Thread by @Anush_krishna_v

Alternatives to an unpaid internship :
A 🧵
( will be updated )

Open Source
I personally learned a lot from contributing to projects and talking to mentors.
Key Learnings
Understanding projects with a large codebase, How to ask for help, Version control system, Coding practices, Documentation, testing, licensing
"Your source for Guidance "

Hackathons
Key Learnings
Solutions to Code, Team building, Designing Database, Application architecture, creating project presentation and demo videos, Collaboration, explored MongoDB, Auth0, DataStax, GCP, Twilio, Azure
Added bonus awards and prizes
Met lot of amazing folks

Personal Project Building
Key learnings:
Full-stack dev, Googling, Debugging, most things from hackathon except I built everything, Streamlit, explored @Azure a lot got certified, Blogged about problems and solves, Research.
Fav Projects: Alang(interpreter in pure python), DLFIN

Writing Blogs ( Content Creation)
Key learnings :
Research, how to present a POV, creating real-life alternatives for tech process/terms, It's okay to blog on pre-existing topics, notes -> blog, hard to solve bug is a blog-idea, storytelling, expressing thoughts in limited words.

Don't copy-paste instead write your version/POV of a topic. I had folks sharing my git-related articles with their community. Your POV might help someone understand a topic better
anush-venkatakrishna.medium.com/hackathon-the-…
anush-venkatakrishna.medium.com/how-to-remove-…
anush-venkatakrishna.medium.com/directed-acycl…

Volunteer work
Can be for an event, community, NGO, etc.
Mostly work done on projects for common good and not for profit.
Choosing the right Org to volunteer is very important.
Do some research on founders/organizers.
Leave if you feel it's not useful for you.
Set time limits

Can't stress the importance of setting time limits and respecting them.
Feel comfortable telling the folks you are working for that it's out of office hours.
Don't get caught in guilt-tripping.
Setting boundaries is important for your mental health and to explore new things.

Tagging folks to share about MLH fellowships, @imabptweets @adityaoberai1

Right, #Tech-Communities will play a very important role in your journey in helping you find the right #oppurtunity at the right time.
I got into hackathons after hearing about it from a fellow #MLSA and I am glad the person shared it with me.
Pay the guidance forward if you can

Finding a wolf pack becomes an important key in building up yourself, finding motivation, access to information, creating things that would have taken you ages to do it alone.
I like to term a group of "similar-minded" "highly motivated" group of "individuals" as a "Wolf Pack"

Thank you for reading till here, more to be added to this thread by then Check out the "@github Student developer pack", If you are not aware of it by now. Check out @MicrosoftLearn to "explore Azure". Two resources that helped me a lot in upskilling & building solutions.

@eddiejaoude @SantoshYadavDev your 2 cents on #Opensource would be very valuable.

Ambassadors programs (a mini 🧵 )
For me personally, @MicrosoftLearn Student Ambassadors has been an integral part of my journey which helped me meet a lot of amazing student developers across the country who had similar if not higher levels of passion towards technology.

The people I met in the program helped me understand what are the different ways it takes to make it in tech and broke my belief that only IITians can be successful in the industry. As a student you have a lot of choices when coming to the ambassador program it seems that almost

Every company has an ambassador program these days, which is amazing news but picking the right set of communities will make the ride much awesome for you. so I will share how I choose a program.

Community
Product or the company
Open source programs
Swags will never he a reason, once you get over the FOMO, swags will hardly motivate you. Its cool to get swags but it shouldn't be enough to single handedly influence your decision.