503 days working full time on FOSS: lessons learned
summary
Worked 503 days full time on a FOSS project (Textual) and reports concrete practices: use contributing guide and GitHub issue templates to cut noise, close and salvage PRs by opening follow-ups with coauthors, run tests locally and CI (GitHub Actions) every time, and open draft PRs to self-review with a pull request checklist. Dogfooding surfaces UX issues, exponential backoff calms heated threads, and a surprising recurring bug report boiled down to “if I run python python runs.” These steps reduce reviewer time and recurring mistakes.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Introduction and disclaimer
- 1:30Getting a job in tech
- 4:23Managing your ego
- 9:02Asking questions and feedback
- 14:04Interacting with users
- 21:11Handling external pull requests
- 28:56Working on large codebases
- 37:24Summary and closing
- 37:46Q&A session
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