Open Source Q&A and Videos

TL;DR Contribute to Open Source ML or do side projects for ML. Which do you suggest is the better option?

I just started a new job, but due to circumstances (visa, tough market), I had to take the first job I could take and I ended up in a devops/production support role where I cant really write much code or write any production code (literally dont have access to dev code). I dont plan to stay here long (>6 months).

I read the infamous "" post and wanted to do side projects so that I am not rusty

Context on me: 80% of my background is in Applied ML/Data Science and 20% is software engineering. I am interested in pursuing as an ML Engineer/Data Scientist

Open Source

Pros

• Tons of open source ML stuff supported by big tech companies
  • Meta has a ton of OS projects
• Huggingface is open source
  • Lot of companies use ML models from huggingface (for e.g. BERT for NLP). Would contributing to this on huggingface be seen as impressive?
• Exposure to working on large codebases, good software engineering practice as well

Cons

• Minimal Impact
• Hard to showcase my achievements, especially on LinkedIn

Projects

Pros

• Ability to make and measure impact
• easy to showcase
• learn a lot

Cons

• For ML, projects with impact is hard to do. Most ML applications is based on improving current products using existing data
• Experience from building ML projects might not translate to what I would do on the job as a lot of it involves working with Engineering around data
• It takes time and a lot of effort to have a ton of downloads
• Can end up taking a lot of non-ML work work (web design/frontend) which is not relevant to MLE

Final question: If I were to do open source, what is the best way to showcase on LinkedIn?

• Do you suggest adding the company you did OS for under the experience section and saying "Open Source Contributor"? My concern with this is that it may sound scammy/shady

@Alex Earlier you mentioned:

Big Tech open-source is obviously ideal (many engineers got hired at :meta: contributed to their OSS), but it's extremely hard to ramp up on the library and get a major PR landed. And it's not like 1 PR will do it - You'll probably need 5 to 10 to get the attention of hiring managers. However, like with most things, it will get much easier over time (the first one's the hardest).

And here: , you said:

These companies all have a large OSS footprint, and I know several people who got hired into these companies by submitting major PRs into them.

What are the parameters for determining whether something is a major PR in Big Tech Open Source according to you? Am currently working on Microsoft Windows Terminal.

Would you consider the below major PR candidates that would get the attention of hiring managers?

Btw they're both from this list as heroic tasks (7158 on completed tab since I've already completed that one):

To my understanding Major PR means lots of people want it and 7158 has around 100 upvotes so that's Major PR. But there are also some PR's where people make commits with 500 - 1000 lines of code

I recently stumbled upon a post on LinkedIn that some experts are not anticipating writing code by 2030.

While this prediction may not materialize in the same way, let's assume the relevance of DSA and coding may not be the most significant skill.

How would you suggest we develop skills for relevance in the future?

Please share inputs to be worked on tech domain, while I agree business impact would be an important metric, I am more curious to know the group's thoughts on tech.

PS: Someone which experise strictly in backend development.

I've recently been getting more into open-source to contribute back to the community and to just make cool stuff.

But I'm interested in various ways of how to market these projects without coming off as "shilling".

I would presume there's less of a likelihood for this to happen due to the free & open framing as opposed to a for profit venture(?)

The meta seems to have a huge focus on becoming an "influencer" with creating short form viral content as a springboard to long form for then that to be your marketing funnel for any type of CTA.

But are there any other tried and tested ways that don't involve so much of this strat?

There are a lot of different side projects, from open source tools to end user apps.

For this question, I would like to know your experience creating and promoting open source projects.

What I think makes sense is:

• You should solve a pain point or problem.
• For nature, mostly of the target users are software engineers.
• You should make it easy to use.
• There should be a decent documentation.

In my case, I created , it's a Next.js boilerplate that helps the developers to start a SaaS web application faster.

I would like to help more developers to get their side projects faster, tho I advise to build your own solution from scratch IF you want to experiment the learning experience completely.

What do you think?

(I'm open to feedback for my open source project, too).

In of Taro's courses, Alex teaches building side projects as a practice during the job search, and he is right (IMHO). Since I have a strong background in OCaml open source, I initially felt frustrated to keep building side projects in OCaml yet OCaml jobs are scarce. When I asked in the Taro premium Slack channel, Josh Lindsay offered some insights into switching to promising languages.

Following Josh's guidance, I translated my project idea to TypeScript and React Native, which has allowed me to build skills aligned with more job opportunities. Again, Many thanks to Josh for the encouragement and insights!

Currently, I’m progressing on this project in a private GitHub repo, but it is far from pleasing. I'm kindly seeking advice on enhancing my resume to be competitive for non-OCaml roles. I've attached a link to my resume and would greatly appreciate any feedback.

About Me

I've been a software developer for more than 20 years. I've been in IT for my whole career. I've worked on mainframes, UNIX systems and all versions of Windows as a Dev and Sys Admin. All my roles have been technical, ranging from what's now called DevOps to Development. I've mainly used the C family of languages: C, C++ and C#. When Angular v1 came out, I transitioned to frontend development full-time from mainly doing C#. About a year after Angular v2 came out I transitioned to that, so I've added TypeScript to that list. During the last 15 years, I've moved countries 3 times and now I'm back in the UK.

I've worked as a contractor most of the time since 2010 when I moved to New Zealand. I've had the odd permanent job when necessary, but contracting allowed me to work in different industries over a shorter period of time than would have been possible had I had permanent roles.

What I'm Looking For

I'm looking for a way to transition from my Angular contracting role to an Angular Architect role.

I imagined myself getting known publicly for Angular expertise and advising companies on Angular application architecture.

This type of role is rare (at least in the UK), so competition is high. I imagined a situation where companies approached me and not the other way around.

I just don't know how to build and execute a roadmap to make that happen.

Any advice would be appreciated.