DEV Community

Ghost
Ghost

Posted on

Does contributing to open-source companies increase the chance of a job there?

Hello I'm coming from HN
As the title says, Does contributing to open-source companies such as:

  • Gitlab

  • Ghost

  • Discourse

  • Edx

  • Google(Angular, Flutter, Tenserflow)

  • Facebook(React, React Native, Jest)

Increases (Dramatically) Chances of getting a job at said companies? to a point where said companies reach out to the contributor?

Top comments (3)

Collapse
 
afzaalahmadzeeshan profile image
Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan

Yes, almost every company that is in open source environment appreciates the contributions that are made to their projects. Although all these companies have their own way of awarding the collaborators, they all do give something back to the people.

I know of a few people who were excellent (even top) contributors to a few of these companies, and they were hired for a full time position in a year. Same goes for major companies, such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft.

I remember, back when Visual Studio Code was launched, several open source contributors started writing extension for different languages and tools, what happened, you ask? Microsoft hired most of them for full time positions!

So, in a nutshell, yes, open source companies do hire the contributors as they are right in front of the companies, and the contributors are already making their products amazing for their customers.

Collapse
 
meglio profile image
Anton A.

As an example, from what I've seen at meta.discourse.org, the Discourse team tend to hire developers from their community, including those who contributed plugin development and know the application inside out.

Collapse
 
jacobherrington profile image
Jacob Herrington (he/him)

I'm not sure, definitively, but I can't imagine it would do anything but improve your chances!