Amjad Masad

Also fantastic for class mobility—even though classism isn't a trendy problem. You can get a great job that pays well without an expensive formal education, and without needing to be part of an exclusive network.

Yeah, I think programming is unprecedented in it's power for class mobility because a) you don't need a lot of resources b) like you said, there's no need for expensive signaling like formal education.

OMG, I think I just connected you as the guy from Facebook who make the Python 2 interface in Codecademy originally and then left draining them of the ability to ever update their Python2 lessons to Python3. I had sleuthed that a long time ago and your blog connects the dots.

Lol sorry but they do have lots of talented people working for them. I think they just focused on other stuff

Did you code most of the in-browser Python2 interpreter then? That was an amazing feat all by itself.

No, we cheated. We used emscripten to compile it. On the other hand we did contribute to emscripten which was at its infancy at the time

Exactly what I've been debating with extremists about for days now... In places like mine, where opportunities are next to none and you're slated for a life of struggle, GitHub gives you a chance to get noticed and get into the global community.

It's so goddamn easy to live in San Fransisco, go to Stanford, work for one of the biggest giants in tech and say that GitHub is discriminatory. It's all we have, all we've ever had, y'all. It's our only way out of this.

Working for local companies who aren't doing anything interesting and probably never will ensures that I'll stay in my bubble. The only way out is to contribute to awesome projects, meet nice people and get noticed.

To say that recruiters shouldn't hire over GitHub puts up too many fences. Not every (aspiring) talented techmaker lives in the Silicon Valley. A lot of them live in poorer countries, go to cheaper universities, etc. You cannot deny them opportunities.

Also, to think that OSS is something privileged individuals indulge in during their free time is a gross misunderstanding. I work with @nodejs. There's @Linux, @ubuntu, @reactjs and what not. Not every open-source project is a side project, y'know.

This stems from a very harsh opinion, I think. An opinion that everything good must come with a price tag. That nobody gives away their best code for free. Get outside of your bubble, I'd say. Open-source is a philosophy, not just something you do on a weekend with friends.

That's it from my side, my 2 cents on this debate. There's a huge demographic of potentially awesome people that the privileged systematically tend to ignore. Thanks for writing this.

Very well spoken. I think open source not only helps folks from underprivileged backgrounds but also anyone without a Stanford (and a few other ivy league) degree which seems to be one of the biggest filters used at big tech companies in SV unfortunately.

Definitely a very good point. However, I would still only consider OSS work on GitHub as PART of the picture when hiring. There are plenty of barriers, like language and internet access, that can make OSS inaccessible to many.

Thank you for writing this! Everything resonates with me.

You inspire me man! Thank you for this! We come from similar backgrounds but my father went through your journey back when OSS wasn’t a thing and learning how DBs work were a trend!