Comment by hoten

I got my first paid work writing software because I got lucky on GitHub.

Back in college, I simply commented on a peer's issue made for a local hackathon. He was confused about what direction to take for a webapp, and didn't have any experience in any frameworks. I just suggested Rails, and gave a few highlights for it and pointed him towards some starter guides.

Within a couple hours a well connected student (I believe he ran the CS club) saw my comment, and forwarded it to an alumni who was doing local Rails work.

I actually didn't have any experience in Rails beyond the tutorials of the day, and I made that clear. But he liked the look of my GitHub and was happy to give me the job.

It was pretty good money for a college student. I recall not really knowing what to expect hourly wise, and when he brought up payment I wasn't able to give an answer so he immediately said 50/hr. To me, I was truly expecting like half of that. I tried to keep cool as I accepted. My pricing mindset was definitely anchored by waiting tables, where 50/hr is something you might get if you got a really lucky shift and required busting ass. So to get that much for _sitting down_? Oh boy.

After settling on the price, he stepped out of the room for a bit. This was a shared co-working space, and I recall looking over to the guy next to us (who I could tell was paying some attention to our conversation) and saying I did not expect that much money. He happened to work for Uber - and he agreed that I got a very good deal. Not sure why I remember that detail.

Anyway: yes, working in public, and even being helpful in public, certainly can pay dividends.