Career advice for recent (or soon to be grads) in software engineering
Came across this article on /. (Slashdot | The Stigma of a Tech Support Background) and it got me thinking about the person’s problem and some advice I’ve given a some recent grads that I have worked with. As I see it, the biggest problem a hiring manager has with someone straight out of college (or changing careers into programming) is they aren’t quite sure where their skills are at. Sure, you can often get a good sense of whether they are smart, and that goes a long way, but it’s always nice to have something tangible to look at other than their “Hello World” code from their undergrad days.
Fortunately, in today’s world, this is easily overcome through the world of open source and a little hard work. Simply put, find a good, fairly well known open source project (I’m partial to Solr, Mahout and Lucene) that you like, and start contributing. Start with some small, well-tested patches, maybe even just simple bug fixes or documentation fixes. Then, as you progress in your knowledge, start answering questions on the mailing list and contributing bigger patches. Make friends with the other contributors by doing the dirty jobs that no one likes to do. Be friendly, polite and answer the newbie questions politely and respectfully, as well as taking on the harder as you can. Keep this up for at least six months or so, thereby demonstrating you can stick with an idea and see it to fruition.
Don’t get me wrong, it will take extra work on your part, but by doing this, you are creating a solid record that demonstrates that you not only know how to code, but you also know how to communicate your ideas effectively and get along well with others. Those are all unbelievable assets for any company and they make the hiring decision so much easier.
In fact, if you keep this up, you will likely be made a committer in no time, in which case companies will be coming to you, no matter your age or past experience, and making you offers.
December 11th, 2008 at 3:21 am
Thnx,
Was wonderful to reaffirm my ideas from your blog.
How will you choose when given a chance to work for
a MNC to that of a small time linux based company?
I am a GNU/Linux enthusiast but the MNC seems to be
a beaten path with riches.
I am in a dilemma. Help me out pls.
December 11th, 2008 at 7:26 am
Well, you gotta put food on the table, so nothing wrong with taking a job if you have the offer, but why are the two mutually exclusive? Do your day job, in the evening (2-3 times a week) work on your O/S project. Don’t forget to keep some perspective in your life, though, it’s easy to get sucked into a hole whereby you spend all your free time working on O/S.
February 18th, 2009 at 8:57 am
[...] around. Open source is like one giant job application. See my career advice post for more [...]
August 18th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
[...] aimed at business analysts, but also at any one looking for work. I’d also add in my career advice for anyone getting started in the software [...]