How to get one of those Open Source jobs – Mark Atwood
- Warns talk might still have some US-centric stuff still in it
- “Open Source Job” – most important word is “Job”
- The Open Source bit means you are a bit more transferable than a closed-source programmer
- Don’t have to move to major tech city
- Communication skills
- Have to learn to Write clearly in English
- Heave to learn how to speak, including in meetings and give some talks
- Reachable – Have a public email address
- Don’t be a jerk, reputation very important
- Technical skills
- Learn how to program
- Start with python and javascript
- Learn other languages eg scale, erlang, clojure, c, C++
- How to use debugger and IDE
- Learn to use git well
- Learn how to code test (especially to work with CI testers like jenkins)
- Idea: Do lots of simple practise problems in programming using specific technique or language
- Relationships & Peers
- Work with people remote and nearby
- stackoverflow
- Don’t be a jerk
- Work
- Have to “do the work” then “get the job”
- Start by fixing bugs on a project
- Your skills will improve and others will see you have those skills
- Collaborate
- Many projects use IRC
- Most projects have bug tracker
- Learn how to use the non-basic stuff in git
- Peer programming
- Reputation
- Portfolio vs resume
- github account is your portfolio
- Need to be on social media, at least a little bit, most be reachable
- Getting the Job
- If you have a good enough a rep the jobs will seek you out
- Keywords on github and linkedin will attract recruiters
- People will suggest you that apply
- Conferences like linux.conf.au
- Remember to counter-offer the offer letter
- Once you are working for them, work out what is job related an the company might have a claim on. make sure you list in your agreement any projects you are already working on
- Health
- Don’t work longer than 40h a week regularly
- 60h weeks can only be sustained for a couple of weeks
- Just eat junk-food
- Don’t work for jerks
- Money
- Startups – bad for your health. Do not kill yourself for a nickle, have real equity
- Keep Learning
- 3 books to read
- Oh the palces you will go – Dr Seuss
- Getting things Done – David Allen
- How to fail at almost everything and still win big – Scott Adams
Pettycoin: Towards 1.0 – Rusty Russell
- Problem it bitcoining mining is expensive, places lower limit on transaction fees
- Took 6 months of to mostly work on pettycoin
- Petty coin
- Simple
- gateway to bitcoin
- small amounts
- partial knowledge, don’t need to know everything
- fast block times
- Altcoins – bitcoin like things that are not bitcoin
- 2 million posts to altcoin announce forum
- lots of noise to talk to people
- review
- Paper released saying how it should have been done
- hash functions
- bitcoin blocks
- Bitcoin transactions
- Sidechain
- alternative chains that use real bitcoins
- Lots of wasted work? – bitcoin miners can mine other chains at the same time
- too fast to keep notes
- Compact CVP Proofs (reduce length of block header to go all the way back )
