few years.
      • The embedded market is huge right now. But you have to know C, assembly, and understand hardwarwe and multithreaded environments.
      • You're not seeing much XML if you work for a small company. At the company I work for, we use CSV based files. Even that is occasionally too difficult for some of our potential partners.

        One person I had to deal with had no idea how to open a file with a .txt extension. I told her to try using Notepad, at which point she replied she had never heard of Notepad and it was not installed on her computer. I eventually had to sent her a template file with a csv extension, guide her through working on it in Excel,
    • Any advice on getting an uncrippled copy of VS.NET. I daresay learning C# or VB.NET would prove difficult otherwise.

  • Look into non-game FOSS involvement (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @03:02PM (#13264903) Homepage
    But I wonder, what can I do to sell myself using my post-graduate project involvement?

    You should consider getting involved in something other than game development. I'm not saying that game development is not intense and complicated code, but I think for most employers, it's just going to be a marginally interesting aside.

  • Somewhat, but not really (Score:4, Informative)

    by trompete ( 651953 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @03:04PM (#13264907) Homepage Journal
    I've worked on some free/OSS projects which I've used in job interviews, but I also did three software development internships in college.

    You'll find that for the most part FOSS experience will get you praise from Unix/Mac people, and will invoke a fairly neutral response from Windows people. Your average windows programming team lead doesn't know much about Open Source or might be bitter toward it due to the "free as in herpes" model of OSS licensing.

    Mostly, employers of 20-somethings (I'm 24) are looking for the following, in order:

    1. Proven experience from previous jobs/projects
    2. A willingness to learn.
    3. Diverse activity participation in college
    4. high GPA (3.5+)

    I have a couple questions to ask back:

    Do you have job experience outside of your FOSS projects that would apply to a programming career?

    Specifically, what kind of programming are you looking to do? Your list of languages is all over the place.

    Brent
    • I put FOSS on my CV, all of the really intersting work I have done if FOSS and it shows a potential employer that I have a highly technical capability to go along with my industry experience.

      The first programming job I had was because of 'FOSS' (This was in the ISDN and Modem days so it was my own code that I placed on bulletin boards, if I had of had and internet connection I would have started my own company). The company required that potential employees send in some programming that they had done, I don
    • How could a post that has the phrase "free as in herpes" used to refer to open source be modded anything but troll?
      • > How could a post that has the phrase "free as in herpes" used to
        > refer to open source be modded anything but troll?

        That wasn't *his* opinion; he was stating an opinion that in his perception exists out there in certain development shops. Although I think it's a fairly unusual opinion. Complete ignorance of the *existence* of open-source licenses is much more common. Many people, even many programmers, are not clear on the distinction between public domain and freeware, to say nothing of the nuan
    • Does he/she even need to mention that the project was open source? Why not just list it like any other project?
    • Most of my paid experience is in deskside/onsite user support - hardware, migrations, etc. But I'm currently "underemployed", so I wonder about how I might use what I have to pursue a full-time position as a programmer.
  • put it in the achievements part of your resume, employers look for stuff exactly like that.

  • Try thinking about it from a different POV (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Safety Cap ( 253500 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @03:32PM (#13265024) Homepage Journal

    Your future employer wants to hire you to do a job.

    If that employer is an ISV, then she wants to use use you to turn code into money, as efficiently as possible. If the employer does something else, then he wants you to make it easier for other people to make money.

    So, with that in mind, does it matter what you did in the past? No. "Past experience is no guarantee for future performance."

    So what, then? What matters is can you do the job the employer wants now, can you fit in with the rest of the team, and will you take the initiative to grow yourself? If you can answer the first two in the affirmative, you won't have a problem getting yourself a job*. If you can answer the last in the affirmative, you can keep yourself gainfully employed long term (in the field).

    .

    *Not applicable if the interviewer is incompetent (i.e., asks questions from the Big Book Of Interview Questions [google.com]).

  • Employers love it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Temporal ( 96070 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @03:35PM (#13265036) Journal
    In my experience, having a lot of OSS work on your resume looks very good to employers. Not only does it show that you have skill, but it shows that you are self-motivated and enjoy your field. You can also demonstrate leadership and management skills through OSS. The ability to see a project through from idea to useful product is a surprisingly rare skill, and open source is a great way to prove that you can do it.

    In other words, OSS is a good way for you to break the cache-22 of job hiring, in which you need experience to get a job and you need a job to get experience. OSS projects are much closer to real experience than anything you do in college.

    In my case, after graduating with my BS, I spent two years or so developing this [evlan.org]. I had no really significant work experience; just some informal unpaid stints with failed startups and a two-month research assistant job. In any case, I finished the above project about three months ago, applied for two jobs, got both of them, and now work at Google. :)

    If you weren't actually involved in coding in your projects, that probably won't be as useful, though. Maybe you should get involved while you can.

    (Obligatory: This post represents my personal opinions, not Google's, etc.)
    • 1. Singlehandedly write new functional language, compiler, and VM.
      2. Get job at Google.

      or....

      1. Write Yet Another (fill in app here), name it after (only) ex girlfriend.
      2. Still do not have job at google, write ask Slashdot.
      3. ???

      Hmmmmm. I'm guessing you're smarter than most of us. Oh well! It's cool that you took the time to do something like that right after school, and even cooler that there are employees who see that as valuable. Congrats.

    • Not only does it show that you have skill, but it shows that you are self-motivated and enjoy your field.

      I have found this to be true as well.

      I've never had a CS class or any formal training in computers, but I have used my experience with Linux and volunteer projects in order to secure a decent career in the field. Unfortunately, it was not the easier, softer way, and I believe that it has cost me a decent amount because I'm in the lowest percentile as far as a sysadmin gets paid, but I (individually) mak

  • it helped me. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ajayrockrock ( 110281 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @03:39PM (#13265063) Homepage
    I used to be one of the main programmers of phpSlash (phpslash.sf.net [slashdot.org]) back in 2001. In 2002 I was unemployed for pretty much the entire year. There was a small company in LA where the programmer knew me from the phpslash mailing lists. He thought I was helpful and nice so even though they didn't have enough work for a full-time programmer, they threw several freelance progjects my way. Later they offered me a full-time job but I was already employed out in Riverside.

    --Ajay
  • I realized that my resume would be pretty empty after University, so I did Co-op. But then I realized I could do more. So I started my own OSS project.

    I'm nearing my first release for BasicJ [sourceforge.net] and I have HardCAD [sourceforge.net] on the backburner.

  • Show your post history... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 07, 2005 @04:25PM (#13265245)
    What you should do is make a printout of all your Slashdot posts, and tack that on to the end of your resume. Employers are VERY impressed by heavy participation at Slashdot; it has been shown to equate to high productivity on the job.

  • F/OSS development GOOD (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GryMor ( 88799 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @04:38PM (#13265298)
    F/OSS development experience helped me land my current job. It did not help my resume very much, and game development likely won't help yours (unless you are trying to get hired by a game developer). It helped because it kept my skills sharp over two years of unemployment and braindead contract work in a way that simple learning couldn't have.

    • Re:F/OSS development GOOD (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      F/OSS development experience helped me land my current job at Burger King. Too bad I had not done more with VisualStudio.NET...

  • Worked for me... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stevey ( 64018 ) on Sunday August 07, 2005 @05:02PM (#13265448) Homepage

    I wrote some software [gnump3d.org] which was moderately useful and semi-popular.

    When it came to be time to look for a job I asked around locally. One guy recognised my name after having used the software at his home.

    That was enough to land me an interview. Of course once I got that I was on my own.

    I suspect this happens a fair bit, you won't get a job unless you wrote something insanely popular but it might help you get an interview.

    (Although writing something yourself, even with other people to help, from scratch is much more useful in terms of being recognised than adding a ten line patch to the Linux kernel, samba, or Apache).

  • The best recommendation that you can have for a developer job is if you can show with your own code that you have done something very similar before in past projects.
    ...at least that's how we hire...

    In the first outsourcing wave companies are sending complete projects to India or China, that's happening right now.

    In the second outsourcing wave companies will hire the best experts worldwide to cooperate on the same project, working dislocated, communicating by voice over Skype, pair programming over VNC. We
  • I think it helped me get my job at least. However what my employer was looking for was the creativity to do new things. So working on a minor aspect of someone else's big project is not going to make much of an impact, as most coders can do grunt work for someone else. However developing and maintaning something of your own, or at least being a big innovater in someone else's project can be helpful.

  • As someone who hires (kind of)... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @07:11AM (#13268200) Homepage
    I don't do the hiring. If you get by the HR guy -- a total moron; just some guy stuck in the HR position who goes exclusively by key word -- you get me.

    If your resume is sloppy, it gets tossed. Of the remaining resumes, I look for someone who has specific experience with a tool or language. Keep in mind that many standard tools are OSS, so mention them even if you are not on that project and simply use them.

    Next, I look for someone who has similar project experience.

    Then...it's who I think I can sell to the project lead and who I want to work with. If they work cheap, that's a plus. If they are not cheap, but can do the work in a superior manner, that's also a plus. Depends on the job.

    The tie breaker (before the interview) is often how much passion the person has for the work we will do.

    Being on an OSS project of any sort, especially if the lead, is a definate plus. If it is high profile -- if I've heard of it or find that it is well respected by the community -- I move the person up in the list.

    Is OSS the only thing I'm looking for? Nope. It helps, though, because it shows interest not just "I'm in it as a job".

  • Make it something everybody can benefit from, like C++ in tcc [bellard.free.fr]. People will notice if 1) it's faster than gcc/g++ and 2) it can provide the same functionality. Maybe give the person/people interviewing you a little demonstration on how fast gcc/g++ is compared to your enhanced tcc.

  • My situation was a little different (Score:3, Interesting)

    by velo_mike ( 666386 ) on Monday August 08, 2005 @10:55AM (#13269404)
    I had 5 or so years in the field, than left in 2002 for a three year "sabatical", semi-voluntary unemployment. I took a small contract gig, 1 or 2 months doing some analysis, played with Linux kernel dev for a bit, expermented with some OSS development, etc. When the time came to go back to work, I listed it on my resume just like any other job:

    Sabbatical
    January 2002 - September 2004 Paris, France

    I maintained my skill set by working on small and personal projects, expanding my knowledge of networking, software development and system administration.

    • Develop requirements, model, and prototype an EDI system to enable Medicaid submissions under HIPAA.
    • Explore advanced system administration, network administration, kernel and device driver development under Linux and FreeBSD.
    • Develop several personal database solutions using MySQL, JDBC, Servlets and XML/XSLT.
    • Implement many of the "Gang of Four" design patterns in Java.

    And had no problems or negative remarks about my time off. Closer to your situation, when I was finishing grad school and needed some technical experience, I included the grad asst I worked in the identical manner. Once I had some real experience that entry dropped off, but it worked at the time.

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