The document provides career advice based on the author's experience working in open source technology for over ten years. Some of the key tips include: publishing your work openly, starting with small projects to learn new skills, open sourcing your code to gain opportunities, following your interests, and knowing that hiring can take a long time. The author shares their journey from creating a Barbie-themed website to working at Mozilla on the Firefox browser and other projects.

1. CAREER HACKING
EXPLORING YOUR WAY TO A FUN
JOB IN OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGY.
Dietrich Ayala, March 30, 2016
Epicodus, Portland OR

3. I’VE BEEN AT MOZILLA FOR ALMOST OVER TEN YEARS.
I’VE SHIPPED SOFTWARE TO HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS
OF PEOPLE.
BUT…

4. I STARTED HERE: BARBIECAKE.COM

5. THAT WEBSITE WAS SHUT DOWN BY
MATTEL CORPORATION.
BUT IT GOT ME MORE JOBS!
(AND MY FIRST THREAT OF LAWSUIT)

6. TIP #1
PUBLISH. PUBLISH. PUBLISH.

7. I TOOK A LOW-PAYING WEBMASTER JOB.

8. “WEBMASTER” DUTIES AT SUB POP:
* LINUX (DEBIAN, REDHAT, SLACKWARE) ADMIN
* MICROSOFT EXCHANGE SERVER ADMIN
* WRITE INVENTORY SOFTWARE
* MEDIA PUBLISHING AND ARCHIVING
* WEBSITE THE EVERYTHING
* ALL EMPLOYEE DESKTOP IT SUPPORT
* E-COMMERCE SOFTWARE
* ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE INTEGRATION

9. I LEARNED A LOT.

10. TIP #2
START SMALL. LEARN BIG.

11. LET’S TAKE A MOMENT TO
TALK ABOUT…

12. WHILE DOING PAYMENT SYSTEM INTEGRATION, I
HEARD ABOUT “SOAP”.
SOAP IS XML MESSAGES PASSED BETWEEN
COMPUTERS.
I IMPLEMENTED SOAP FOR FUN IN PHP. BECAUSE
THAT WAS THE ONLY LANGUAGE I KNEW.
I PUBLISHED IT AS OPEN SOURCE ON SOURCEFORGE*.
(* ANCIENT GITHUB PRE-CURSOR)

13. PUBLISHING MY SOFTWARE
AS OPEN SOURCE GOT ME
THREE JOBS AND A BOOK
CHAPTER.

14. THEY CAME TO ME.

15. TIP #3
OPEN SOURCE YOUR CODE.

16. INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS.

17. I WAS AT YAHOO.
MY PROJECT WAS A SUCCESS.
BUT I WAS EXPERIMENTING IN
THE NIGHT…

18. I WROTE AN ADD-ON FOR FIREFOX 1.5.
+

19. I PUBLISHED MY ADD-ON.
A FEW MONTHS LATER,
MOZILLA CONTACTED ME TO
SEE IF I WANTED TO WORK
ON FIREFOX.

20. TIP #4
FOLLOW YOUR INTERESTS.
SERIOUSLY.

21. AFTER THAT INITIAL EMAIL…
3 PHONE SCREENS…
7 ON-SITE INTERVIEWS…
A BUNCH OF PAPERWORK…
AND A TOTAL OF 5 MONTHS TIME…
I BEGAN WORKING AT MOZILLA.

22. TIP #5
HIRING TAKES A LONG TIME.

23. OVER THE LAST 10 YEARS…
I WORKED ON FIREFOX, ADD-ONS,
FIREFOX OS AND MORE.
I WAS A MANAGER.
I WAS A PROJECT MANAGER.
I WAS A TECHNICAL LEAD.

24. I AM AN EVANGELIST.

25. BEING AN EVANGELIST MEANS…
SPEAKING AND WRITING
ADVOCATING FOR DEVELOPERS
GUIDING PRODUCT DEV
EXPERIMENTING WITH NEW TECH
HELPING OTHERS SPEAK AND WRITE

26. VIRTUAL REALITY
ON THE WEB

27. WEB & IOT
RASPBERRY PI

28. VAANI
MACHINE LEARNING
SPEECH RECOGNITION
ON THE WEB

29. ONGOING PROJECTS…
CODE SCHOOLS (HI!)
TECH COMMUNITIES IN ASIA
SUPPORTING STAFF EVANGELISTS
MOZILLA TECH SPEAKERS PROGRAM
MOZILLA FESTIVAL AND
OTHER FOUNDATION EFFORTS

30. THANK YOU.