Contributing to Open Source Projects is Overrated.
It isn't all sunshine and rainbows if you take burnout and opportunity costs into account.
Tech influencers often glorify contributing to open source projects and hail it as a rite of passage for every developer, including beginners who are just getting started. Some make outrageous claims, such as:
you gotta contribute to open source if you wanna make it in tech.
Before I list why that’s a horrible take and that you can have a successful career in tech without it, let’s get on the same page on terminologies.
Red Hat defines open source as:
Open source is a term that originally referred to open source software (OSS). Open source software is code that is designed to be publicly accessible—anyone can see, modify, and distribute the code as they see fit.
Contributing to open source software can range from fixing a typo, translating to your language, and documenting or fixing a bug. As you can see, anyone, regardless of technical expertise, can contribute to any open source project.
I’m contributor #83 to Riverpod, a well known open source Flutter package, by adding missing parenthesis to a code example.
Contributing to open source boosts your resume and career.
This is the most frequently cited statement, and it’s true to some extent.
It’s only true because a few experienced developers fix long-standing issues with well known open source projects. Fixing just another bug doesn’t hold the same weight, and, as a matter of fact, most beginners don’t have the know-how.
If you’re a junior developer or still learning to code, you might get a higher return on your time by building your own project from scratch. Arguably, a zero-to-hero project holds more weight on your resume than any amount of contributions to open source projects.
Remember, most employers care about what you can do for them, not what you have done for an online community, unless it’s their own community or target market.
Contributing to open source projects without receiving anything in return leads to burnout.
Humans are incentive driven. No one gets up in the morning and puts in a day’s work just to not get anything in return. Spending hours and days contributing to open source projects is similar to that.
Conclusion
I’m not saying you shouldn’t contribute to open source projects. You should, and here’s an excellent guide on how to do so by freeCodeCamp. But I want you to know what you’re getting into and be aware of the downsides.
I tweeted this last week and got mostly opposing views. Check them out to form a balanced take.
Erick came swinging for the fences. I highly recommend you check out his rebuttal.
