Personally, I'm spending a significant chunk of time on a regular basis working on open source stuff, so I feel like it might be worth elevating beyond the projects section to the experience section. However, I'm worried it might appear pretentious because I'm mainly working on my own projects, and they're pretty niche so they aren't especially successful or glamorous and definitely don't make me any money. Wondering what others think.
Anna Aitchison
Posted on
What's the best way to represent time spent on open source on a CV or Linkedin?
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Top comments (3)
Hey Anna, it's thanks to my open source project that I've been able to switch from sysadmin to software engineer. So share yours with your network! I've added "Open source developer" in my experience section:
You can check my LinkedIn here
Don't worry you won't appear pretentious. IMHO, open source is about people, the fact that you are willing to share your projects shows how open-minded and collaborative you are.
It doesn't matter if your projects have 1 or 1000 stars. It doesn't mean anything. What matters the most, is that your project provides a solution for a given problem, this is my first criteria when using a library.
Yes I think it's definitely worth going in the Experience section. It shows your motivation for doing it and personality (which is always valuable in dev jobs working with a team). As long as you can explain the value you are adding, that you follow best practices, it can only be a positive.
As long as you work as careful on these projects as with contributions to popular ones (in terms of code quality, tests, documentation) they are still a good source to show your skills. The process for a Repo to become popular is still quite irrational as search is biased and projects, that get shared by popular platforms have a great competitive advantage.