GSOC 2024 Complete Roadmap: Step by Step Guide

so it's 4th of September I have a flight in eight hours and I'm leaving India for a few months which is something I announced a few months ago as well it's for a job and this journey sort of started around eight years ago when I first applied to GSoC in college you usually have two high level paths to pursue one is algorithms which is something I did as well in fact I attribute my very first job at Goldman to my algorithmic skills however all the jobs that I've done since are purely based on my developmental skills which means I've had zero algorithmic interviews and haven't really had to use algorithms in my day-to-day life the question really is what was my butterfly effect moment to start learning development and the answer was the greed to make $5500 dollars over the summer I wanted to make at least some money to pay like college tuitions and Google summer of code was a pretty lucrative way to do that that is still the case today they still pay fairly well but more than money I think gsoc is the best internship you can do for one learning and two getting a bunch of exposure it's basically a mini remote work sort of an internship where you have to show your skills upfront contribute to open source and then sort of get a job and if you're in college you can either go to big Tech which I feel the learning there is very nuanced based on the team you're in you can go to an early stage startup the problem there is you're doing a lot of shit shoveling and not learning which is why I feel unless you have some research internship offer from a university outside India GSoC is probably the best internship you can do if you're in your first second or third year to prepare yourself for a very long career that you have ahead the question really is how do you apply and what's the high level roadmap considering there are only six to eight months left now before the whole GSoC season begins so in this video I want to talk about how I would prepare for GSoC today if I was a college student the journey luckily thankfully is very similar to how I would apply for jobs if I was applying through open source so in this video I'm going to talk about a high level road map or four things that I would do if I Was preparing for GSoC next year and a few things that you shouldn't do when you're doing the same with that let's get right into the video step one is getting moderately good at a tech stack there are four General Stacks that I've seen that Google summer of code has organizations in first one is Javascript / typescript second one is Python Third one is Java and fourth is C++ all four of these languages have some benefits that are more than GSoC if you use JavaScript or typescript you can apply for remote jobs a lot of startups use this as their primary stack so even if you don't make it you learn something that's very useful if you use Python it's very well used both to build back-end applications in Django or it's very heavily used in AI the upcoming field so if you don't get anything at least You Learn Python and your AI Learning Journey becomes easy for Java It's usually the language of choice in big Tech if you go to Amazon if you go to Goldman Sachs most of these companies use Java as their backend it's been Legacy backing for many years now and C++ will give you that 4cr hft offer more specifically which is like Niche offers so I don't really want to over leverage on it but other than that if you want to go to ICPC World Finals C ++ is the common language that I've seen all the best algorithmic developers use especially from India so choose a stack I would stick with just one and not change my stack too often at least for the next six to eight months whatever you think can align with your longer term goals just pick one language and then go very deep in it which means understand the syntax and then start to look for project which brings us to step 2 after you've done a moderate set of learning in a specific stack for maybe two months or so start looking for organizations you should choose at least two organizations because a lot of times organizations either back out or don't get selected so if you have two in case one backs out you have the other one to fall back on create a decent reputation of yourself with the maintainers which means start to solve small bugs maybe don't ask too many questions introduce yourself in the slack in the Discord and just ask curious questions you don't have to solve issues on Day Zero just make your presence felt early because as January and February comes everyone will start flogging to these Discord groups this is the right time to at least let them know okay hey I am someone who is not necessarily here for GSoC even though you are but since you're here so early you have won a head start to some time to get to know the maintenance and and be in their eye much earlier than when the complete crowd comes in all right so step two is finding two organizations in the stack that you've learned maybe a third one as well just to be sure and and until December you should have a decent reputation with the maintainers and hopefully should have solved a few bugs in these organizations with that let's move to the third point when January comes is when you should be very aggressive with your contributions this means you should be picking up bigger code basis bigger issues and solving them without the help of maintainers if you've spent two months learning a stack and two months understanding the code Base by this time you should be moderately aware of what the stack looks like and if an issue comes up you should be able to one be very aggressive in picking up issues and two pick bigger issues January is the time where a lot of people will come in but since you have a head start of a few months you can understand issues much better and the maintainers will also be more comfortable assigning the issue to you than someone else and if you've contributed for so many months they would want you to pick issues and have higher probability of winning than the new people who are suddenly flocking January onwards right so January and February make aggressive contributions make sure that there's literally no stone that you have left unturned when it comes to contributing you're like number one number two maintainer amongst the g-soc lot you don't have to be the overall number one maintainer but whoever is coming in GSoC whenever you're seeing a new person come in and trying to pick up issues make sure you've already solved bigger issues but at the same time if you see someone really good has come please pick and choose wisely if someone else is contributing and contributing much better than you move from this project to a different one don't get emotionally attached if you can clearly see someone better has joined the organization just move on to a different one that's three steps the fourth step is having a very polished proposal try to aim for two to three proposals in two to three organizations you can send multiple proposals in the same organization or you can just pick two different organizations or three different organizations and submit proposals in each one of these it should be at a point that your proposal does not matter at all your contributions have pretty much spoken for themselves and the proposal is just a formality 80% of getting into gsoc is contributions maybe 10% is reputation with maintenance and at Max 10% is how well you have written the proposal of course don't have very big red flags in there don't be rude don't have typos in there but other than that your contributions will speak much more than the proposal but basically February end is where you should start to focus on your proposal and submitting a decent one in all the organizations where you've been contributing for a while at this point is when you have the last 15 to 20 days before the results are announced be very aggressive in your contributions there as well until the results are announced your contributions matter so make sure you're contributing actively even after you have put the proposal and then if you get in great if not you learned a lot in your six month Journey this is actually a mini internship into how to apply to remote jobs via open source because the path is very similar I feel this path came to me very naturally because I had done this twice during GSoC so even if you don't get in which if you follow this path well if luck is on your side and with a bunch of other factors if number of projects are higher not a lot of people contribute and you're in the right project there is a higher probability of you making it in if you start right now you think September is a decent checkpoint you can actually go to my GitHub and look at my contributions from a few years ago around this time is when I started to learn JavaScript and typescript and around January when I started to contribute to processing it's like one of the organizations that used to come hence I would want some of you to follow the same path again you might not see results on Day Zero at some point that maybe had the butterfly effect and that's how you became a good long-term software developer all right I want to discuss a few don'ts before we end the video These don'ts are also very well replicable to when you're applying for a remote job via open source the first one is please be polite don't be aggressive when communicating which means don't ask them persistently why haven't you looked at my issue if a maintainer hasn't looked at the issue it means they're busy don't ping them unless they have not looked at your pull trackers for maybe over a week number two don't make them feel like you're here just for GSoC you may be there just for GSoC you may be there for more reasons getting a job being a good open source maintainer creating a good open source profile but don't start asking them about GSoC from Day Zero just try to create a natural reputation try to be a good contributor initially and don't worry about GSoC for the first few months when the time comes if you have a good reputation you can ask your maintainer about whether or not you will make it in what are the kind of projects that are coming but until then initially don't give them the vibe that you're here just for gsoc finally the third point which is very important for remote jobs as well don't ask too many questions if you are trying to tackle an issue if you're stuck trying to set up the project locally if something weird is happening there's a bug in your machine the maintainer is not the right person to ask it you have to debug it yourself you have to find a senior you have to find a friend don't ask the maintainer to solve local issues on your machine if you have picked up a bigger issue which is more than what you can chew right now don't ask them questions just give up the issue for someone else to solve for now you can come back to it later have a very natural progression of solving small issues and then slowly becoming the person that everyone knows and looks up to don't start with very big issues initially because if you get stuck it leaves a very bad taste in the maintainer's mouth this guy started this big issue but then I was the one who had to come in and fix it start slow eventually move to bigger issues at all times be very polite because in remote work when you're interacting with people all around the world everyone has different accents different time zones so it's like very important to be extremely polite and over communicative when it comes to these things cool these are the high level points this is how I would start my journey in September October maybe November starting I would learn a new stack for me that would have been JavaScript typescript everything that's related to the MERN stack mid-novemberish I would find two organizations and start to introduce myself start making some contributions and until December have a decent reputation with the maintainers January and February I would go very aggressive solve very big issues and Harden my position in GSoC February end I would spend maybe a week writing a very good proposal March I would keep contributing until the results come and when the results come irrespective of what happens I would love this six month journey and it would have compounding effects in My overall software developmental career hopefully that was enough motivation and a decent roadmap for the next few months if you need more help more contributions contributions contributions into GSoC organizations and not companies let me know in the comments I'll see you guys in the next one and next time I will see you not in India but in a different country which one I'll reveal very soon although a few of you from the course already know I'll see you the next one bye all right that was a decent video editor....

Channel: Harkirat Singh

Views: 136,849

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Id: 5XRadxa0CfY

Length: 11min 23sec (683 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 06 2023