I have been trying to get some programmers to work for me on Upwork lately. Every person who applied raised so many questions about whether they could actually handle my project.

I haven’t hired any yet.

Adding a JOB to Upwork

I put a very simple job description with a few questions to answer:

and started receiving many unhelpful applications. I would not be surprised if many of them were created with ChatGPT.

And then got so many applications with unresolved questions:

How can I know they can handle my project?
How do I know they don’t lie?
How can I know if they can handle it with a high-quality contribution?
How do I know they know how to communicate with me properly?

So many unanswered questions put a big risk in hiring any of the candidates. If they are not good, I can:

Lose time
Lose money
Lost my time (because I need to teach them)

I would need to interview and test every candidate (big headache)

Open source shines

Now, let’s assume somebody contributed to my open-source repository.

Now I know:

Their level
Their ability to handle big projects
How they communicate

I can tell you that in Novu, many contributors have shifted their roles from contributors to employees.

Mistakes most developers do

I got an application from one person over GitHub. This is their GitHub profile:

Instead of making many contributions to different open-source repositories, they tried creating and applying their own demos.

That’s a big mistake.

Every developer with 1+ years of experience can start something from 0; it’s much easier to be in a controlled environment.

Actually, contributing to a large code base (and getting merged) is a different level.

Here is a message I got from the HackSquad discord:

“But beginners can’t contribute to their gigantic code bases”

This is how you reduce the risk when applying for a job.

SO, INSTEAD OF CREATING 100 DEMO PROJECTS, FOCUS ON 1-2 CONTRIBUTIONS FOR A BIGGER CODEBASE PROJECT.

Be strategic with your contribution

Before you contribute to any big codebase project, check:

Is it a company?
Are they hiring?
Do they have an open position for what I am looking for?
Can I show this contribution to a similar company or in Upwork?

Project you should contribute to

All the listed projects are fully remote companies that hire everywhere.

1. Gitroom

I don’t have a huge budget, but I am trying to offload some of the work. This is a good project if you want to:

Start with a mid-size project
Work with the biggest technologies out there, such as NextJS and NestJS
Be exposed to more open-source companies (because Gitroom) that support many open-source companies.

I have also opened a bunch of cool issues you can start with!

2. CopilotKit

Today, there is a new concept of “AI Engineer.” It’s mostly for people who are interested in building stuff with AI without building the AI themselves. Copilotkit is building chatbots that wrap existing LLMs. This is a good project if you want to:

Work with LLMs
Work with NextJS and, in the future, more frameworks
Do some cool AI shit 🙂

3. Winglang

While many people go to learn computer science, they work as developers and not engineers to program full-stack software; you don’t have to learn CS (I barely finished high school). If you want to pursue a career as an engineer, This is a good project if you want to:

Build a transpiler that takes code and converts it to JS at the end
Write sophisticated algorithms
Build a deep infrastructure

4. LLMWare

I asked Santiago what the biggest trend in AI is today. He said that RAG and LLMs are the biggest hypes or mostly the future.

LLMWare are killers with everything connected to RAG. This is a good project if you want to:

Play with RAG
Play and fine-tune models
Be a Python professional

5. Novu

I worked for Novu, so I can tell you it’s a good company 🙂
Their codebase is pretty big (3 years of coding). This is a good project if you want to:

They have already hired many community members
Easy codebase full-stack javascript
Huge community (it’s just fun)

6. Taipy

I love Taipy. They build a unique Python app builder; this is a cool project because it’s not as easy as full-stack JavaScript applications. This is a good project if you want to:

Learn Python
Showoff with a kick-ass contribution for a large codebase
Be a part of a big community.

If you are an open-source company also hiring, add your repository in the comment 🙂