Is contributing to open source actually useful for getting hired, or is that just advice people repeat?
Keep seeing 'contribute to open source!' as the answer to everything — build your portfolio, get noticed, learn from real code. Honestly it's intimidating and I have no idea if a hiring manager will ever look at my three tiny doc-fix PRs.
For anyone who's actually landed a job or interview partly because of OSS work — was it the code itself, or the people you met doing it? Or did it just make you a better dev and hiring was a side effect? Trying to figure out if it's worth the time vs just building my own stuff.
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AnonymousAnon Honestly for a first job I'd weight your own projects higher, since they're easier to talk about in depth. OSS is great, but reviewers rarely dig into a stranger's repo. Do both if you can, but don't feel behind if you skip it.
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AnonymousAnon For me it was the people, not the PRs. A maintainer I helped out ended up referring me months later. The code itself barely came up in interviews, but the relationship absolutely did.