As this video titled get hired as a junior dev. I disagree with the advises on open source contribution and working for free. Many people nowadays are just fishing for open source contribution. And not all open source project are welcoming to outsider contribution, most require some level of communication with the maintainers beforehand. Regarding working for free, people will either suspect their free work offer (spy, ulterior motive, etc.), or just outright exploit them, now they're just contribute to the sweatshop problem. As for the alternative, community college or university where you got a scholarship for is a good start, they provide networking opportunities and the prestige of a degree.
There is a *lot* of open source projects, while there maybe some FOSS communities that are not welcoming it's hard to generalise across *all* FOSS projects. Of course some level of communication is needed and this applies to *ANY* project or team you work on, so I don't understand why you're suggesting this is a problem? There are many internships from companies where you *do* not get paid, for companies this is a much lower risk with lots of advantages including the potential of hiring the intern at the end of internship because it would have given the company and the candidate time to learn about each other as well for the candidate to come to understand the companies codebase etc. Could the internship be exploited? yes, but at least you will know that it is a toxic company and you can just walk away, something that would be much harder to "walk away" if you where employed by that toxic company. Universities (at least in the UK) do NOT provide networking opportunities, I know because I've come out of academia into Industry and it was the *MOST* painful journey to cross, and my story is not unique.
As this video titled get hired as a junior dev. I disagree with the advises on open source contribution and working for free. Many people nowadays are just fishing for open source contribution. And not all open source project are welcoming to outsider contribution, most require some level of communication with the maintainers beforehand. Regarding working for free, people will either suspect their free work offer (spy, ulterior motive, etc.), or just outright exploit them, now they're just contribute to the sweatshop problem. As for the alternative, community college or university where you got a scholarship for is a good start, they provide networking opportunities and the prestige of a degree.
There is a *lot* of open source projects, while there maybe some FOSS communities that are not welcoming it's hard to generalise across *all* FOSS projects.
Of course some level of communication is needed and this applies to *ANY* project or team you work on, so I don't understand why you're suggesting this is a problem?
There are many internships from companies where you *do* not get paid, for companies this is a much lower risk with lots of advantages including the potential of hiring the intern at the end of internship because it would have given the company and the candidate time to learn about each other as well for the candidate to come to understand the companies codebase etc.
Could the internship be exploited? yes, but at least you will know that it is a toxic company and you can just walk away, something that would be much harder to "walk away" if you where employed by that toxic company.
Universities (at least in the UK) do NOT provide networking opportunities, I know because I've come out of academia into Industry and it was the *MOST* painful journey to cross, and my story is not unique.