Comment by fideloper
4 years ago
It’s true, I can attest! The idea of “increasing your luck surface area” is real.
You can create a lot of opportunities for yourself by being public about what you’re up to.
It got me a job working with Taylor Otwell, before his businesses took off, and now working at Fly to help with Laravel adoption.
My side projects have made helped people learn, given me an audience, and earn extra income.
The concept of "luck surface area" changed my life, no joke. It's the best framing I've ever heard for it.
I like the framing. I've been trying to blog more and publish more personal projects over the last ~4 years than I had before that, but speaking to the proverbial empty room is a little disheartening.
I think it's because I'm pining for perspective, which is a fairly high-value thing.
I can't say "luck surface area" has changed my life, yet, but I suspect seeing it that way provides a more stable and intrinsic (if small) motivation. I've thought for a while that I'll need a less-external motivation to be able to keep it up in the long term.
Personally I use github issues / prs as documentation for future me. It's a happy side effect that it builds my portfolio (same for if someone actually finds it useful).
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Same, I can't remember where I heard it first but it changed my life. Would be curious if someone knows the origin of it.
I think the first mention of the concept was on a podcast called TechZing. The author later wrote it down on his blog (referenced in the article) https://www.codusoperandi.com/posts/increasing-your-luck-sur...
as an open-source developer, i can confirm this is a real phenomena
best gigs i’ve got are because of relevant contributions and from companies depending on my software
if you have a strong open-source profile, many companies will skip the screener and invite you straight to interview (i believe this is called “red carpet treatment”)
public work makes you trustworthy and you will stand out among other candidates
Edit: I meant something more more like, "What would you say makes an OSS profile strong?", but I'll preserve the original question below so that the responses still make sense. :)
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Where would you say a strong OSS profile begins? (Feel free to give a fuzzy low-stakes answer. Haven't experienced this but curious where the ballpark is.)
(Author here)
The path I took was to write libraries for a large ecosystem (Laravel) to solve gnarly problems I was having. The gnarlier the better. Pick the thing that nobody else wants to do and solve it. That's what I did, no guarantees that'll work for anyone else though!
i’d say with exposure!
most of the exposure you’ll be getting is from organic search
you might not realize, but people are literally searching for solutions all the time
companies also search for projects they want to build/use to see who’s already building it (this is where you can get hired)
so, a good idea would be to work on your README so when your prospects describe the problem to the search engine your project comes up as a solution
then make sure the technical side and the documentation are solid, so that people can depend on it
a plus for you would be to have projects across multiple domains, this increases your exposure
if you want to go a step beyond that, try to post your projects to relevant communities (note: this should come secondary after search)
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Finding and reporting bugs in software you use is a good start.
Better yet is fixing those bugs and opening pull requests.
Or just mining the bugtracker to fix bugs other users encountered.
Its a solid place to start - getting known as a useful contributor to a handful of projects can work wonders.
Not just sharing work, but sharing stories as well. I recently did a 3-peaks challenge for charity and tweeted about my accomplishments which has led to my next line of work.
I also shared about buying my first house which led to 2 news articles and 1 podcast 30 second audio clip that have all paid money, and given me more exposure. It's been great!
Could you explain more about how buying your first house led to news articles and a podcast that all generated revenue? Seems like it would not be reproducible by many people but interesting nonetheless.