7 ms·

Thats a very good point. In my company whoever writes the most valuable and extensive docs are looked up by people automatically. Either for clarifications or j

Thats a very good point. In my company whoever writes the most valuable and extensive docs are looked up by people automatically. Either for clarifications or just networking. For the past couple of months I have been making devtools for QA and documenting them and just recently found out that every single team uses them and got recognized for it in the all hands!!

peakaboo 5y ago
Any extra salary? No of course not. Lol.
- lhorie 5y ago
  Anecdata, but after I released Mithril.js, I started getting contacted by recruiters from Bay Area companies. I now make 4 times as much as I did when I first started working on it. I know of other folks that got poached by high tech companies due to growing prominence in open source. FWIW, my experience reflects GP that people really appreciate someone who takes the time to teach/help others. YMMV.
  - xwdv 5y ago
    Was your original salary at the average market rate?
    - lhorie 5y ago
      It was on the higher side of the bell curve (in Toronto, Canada, if you're curious)
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    And it's very well deserved, Mithril is amazing! I never had a really successful OSS project but I have a few friends who had or were maintainers of successful projects. One got poached by FB, another one is a contractor at a higher than average rate.
  - krageon 5y ago
    Working on OSS and working for high tech companies are two things that are diametrically opposite. The latter is not a reward for the former, unless you were only ever writing OSS to pad your resume.
    - lhorie 5y ago
      In my experience, it's not an either-or thing. I started my project to scratch an itch and only released it because I thought it could be useful to others. It originally didn't occur to me at all that my side project might influence my own career. But turns out that having a lot of stars on github attracts the attention of recruiters who use bot-based tooling to find talent and hitting HN front page attracts lurker employers. Getting stars is correlated with usefulness, and good docs correlate w/ usefulness as well. There doesn't need to be a direct causation relationship or even any specific intent, all that matters is what actually ends up happening when multiple correlations interplay. Also, you can write open source software in big tech companies and even be paid to do it (React core team is a good example). TC39 folks spending time moving the Ecmascript standard forward is another example of staff/principal engineers doing citizenship-oriented work in order to get recognition for impact at FANG L6+. Being snarky about it doesn't change the fact that these sorts of symbiosis exist.
- vijaybritto 5y ago
  Ha ha no. I didnt even have a discussion about that. I think i need to talk to my manager at some point. But he has been very supportive!
  - sumedh 5y ago
    Just out of curiosity, what is your age? You can give a range if you are not comfortable sharing the exact number.
    - vijaybritto 5y ago
      31
    - aidaman 5y ago
      bro i'm 150,000 to 300,000

peakaboo 5y ago

Any extra salary? No of course not. Lol.

lhorie 5y ago
Anecdata, but after I released Mithril.js, I started getting contacted by recruiters from Bay Area companies. I now make 4 times as much as I did when I first started working on it. I know of other folks that got poached by high tech companies due to growing prominence in open source. FWIW, my experience reflects GP that people really appreciate someone who takes the time to teach/help others. YMMV.
- xwdv 5y ago
  Was your original salary at the average market rate?
  - lhorie 5y ago
    It was on the higher side of the bell curve (in Toronto, Canada, if you're curious)
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  And it's very well deserved, Mithril is amazing! I never had a really successful OSS project but I have a few friends who had or were maintainers of successful projects. One got poached by FB, another one is a contractor at a higher than average rate.
- krageon 5y ago
  Working on OSS and working for high tech companies are two things that are diametrically opposite. The latter is not a reward for the former, unless you were only ever writing OSS to pad your resume.
  - lhorie 5y ago
    In my experience, it's not an either-or thing. I started my project to scratch an itch and only released it because I thought it could be useful to others. It originally didn't occur to me at all that my side project might influence my own career. But turns out that having a lot of stars on github attracts the attention of recruiters who use bot-based tooling to find talent and hitting HN front page attracts lurker employers. Getting stars is correlated with usefulness, and good docs correlate w/ usefulness as well. There doesn't need to be a direct causation relationship or even any specific intent, all that matters is what actually ends up happening when multiple correlations interplay. Also, you can write open source software in big tech companies and even be paid to do it (React core team is a good example). TC39 folks spending time moving the Ecmascript standard forward is another example of staff/principal engineers doing citizenship-oriented work in order to get recognition for impact at FANG L6+. Being snarky about it doesn't change the fact that these sorts of symbiosis exist.
vijaybritto 5y ago
Ha ha no. I didnt even have a discussion about that. I think i need to talk to my manager at some point. But he has been very supportive!
- sumedh 5y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what is your age? You can give a range if you are not comfortable sharing the exact number.
  - vijaybritto 5y ago
    31
  - aidaman 5y ago
    bro i'm 150,000 to 300,000