u/Parky-Park wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Do you have any tips for finding leads for any of these? Namely, finding a good open-source project that's appropriate to your skill level, or finding companies to work at for free?
u/michaelnovati replied ·
Open Source is a bit tough because it's so intimidating to contribute to giant projects. As it should be - because they are codebases similar to top tech companies and if you joined Google tomorrow it would take time to navigate the code.
So if you plan to contribute over 6 months and longer, you might be able to make some small contributions to large project, but you'll learn a lot.
There are a set of smaller projects, like MUI, that are run and maintained by tiny company of a few people. These are easier to contribute to and get something on your portfolio and still fairly legit. But harder to find.
Another option here is to start a company with friends and make a startup that does something legit and gets some users and has a bank account, state registration, etc...
For free work - startups. Ping YC startups before demo day and hope you get paid when they realize money. Or do projects on Upwork for ridiculously low prices.