Posscon2011

Enabling Students to
Become Professionals
https://github.com/atmos
@atmos
Tuesday, March 29, 2011

It’s an octocat, not a cat-o-pus.

Corey Donohoe

It’s a me! I’m a software developer.

Enjoy Life

I live in SF, I like biking, surﬁng, snowboarding, beer. Normal hacker stuff.
This is a beautiful day from earlier this season at lake tahoe.

Participating since 2000
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/27316226@N02/3000888100

I stumbled upon open source and linux in 1999, I was contributing to projects within a year.
I strongly believe that ﬁnding open source early on opened up a lot of opportunities for me.

Undergraduate Degree
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mybloodyself/2225047118

Unlike a lot of my coworkers, i attended and graduated college

Work @ GitHub

Now I work here, it’s probably the best job I’ve ever had.
A lot of my open source work and enjoying what I do led to me landing the job i wanted.
We build software collaboration tools.

Open Source and Students
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/knittymarie/3542395756

The majority of college graduates I meet aren’t ready for “the real world” when it comes to software development
today’s talk is enabling students to be ready for real software jobs after graduation.
Here’s what it was like for me...

Young dumb and full of vision

I bummed around for two years after high school, went to a local college, graduated in 4 years.
I did not program before college, most of my classmates had.
So I had to work hard.

Undergraduate in CS


pretty small CS department, some truly amazing educators.
a “computer lab” full of visual studio stuff, a linux box that i had to beg for access to.

Enlightenment

I got to learn about library management, release cycles, collaboration, design discussions
We were all passionate about making pretty things for Linux workstations.
My formal education was complemented by this participation

Hacked Shit

we built things we used, we were involved with the users of our stuff
we were all friends, and we helped each other out where possible

Graduation

i stuck to my studies for theory, hacked on open source projects as practice, i got better.
i debated grad school but decided to ﬁnd real work, a lot of that drive came from real world stresses
i decided it was time to ﬁnd a job.

Get a Job
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/49938597@N00/5223416841

In my naivety I thought my education, open source contributions and passion would get me a job.
Boy was I in for a reality check.

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/lwr/517712577/

The catch 22 is that employers typically want N years of experience
6-7 years ago, open source didn’t count, so you couldn’t even get your foot in the door
“We’re sorry but I just can’t put someone without experience into this position.”

Take a Hike
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/slieschke/4149185893/

“We’re sorry but I just can’t put someone without experience into this position.”
Unfortunately experience means, years of “professional” work.
Even if your professional work is complete crap.

Independent Studies

There were actually lots of opportunities here to help with researchers and their grants.
As an undergrad I was lucky enough to have two, much more challenging than my normal curriculum.
Buuuuuut, employers don’t care.

Internships

There aren’t enough internships.
Kicks off reputation management but little to show at the end.
We’re accepting intern applications for this summer at GitHub.

Why Did I Go?
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/bex_x_pi/3180576600/

It wasn’t just my school, almost everyone I meet had similar experiences
Or they just dropped out because they found an opportunity w/o the degree
Did I only go to make my mom proud?

Work for Big Guys
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mjb/38571308

After a depressing 3-4 months, someone hired me in an area that I didn’t really enjoy.
I was underpaid and contracting for a fortune 5 company.
Normal corporate ladder bullshit, I didn’t find this fulfilling.

What Did I Miss?
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/bex_x_pi/3180576600/

I couldn’t help but wonder why I’d worked so hard but found a job that was unsatisfying.
Looking back, I realize I understood what was necessary, the market didn’t yet.
It does now, and a lot of that can be achieved by participation.


Collaboration is one aspect of software development that doesn’t happen enough in education.
The days of the wizard in the basement building everything himself are over.
Collaboration is a day to day thing in every shop out there right now.

Contemporary Software
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/wonderlane/2316339816/

Collaboration is what modern software is about.
Peer review of patches and design decisions, testing and deployment involve the whole team.
Exposure to new things through working with others.

Geographically Distributed
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/andresmusta/5492899843

Teams are becoming more and more geographically distributed.
People need to have good communication skills in order to be effective.
I remote pair programmed with a co-worker in NZ for almost 2 years, very rewarding.

Coding is Social
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/atmos/175465956

Large projects are using it with a lot of success, Rails, Jquery, Node.
Users begin to interact with each other and in a lot of cases it’s a meritocracy.
The picture is a lot of early adopters to rails, we built projects, but the ﬁrst time we’d all met in person.

Reputation
Management

In this social media crazy culture we’ve seen develop over the past few years, hackers need a rep.
Students/Graduates need a way to stand out when they go looking for jobs.
It’s not just what you know, sometimes it’s who you know too.

Encourage Involvement
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/ozarksredcross/5152044443/

Educators should encourage involvement.
Have them create a GitHub or BitBucket in some of their early labs.
I’m still unsure about how to do labs, my CS labs were nothing like real software development.
Help your students understand that reading source code is invaluable.

Travel
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/bhenry/124519641/

Open Source conferences put you in a great place to meet other passionate people.
There are free conferences available and often student discounts.
You can learn about emerging tech as well as meet people who might need employees.
Let them know that the job they want, might not be in the town they’re from.

*SOC
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/mjb/38571308

Google Summer of Code and Ruby Summer of Code offer students money to improve the ecosystem.
They have mentors and are required to explain their efforts over the summer.
Looks good on a resume.

Student’s Responsibility
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/toastkid/4316891537/

The best you can do is tell your students that they need to make it happen.
Recommendations are nice but they don’t help if people are basing employment solely on years experience.
It’s basically collegiate or extra-curricular activities, and they need to practice.
It can be really rewarding.

OSS & Businesses

there’s a huge surge in businesses being created by talented open source hackers.
we’re professionals in probably the most exciting time in computing.
the work that we do can directly impact our friends and family, great ideas are adopted.

Regular People
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/samgrover/36998596/

The socially inept nerd stereotype is slowly going away, normal people are computer savvy.
Often start as boutique consultancies, move on to create products with recurring income.
You don’t need mega global partnerships to make good money and have fun.

Working with Friends
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/holman/5383038805/

These businesses end up hiring friends from projects, because you know their friends skill-sets.
This is fun because it tends to be a ﬂat organization and everyone’s opinions are equal.
These are my friends, coworkers, and my “bosses” are in there too.

Corporate Ladder?
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/vkx462/3013865271/

Climbing the corporate ladder is of no interest to me.
The likelihood that you’ll become an exec at some fortune 50 is pretty low.
If I’m going to spend much of my adult life working, I want to enjoy it.


Software developers can enjoy a much higher quality of life than a lot of other people.
The difference comes from people ﬁnding jobs they’re passionate about.
I think happiness is undervalued and often overlooked in employment.


Chad highlights patterns that have helped him through his career.
Ongoing exploration/learning, ﬁnding work that you love, enjoying your life outside of your work.

The Jobs are Out There
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/suzan-a/114046250/

There is a shortage of talented people in technology.
The job you want exists in mobile/web/media, but you need to make it happen.
Find work that’s rewarding because you spend so much of your life doing it.

Enabling your Students
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/pedestriantype/4789244416/

I can’t think of anything more fulﬁlling than helping people live wonderful lives.
If 5% of your students are successful w/o OSS, what if you could get them to 50% w/ OSS involvement.
Think of how amazing all of those “thank you for helping me” emails will feel.

So, WTF, Man.
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/bearpark/3149679619

Some of my friends/coworkers went to school, some didn’t.
You can survive in this industry without a formal degree.
I’m glad I got one, but I think that a CS degree alone isn’t enough.

So, WTF, Man.

I think the lessons learned in open source give students a competitive advantage in the job market.
I also think it gives them a competitive advantage in life.

So, WTF, Man.

The most fulﬁlling part of my job is putting smiles on people’s faces.
Students, if you hustle, I swear that fulﬁlling work is out there.
Educators please motivate your students to work on things outside of the classroom.

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/danielslaughter/64038881/

Thank You.
If you have any questions, feel free to talk to me.
(Plug GitHub free for educators, and the drinkup tonight)

Posscon2011

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