I know many people that did this. Not all of them are making $500k a year, but here is some more examples:
- Multiple Rails contributors, one that turned core. Those folks are making well north of $200k a year.
- Ember contributors or contributors to projects around ember-data or similar. Multiple people making north of $200k a year.
- A guy that dove into contributing to Postgres. He wouldn't even share how much his offer was because it was so insane.
The point is that if you actually put in the work to projects and you network and learn from seasoned developers it's going to be far, far better for your career than grinding out little Fiver or Upwork contracts.
Put another way: Your pay is related to your skills, your professionalism, and your network. Working on the right OS project exposes you to people that are really good at software. Sure you can do the same working for money at the right company, but this guy isn't in that position. So, in my opinion, his best bet is to skill up and network and contribute. Even if he's applying to remote work positions absent a network, a string of commits to Numpy or Rust is going to look a hell of a lot better than "freelancer that did rinky dink work for marketing guys" or "I built a todo list app to show off my skills" and I don't really see why this is so controversial. I'd like to see a counterpoint, honestly. Someone here that worked on a real OS project for a prolonged period of time that has trouble finding work at a reasonable salary.
- Multiple Rails contributors, one that turned core. Those folks are making well north of $200k a year.
- Ember contributors or contributors to projects around ember-data or similar. Multiple people making north of $200k a year.
- A guy that dove into contributing to Postgres. He wouldn't even share how much his offer was because it was so insane.
The point is that if you actually put in the work to projects and you network and learn from seasoned developers it's going to be far, far better for your career than grinding out little Fiver or Upwork contracts.
Put another way: Your pay is related to your skills, your professionalism, and your network. Working on the right OS project exposes you to people that are really good at software. Sure you can do the same working for money at the right company, but this guy isn't in that position. So, in my opinion, his best bet is to skill up and network and contribute. Even if he's applying to remote work positions absent a network, a string of commits to Numpy or Rust is going to look a hell of a lot better than "freelancer that did rinky dink work for marketing guys" or "I built a todo list app to show off my skills" and I don't really see why this is so controversial. I'd like to see a counterpoint, honestly. Someone here that worked on a real OS project for a prolonged period of time that has trouble finding work at a reasonable salary.