GitHub and Open-Source Is a Boon for the Underprivileged

The #1 technical lever I have found worth exploiting, worth far more than anything a university can provide, is the willingness to get the job done.

It hasn't mattered if I wrote CP/M code ISR's, PROGRESS 4GL modules, Unix daemons, Pascal, .. Java, C, C++, Objective-C, Lua, Swift, &etc. - through the thick of it all, the fact that I was willing to get the job done, no matter what, is what made the difference.

On the other end of this scale, is a bit of decadence.

From my particularly tainted point of view, the ideological basis of the current cultural norm of "university==well-paid job" is entirely decadent. People seem to have expectations that, because they're in a certain class, they don't have to work hard at developing other real life issues, and too many times I've seen the well-educated, well-connected, nevertheless incompetent developer fall to pieces under pressure. I am grateful for these guys, because they make my life easier.

Yet, those who are in this group, who haven't got a decadent ideal of their own worth, but rather get things done in computing, whatever it takes: great.

So its really not a matter of educated-enough. Its whether the will to perform is, through whatever means, inculcated - and then manifest by taking the actions to get the state of things, done.

Some of the best developers I've ever worked with, have come from utterly dire circumstances. Some of the worst, too. Likewise for the privileged, candied elite.

The one differentiator, truly, is the will of the individual. Computers, being machines of will, equalise us all that way.

    A rich GitHub profile is like a college degree:
    ∙ It's a positive signal, one of dozens possible
    ∙ Not everybody has the time and resources to get one
    ∙ Having one does not necessarily mean you're good at your job
    ∙ Ignoring one would be silly
    ∙ Requiring one would be silly

It's _complicated_. I mean, almost everything in society is complicated: it's like sphagetti code written by millions of people with no single coherent goal.

There's a degree to which what you say is true, and a degree to which it is false. The most obvious way in which it is false is that learning how to use a computer well requires a) access to a computer (obviously), b) time you can dedicate to learning how to use it, c) resources to assist with learning (this one is mostly solved by ubiquitous internet connections _today_, but that was much less solved even fifteen to twenty years back, when many of the current self-taught mid/senior experienced people around today were learning), and so on.

Tech is not a pure meritocracy, because not everyone has had access to the same resources or opportunities. I think that's getting a lot better - as this article flags up, the modern open source community is extremely accessible, and sufficient equipment to be competitive with the best is cheaper than it has ever been. With just a cheap laptop and a relatively inexpensive internet connection you're not _that_ far away from having the same tooling available as a rich professional, today. That doesn't mean that problems a and c are _solved_ by any means, but they're certainly better than they used to be.

Point b may not be something we can solve with improving technology, though, nor the thousands of tiny factors involved in whether people unconciously gain an attraction towards programming or pass it by. These are really hard problems to solve.

So, like, generally, I think we're _doing better_ than we were twenty years ago, but we still have a long way to go before we can unironically call tech a meritocracy where those with the will to thrive succeed and those without fail. Life is just more complicated than that.

I'm in this situation right now, where I've been always highly appreciated by the place I was working at. I've also built a few systems used by a few companies in a certain niche, and always strived for excellency in what I was doing. That had resulted quick series of promotions and raises in my career. This has turned out to be of very little help for me when trying to look for a new job. For various reasons, I'm trying to look for a new job and it is impossible for me to find one.

I'm probably not very good at "selling myself" as I always thought my work should speak for me. My CV looks "average" - nothing special in there, just working here and there for x years doing y.

I'm finding myself at a pay level and seniority level that other companies just cannot justify by judging me by my CV, so in the end they decide to pass on me. Maybe it sounds like a good problem to have, but it's a very big problem to me with a significant negative consequences for my life at the moment.

What I'm trying to do now, is exactly trying to put up some impressive things on Github, speaking at conferences and in general try to "market myself" a bit more. I expect this to take quite some time before it bears any fruits, but I see no other way how I can get out of this situation.