Notes
When u think about contributing to OSS, u think about putting up a PR or adding 1 feature or at the most doing that 1 GSoC internship. But what is it like to spend decades working on open-source projects and why would u even do that in the first place, @lantiga sheds some light.
@lantiga’s career, in his words, was very serendipitous.
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Started off doing bioengineering research, got a PhD and created a bunch of OSS tools. Later started a company @orobix in the same space. This was the start of his opensource journey
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Got involved with the @pytorch community right from the early days. This was a chance to meet some of the best people he has worked with in his career and made some awesome friends too. That project was an awesome exposure for him. This was, as I understand, an incredible opportunity! He got to meet and work with the core maintainers a lot since it was a small project and this also meant he was able to learn a lot and build up an awesome network.
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Later started his own OSS company @tensorwerk focusing on solving the problem of ML tooling. This was a space is super early and that meant there was a ton of opportunity here too.
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And finally, now he is VP of Engineer at @gridai_ and explores more about effectively managing engineering efforts there.
Throughout each of these phases, he was driven by his curiosity and went deep into each. It was not part of a plan but just going where his curiosity drove him. And this was his biggest takeaway for understand
Life is like walking on the beach collecting pebbles. There r a lot but your job should be to pick out that one big pebble that really stands out for you. Go deep on that one u have in ur hand. in the end, u only have space for a very few, so make each pebble count.