Building Better Developers

What if the primary value of open source isn't in producing software, but in producing better developers?

Think about it. When you contribute to an open source project, you're essentially learning in public. Every mistake, every breakthrough, every half-baked idea is out there for the world to see. It's terrifying. It's vulnerable. And it's incredibly powerful.

Learning in public does several things:

1.It accelerates skill development: When you work in public, you get feedback faster. Your code is reviewed by experts. Your ideas are challenged and refined. It's like having a personal mentor, or even, hundreds of mentors. (See: You Don't Need a Mentor: Embracing the Power of Community.)

2. It builds resilience: In private development, mistakes are hidden. In open source, they're exposed. This builds a skill that, honestly, we all need: the ability to fail publicly and keep going.

3. It creates a living portfolio: Your OpenSauced profile becomes more than a code repository; it's a record of your growth, your problem-solving skills, and your ability to collaborate.

As Fred K. Schott of Astro puts it on The Secret Sauce Podcast:

"It's like you can see me working through a product like you don't need to. Like maybe you should still interview me but like you can see how I communicate. You can see how I work with people. You can see I respond to feedback and take feedback like it's not even about the green square at that point. It's about you see me at like doing work. You see me doing engineering work. You can get a peek into my life if I joined your company. And that was what I always thought I could kind of communicate with that work."

This transparency changes how we evaluate talent, how we learn, and ultimately, how we work.

The New Networkscape: How Open Source is Expanding Professional Relationships

In traditional career paths, your network is often limited by geography, education, and chance encounters. In open source, your network is limited only by your willingness to contribute and engage.

This new "networkscape" opens up new opportunities:

1. Global Talent Pool: Companies have access to a worldwide talent pool, identifying top performers regardless of their location or background.

2. Reputation Economy: Your reputation in the open source community becomes a new kind of currency. It's not about where you went to school or who you know; it's about what you can do and how well you collaborate.

3. Distributed Mentorship: Junior developers can learn from experts simply by engaging in project discussions, reading through issue and pull request comments, or submitting quality pull requests.

Matt Schrage's observation in the Secret Sauce becomes even more powerful in this context:

"We've managed to find really talented engineers that probably would not have been easy to find if we didn't have this community."

This isn't just about finding talent; it's about reimagining how professional relationships are formed and maintained in the open source age.

The Collaboration Laboratory

While open source undoubtedly opens up new professional opportunities, its true power lies in developing meaningful, long-lasting connections rather than transactional relationships. Maybe the most overlooked benefit of these relationships are their role as an experiment in human collaboration. In open source, we're learning how to coordinate complex tasks across time zones, cultures, and competing interests, which requires trust.

These lessons have value far beyond software development:

1. Asynchronous Communication: Open source projects have demonstrated the art and value of asynchronous collaboration, a skill that's we all need in our increasingly distributed work world.

2. Conflict Resolution: Public disagreements in open source projects provide opportunities to learn more about constructive conflict resolution and consensus-building.

3. Governance Models: Different open source projects experiment with various governance models, providing insights into managing large, diverse groups of contributors.

4. Incentive Structures: There's no right way to motivate and reward (the right) contributors in the absence of traditional financial incentives. Open source projects are a living experiment for exploring new incentive structures. (See more on the power of recognition here.)

With increased globalization, we're also faced with new challenges. Sometimes, open source collaboration reveals that we're not as good at working together as we thought. But that's the point: open source is a great space for learning how to collaborate better.

The Unforgiving Mirror: When Open Source Exposes Weaknesses

Open source contributions can be unforgiving. It doesn't just showcase strengths; it exposes weaknesses.

The Harsh Reality of Public Performance

In open source, there's nowhere to hide. Every contribution, comment, and interaction is public and permanent. This level of exposure quickly reveals:

• Effort Level: When contributors consistently submit high-effort work, it becomes obvious and maintainers notice. The opposite is also true: if you're not putting in the effort, it shows -- if you're just going for the green squares, maintainers can tell.
• Skill Level: Good/poor code quality, understanding of best practices (or lack of), or inability to grasp project guidelines become evident through pull requests and issue discussions.
• Communication: Polite and respectful responses, openness to constructive criticism, and clear explanations of ideas are there for the community to appreciate. On the opposite side, so are rude responses, inability to accept criticism, or poor explanation of ideas.

Why is this important? Because it creates a natural filtering mechanism. In traditional work environments, these issues might be hidden or slow to surface. In open source, they're immediately apparent.

The flip side of this statement is equally true: it's also a way to showcase your lack of skills or dedication.

Beyond Star-gazing: The Currency of Meaningful Contribution

We've said it before: a project's star count on GitHub is not a meaningful metric of success or importance. But what does star-gazing mean for contributors?

The Illusion of Passive Engagement

Star-gazing - the act of simply starring a repository without engaging with it - is the equivalent of a social media like. It's a low-effort show of appreciation that doesn't contribute to the project's development or success.

The True Measure of Success: Quality Contributions

In contrast to passive star-gazing, meaningful contributions lead to successful open source projects.

As Matt Schrage points out:

"Anyone who's excited by what you're working on can contribute to the project."

The key word here is "contribute." Passive excitement doesn't move a project forward; active, quality contributions do.

Why Quality Contributions Matter

The focus on quality contributions over vanity metrics has several important implications:

• Project Health: Active, quality contributions are a much better indicator of a project's health and longevity than star counts.
• Community Building: Quality contributions allow for a supportive community of contributors and promote progress in open source projects, creating a more productive and rewarding environment for all involved.
• Real-world Impact: Meaningful contributions solve actual problems and create value for users, which is ultimately what open source is about.

When we combine the unforgiving transparency of open source with the emphasis on meaningful contributions, we create a crucible for developing both individual skills and project quality.

In this light, open source becomes more than just a way to produce software. It's a path for creating better developers, more resilient projects, and a more transparent, meritocratic tech ecosystem.

The question for aspiring contributors then becomes not "How Can I Find Open Source Projects to Contribute to?" but "What meaningful value can I add?" It's in answering this question through action that both contributors and projects find true success in the open source world. In a couple of weeks, we're launching a feature that helps to showcase these meaningful contributions. Stay tuned!