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The FOSS crowd is absolutely overflowing with people who dream of being software developers, but I've discovered that there are very few among them, who have the fortitude, social skills, and diligence to create, test, support and maintain a software product over an entire lifecycle.

And they are usually already working in IT.

That's why they are working in IT.

That's why people pay them money to work in IT.

Luxferre 1y ago

I think there is a slight misconception here.

There are several types of FOSS developers, the main two of them (besides RedHat-like corporations) being 1) ones who treat this as a hobby and have main jobs totally unrelated to this, and 2) ones who deliberately write FOSS projects in order to get noticed and eventually hired by some companies. What you wrote only applies to type 2. Type 1 doesn't need to prove anything to anybody. Everyone is free to use or not use whatever they publish.

Yes, that is a problem, irresponsible FOSS developers pollute the space and often promise what they can't deliver. But the responsible ones, if they belong to type 1, reject any money proposals to implement something far more often, precisely because they are responsible. Taking money for features takes away your freedom to do whatever *you* want to do with this project. Yes, a responsible FOSS hobbyist can accept donations, but the donators don't have any right to dictate how to develop the project any further.

So, every such developer needs to make a choice between being independent (but probably non-profitable) and selling oneself.

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Laeserin 1y ago

Yeah, I'm increasingly sticking to Type 1.

They show up. They do the work. They come back next week.

They don't expect money for products that aren't (yet) worth selling.

They are willing to grind away at a project for weeks or months, without any public praise or payment.

Salt of the earth.

Ironically, that's the sort of person employers are looking for.

We can look at repos and see who is just humbly grinding away. We can see who is still responding to issues, or updating the stack, months or years after the last feature release.

GitHub is completely littered with fly-by-night dev projects. Repo spam.

Luxferre 1y ago

The problem is, employers are looking for such personalities for a very different reason: exploitation. They prey on their enthusiasm, and responsibility too. Responsible enthusiasts are easier to manipulate into doing more for less. They don't know how to "sell themselves" because they don't want to do this in the first place.

Laeserin 1y ago

You call it "exploitation".

I call it "hiring workers who actually show up and do work" or "hiring workers who are able to contribute productively and reliably to a project team".

Why the heck would I want to hire someone who doesn't even do anything? You waste time recruiting and training and trying to integrate their ideas and preferences into your project and answering their questions and get back...

What, exactly?

Nothing. They literally cost you time, money, and energy in return for not a fucking thing.

Software project pump-no-dump.

Luxferre 1y ago

By exploitation, I mean paying those reliable workers half the real price of their work because they are enthusiastic and cannot see they are treated unfairly because of that.

Laeserin 1y ago

It's because the unreliable workers destroy the impression of scarcity, so they have no market leverage.

Paper developers, like paper gold, flooding the market and distorting price.

And I think the FOSS movement has made that much worse because every Tom, Dick, and Harry has a repo with some scriptkiddie bullshit in it.

All noise, no signal.

Luxferre 1y ago

Maybe. Sometimes. More often though, it looks like this: "let's offer him less, he'll agree anyway, he doesn't have anywhere else to go"

FOSS movement doesn't have anything to do with good old corporate greed.

Laeserin 1y ago

Maybe, but I see it more like this

Hard workers will work for no money, for a little money, or for a lot of money. A lot of them actually pay money to work, which is sort of crazy. They always work. Workers work. They'd go nuts, otherwise.

People pay them money to get them to work on THEIR project and not some other guy's project. If they pay them too much less than the other guy would, they might eventually lose their worker, and that's the risk they accept by underpaying.

Likewise, if an employer (or grant-provider) sees someone working for no money or low money, he is likely to make him an offer, so that he can influence what that worker is working on. So, I think what FOSS does, that is positive, is make hard-workers working for no money, or who are temporarily unemployed, more visible to potential employers.

And you can't fake that by just slapping something together on GitHub and running off. Employers can literally watch you work in real time.

Luxferre 1y ago

I understand, seems like we've been talking about different things in the same thread.

There's another factor to consider though: a lot of people (me included) also lose their enthusiasm and energy very quickly whenever their hobbies become their full-time job. Up to the point they start really hating what they liked to do before.

Anyway, as I said, I'm not *that* old but, in my 30s, I already have decided I will stop working as soon as I have a chance, i.e. have enough money to spend throughout the rest of my life. Meanwhile, I know a guy who, in his 40s, earns 2 or 3 times more than me and keeps saying he loves to work and loves his job position (senior Java developer). Not sure he'd necessarily go nuts otherwise but he had some mental problems in the past, so maybe focusing on the work is a part of his therapy.

Laeserin 1y ago

I could never really retire. Retirement is just a chance to freely choose my work. I love working. I'm like my dad, I guess. He's retirement age and refuses to retire. Says they'll have to drag him out. 😅

I got on Nostr to chill and immediately fell into working. Even when I'm "posting", my posts usually serve some sort of purpose. They're rarely just aimless chatter. I don't do aimless.

Luxferre 1y ago

Neither do I. I just point out why looking at FOSS repos to find potential employees is pretty much inefficient.

Oh, and here's another factor: there is a small fraction of people who just don't accept any kind of control over them.

Laeserin 1y ago

Yeah, they can't work as part of a team or follow simple directions.

Can't even get them to put files in the correct folder or follow naming conventions or implement a linter.