Building Bridges: How Open Source Contributions Enhance Your Web Development Career

Hello, everyone. My name is Pachi, and I'm a frontend developer that works with the community. And today I'm here to talk about building bridges with open source. I have been really passionate about open source since I started supporting because of Hackerware Fest and I found that open source really helped in my career.

And today I'm here to share how I use open source to enhance my career, how it helped me, and hopefully how it can help YouTube. I'm going to do some things a little bit different. I'm going to introduce myself in the middle of the talk, talk more about me and you understand why. So let's get started.

First, an introduction. Open source is not just about code. We have a misconception that, you know, if you want to go to open source and you have coding skills, it's something to use open source and then to use the first code. And open source is so much more about that. Right? There's a great community around open source and so many learning opportunities. You can grow so much. I want to share a little bit about you. Sorry. And I'm going to start with that today.

First, the power of contributions from open source is something that I'm really passionate about. I started learning to code in 2018. And I felt really lonely when I was just learning to code by myself at home. And when I found open source and found some people that could help me and projects that we could do together, that was so exciting. I really felt like I was ready to be a developer and be part of something. And with open source contributions, you can learn a lot. You can enhance your technical skills, your software skills. You can grow as a developer. There's a lot of ways you can improve your career and as a person, too. And I'll talk about that. First thing. Skills enhancement. It's super important.

Of course, you're going to have better coding skills. You're going to be able to practice in other languages, other frameworks. Even like if you're working near your job with React, you can join an open source project that you designed with our review. And you can use those skills. But there's a lot of soft skills there, as well, that I didn't think about.

When you're contributing to open source, there's people from all over the world there, even if they mostly write in English. They have different cultures, different holidays, different time zones. And this gives you such a good communication skill that I had no idea. I had been working with people in Australia, India, U.S., Brazil, of course. I'm from Brazil, by the way. And it's so interesting how much you learn from each one of those people. And of course, your coding skills. Even if you work in a certain company, sometimes they have a way they work in open source. There's another way. And your repertory of how to code what you're coding grows.

And of course, the pull requests, the code reviews, people are going to teach you how to code better. And this exchange of knowledge really helps you through your learning career. That's really, really helpful.

Another part and I think that's super special and important that open source helped me a lot and has helped people that I know, is the visibility and networking. When you're at home or you're doing your code and you do your projects, if you don't share them with people, nobody is gonna see it. And that's okay. But when you're doing contribution to open source project, everybody that uses that project, everybody that also contributions to the project, they see your little name there in your picture. And they know what you're doing. So, you get to be known for what you're doing.

I had some people that they were current open source contributors. They would take like five hours a week to go to reach your project. And then this person grew to a point that they had budget to hire a software developer. And they hired the people that the person that was already there. They know the project. They are passionate about the project. So, there are opportunities there, right? And the networking is like immeasurable how much the networking helps. You get to know these people. And they just know your name. They know your skills, right? Because they have shown the code already. And you get to know so many good people.

So, it is that most 90% of my friend circles are people that are natural communities. And they're my bestest friends. So, there's a lot of potential here to learn and grow, to get to know people, even to find opportunities. So, it's really important that you really put yourself out there, to open yourself to get to know these people. And you never really know when opportunity can come. Actually, since I started my tech career in 2018, all the jobs I had were through networking. I never had a job that I sent a resume and they got back to me. All my jobs, they were for referral. Like somebody that knew me and said, hey, I'm looking for a job. And that's actually really awesome.

And here we get to a little bit more about me and who I am. And I'll wait to talk more about me right now because I want to show you this page, right? If you want people to find you and to know about you, you need to have a GitHub page that talks about yourself. And I'm mentioning GitHub because it can be the most used platform worldwide for open source. So, you can use others, but it should be fine. GitHub is probably the way to go.

And here, we have to have some information, right? We don't have to do everything that I have right here. That's my profile. But the bare minimum is have a picture with your face even if you are a bit shy. Something that resembles yourself if you need a drawing of yourself. I love animes, but there's animes pictures like this. If you want job opportunities, if you want to grow, that's my recommendation, right? Have your contact information on how people can reach out to you.

Here I have my email, my portfolio, I have my blog. That's really important to me. I work a lot with teaching people how to use code and skills. So, that makes sense to me. You can put in other information. And if you want to go a step beyond this, you can just unlock this readme page. I will have to create a repository on GitHub and use your handle as the name. So, it's by the code. And this is your profile, right? Right here, about me, I am a developer advocate, a community manager. I do live coding. I like to watch anime. And, you know, that's my contact info, my email, and some of my articles here. So, if somebody sees that I contribute to a project, now your little picture shows in the corner, and hey, who is this person that is helping this project? They're gonna click. And they're gonna see, oh, this is Pachi. And that's who she is. I know a little bit about her now. And maybe if I have an opportunity, or if I want to network with her, I know who she is, right, who made this connection. I also, like, here I mentioned that I'm a cat mom. So, if you also have cats, hey, don't talk to her about that.

So, it's really important to take some time to pay some attention to this, right? Something simple. But what people know about you is you should build connections. And all this, building bridges in open source goes back to connections. We use the word networking a lot. But I want this to be more a little beyond networking, right? Networking usually don't get, you know, the people to say, hey, Pachi did the operations. But it's good to give it to people mature to get to know you better.

Like, really have that feeling that, I know the person, even though, if you're not best friends. Like, most of my jobs, all my jobs in tech, I found them because of somebody that knew me. And some of the job companies say, hey, Pachi would be good for this. And some of these people, they didn't know me very well. But they had an idea of the expertise I had, what I was like. And they were confident enough to reshare me for the jobs. Now, we have a nice profile. We know how we're gonna learn. And why are we there, right?

We talk about how open source can get you better skills, you can connect with people. But the part that I think is most important is really, you can use the open source to advance in your careers. Like, you can open doors if you strategically choose the projects you're gonna, if you just want to get some skills, you can reach to a new project. But if you have a dream project that you would love to work on, or something similar to that, you just really like this framework of this project. If you contribute to that, you can make a mark on the project that you use and like. Right?

I can mention this can get you job offers, freelance opportunities. And it's very common to get speaking Asian, right, because you're building that, how did you build X project with open source? Or which skills did you use? It's really common that people that build open source like to talk about that, how they did that. It's a great learning opportunity and you can also teach people. And that's really cool. And in the job market today, there's so many great developers. And sometimes the fact that you have a little thing extra that other people don't have, you can be a game changer, right? Like, if you're a developer and, you know, you are a React developer. And you have a really great talk that you gave at React. And the recruiter, they have two people, awesome people. But maybe your talk wouldn't be the extra thing that makes a difference, right? It's really competitive in developer markets nowadays. So whatever you can do to stand out a little more. It's really helpful.

Now, how do you choose the projects to contribute? There are so many projects out there, right? First, try to choose things that you like. You know, on GitHub, there's a way that you can see all the projects that you use on your projects. So, I'm going to check that if they're open to contributions. If you have a bunch of bigger projects like React, it may be harder. So, I recommend you try to look for smaller ones. Because usually they have less people who want to contribute. But find people that are interesting and match your career goals, like I mentioned.

If you are a front-end developer, and maybe you want to transition to another language, or to a full stack or backend, you can start contributing to this project. So, even though you are a front-end developer with front-end experience, you're going to be building a bit of backend experience open source, right? Sometimes, if you want to learn something new, that's where to go.

Open source is much more than code. You don't need to contribute with code, right? I started doing translation. I'm Brazilian, and I'm fluent in English. So, my first open source contributions were translating documentation to Portuguese, right? Sometimes fixing bugs. And even if you're not ready to send out PR, participate in the discussions. Usually, there's a discussion tab where people can give feedback, give ideas, and then it would be a way for you to get started again to another project, and make a small contribution without that big emotion of sending out PR in a way that should be approved. If you want this open source contribution to be something that can change and impact your career, it won't work if you send one contribution to this project, and two months later, send another contribution to another project. It's just inconsistent. The ideal is to always contribute to the same project, or to similar projects, if possible. But you have to have a cadence and always contribute, keep, like, over time.

If you're not ready to contribute, you can start your own project, right? And it doesn't have to be a life-changing project. It can be a small thing, actually. And my most popular repository that I have is a repository, like, in Brazil, have lots of tech events. But it's hard to get information on that.

But you have to have a cadence and always contribute, keep, like, over time. Not just a one-time thing.

Another thing here, right? I like to say, if you're not ready to contribute, you can start your own project, right? And it doesn't have to be a life-changing project. It can be a small thing, actually. And my most popular repository that I have is a repository, like, in Brazil, have lots of tech events. But it's hard to get information on that. So, I create a repository where people can just get there and add the events they know of. And it's a huge project. Like, has over a thousand stars right now. And, again, no code involved. You just go there and add the events they know of. So, if you think about the way to solve a problem, you don't need to save the world. Things are useful. And people want to contribute to that as well. So, if you're not ready or don't want to commit yourself to contribute to another project, you can start yours.

And, okay. Something that's super important here is document your contributions in the way you can. Like, one thing I did in the beginning, I started contributing and doing things. But when I got to an interview and I would say, hey, so, I'm going to open source this. What have I done? What has contributed to it? I didn't know how to answer that. Because I wasn't keeping track. I was, like, doing my thing. And I didn't know what I did. I just thought I had done this. So, keep track of that. It can be, like, you know, a repository with a list. You can keep a journal of, like, you know, everything you learn. One thing that I really recommend is learning in public. So, one thing that I should do, like, I use a lot of LinkedIn nowadays.

So, one thing that I should do, like, I use a lot of LinkedIn nowadays. So, okay. I contributed to this project today. I learned X thing doing that. So, I post on LinkedIn about that. I have that write down for myself. And I'm sure people as well. That's really helpful.

If you are familiar with the hashtag 100 days of code, that's really cool. Like, for 100 days, you post and share something that you have learned about coding. So, this learning public, this helps you to build a portfolio, enhance your resume, and really, you want to know what to answer people when they ask, what have you been doing? Especially when you contribute to other SQL projects, it's easy to forget exactly what you have done.

Especially if you have a full-time job, you have your own projects. So, keep track of that. That really can make a difference for you. So, if you take anything away from this talk today, is this. Open source is more than code. It's a bridge of opportunities. So, start contributing today and watch how your career transforms. Really. I'm not saying that in a year, you're going to be like a senior developer working at a big, same company and making billions of dollars. But you really can see that you're going to be improving your coding and your career. That's another reason why the journaling I mentioned before is important.

Sometimes you don't realize how much you grew over a time period. And if you did the journaling before, like, in a year, you can go back to that journal and say, hey, I didn't know all these things I knew today back then, right? And that's helpful for a career. But also for your sense of self. Like, you know, your self-esteem and how you trust yourself as a developer. And that's it. Thank you so much. This is a QR code to my socials if you want to follow me and connect. Thanks again for watching. That was a pleasure. Have a good one.