Hey👋, I am Archit Sharma, a student and SDE based in India. In this blog, I aim to share my experience and journey of obtaining my first internship through open source contributions.

How did it all begin?

It all started back in 2023 when I was confused about what I was doing. I was learning different tech stacks but wasn't applying them anywhere. One night, I was looking through the LFX mentorship page and found a project called Meshery, which is under Layer5. Even though I didn't have all the required tech stacks, I still applied.

A few days later, I received a DM from the founder of Layer5, asking me to participate in the community and projects. He also gave me a brief introduction to the community and its projects.

And that is how I kickstarted my journey in open source.

Joining the Community

I joined the Layer5 Slack and introduced myself in the #newcomers channel, where I received advice to join the website meeting held every Monday. Taking that advice, I attended the website meeting. At first, I was a bit shy, but then I introduced myself during the meeting. Additionally, I received my very first issue to work on during the same meeting. It was a simple task—just adding an image to a React component.

From that day onward, I never looked back and continued making contributions to the project. After six months of contributing, I was offered a six-month internship with Layer5.

Advice for New Open Source Contributors

1. Consistency is key, be consistent in solving the project's problems
2. Ask your questions, but don't overly rely on or disturb the maintainers, as they might end up solving the issue themselves.
3. Things may seem overwhelming at first, but with patience, everything will eventually start to make sense.

Conclusion

Besides all of this, Layer5 is an awesome organization for networking and learning new things. In my opinion, it’s the most beginner-friendly organization, and I advise all open source beginners to give it a try.

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. - Steve Jobs