Bhaskar Singh
59 posts


5 years ago, I made my first contribution to an open-source project. 6 months later, I received this mail.
It was the catalyst for a journey that transformed me from just another tier-3 college student to having interviews lined up at some of the top remote startups, all through cold applications.
Here are the 5 steps I took to get there despite lacking a coding culture, ambitious peers, or seniors to look up to in my college.
1. Stopped complaining about lack of mentors. Started providing value instead
2. Looked up open source communities from GSoC archives, started cloning their projects which I liked from GitHub and ran them on my machine
3. Filtered open easy/beginner issues on the project's GitHub dashboard, reproduced them, and tried really hard to solve them and submitted pull requests
4. Started getting active in the open source org communities, and asking for specific technical doubts that I was facing.
5. Cut the competitive attitude. When I was applying for GSoC, there was another student who had started the ground work for the project I was interested in. Instead of competing with them, I chose a different project in the same org
Reply with your handle and I'll send you my playbook on open source contributions, plus snippets from the very proposal which got me accepted. ⬇️

English

me at 19:
- broke, skinny introvert with no friends and no social life
- no marketable skills, living off my parents income
- hated who I was
me at 24:
- living it up with the most wholesome group of friends
- in the best shape of my life - physically, mentally, and financially
- in love with myself, fascinated by the world
the secret? truth seeking, gratitude, and courage, sans ego

English

I didn’t. I simply told them one day before that I’ll be moving out and I did.
For I was paying for everything and my job “required” it
Raj@rajgoesout
qrt with your stories about how you convinced your parents about moving out of their place 🚚🏡. I'll go first: I had a remote startup job, and my company's founders stayed at a place 2 hours way from my family's home, and I visited my co-workers for meetings/hanging out every week, which was tiring due to the long commute. I told my dad that it's so much more productive if I stay my co-workers, and gave him examples of successful startup teams who live and work together.
English

@rajistired Uske dil ka algo tho crack nahi kar paya phir eska kya faida ?
Filipino






