So you want to be a software developer?

Imagine that you are a software engineering student, with one more year left of school. How do you plan on being hired by a software company, despite the fact that you have no real-world experience? The traditional strategy has been to find an internship with a company. If you can get an internship, it will provide you with a part-time job. The best part of the deal is that you get your real-world experience, which will make you employable after graduation.

What do you do if there are no internships available? I propose that you should get involved in developing an open source project. Look for a project that interests you, and perhaps one that uses the programming languages that you would like to work with.

For example, if you want to be a game programmer, look for an open source gaming project. There is no interview or job application, you simply start looking at the code and seeing where you can help. The development team will provide direction and encouragement of your efforts. What a great way to improve your programming skills!

If you are an extremely good programmer, there is a chance that the open source project may hire to continue working full-time on the project. Here are two examples of community members who were hired by the open source project they were working on.

An additional advantage of an open source internship is that you are improving software that can be used by anyone, regardless of their ability to purchase software. You could even consider your work to be philanthropic.

Comments

  1. Anonymous9/28/2007 2:37 PM

    Great post. I wrote a post on my blog about using open source for building a curriculum. You can check it out (in spanish):
    http://picandocodigo.linuxuruguay.org/index.php/2007/09/27/como-iniciar-tu-curriculum-de-programador-para-conseguir-trabajo/

    Regards

    Fernando

    ReplyDelete
  2. Stew Magoo10/04/2007 1:28 AM

    This strays slightly (drastically) from the topic but... have you read anything from Joel Splotsky? I'm probably spelling his name wrong but regardless, checkout:

    http://www.joelonsoftware.com/

    Very entertaining writer and although he writes commercial closed source, he has some fantastic ideas about software development.

    ReplyDelete

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