I recently got advice that in the current market, hiring is heavily based on trust and relationships.
One point that really stuck with me was this:
Open source contributions are often a much stronger signal than solo demo projects because they show:
Especially now that LLMs can generate so much boilerplate, it seems meaningful OSS contributions stand out more than ever.
I’m currently focusing on Elixir/Phoenix and would love recommendations for open source projects that are:
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beginner-friendly but serious
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active and maintained
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good for learning OTP/distributed systems/Phoenix internals
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welcoming to long-term contributors
Interested especially in ecosystems like Phoenix, LiveView, etc.
Would appreciate any guidance from people already contributing to the ecosystem.
Elixir and Phoenix are serious open source projects.
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LLMs can generate OSS contributions as well, you just need to know the requirements & verify the solution. In other words, you need to stand behind the code, regardless if it’s hand written or generated. There are many ways to go from point A to point B but what’s important is charting the point B correctly and being sure you navigated correctly. You give it your best shot. If it turns out you made a mistake somewhere along the way, be it in charting or navigating, you can try again or give up.
How this metaphor translates is, for the charting part, you look through open issues (some can be labeled good first issues, those are beginner-friendly) and try to find one you want to understand; basically you need to reproduce the issue on your machine and figure out why is it occurring. This is when an issue is a bug, but an issue could also be a needed feature; a harder issue for sure, but same reasoning applies: you try to understand a problem. Navigation is figuring out a solution. This is a different problem and going back to the metaphor, you can get off course without realizing it. Maybe your solution does solve the issue but causes another, maybe it’s not backwards compatible or is not optimal. Who knows, the things you don’t know you don’t know. But there’s a chance you find out. Those who know.
You want good feedback for each, charting and navigating. My advice is to focus on that.
In any case, IMO. That’s what I think atm. 
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Open source projects generally look for contributors that are genuinely interested in the project and will commit to it for the long term, not for people after credentials.So instead of advertising yourself here, can you ask yourself, what open source projects I already use and want to improve, and the vision of the leader align with my interest?
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Adding on to what @derek-zhou said about genuine interest, FOSS contributions are a talking point in interviews. It can look good on a resume to some recruiters, but the specific technical details probably won’t come up unless it’s something very niche for a research-oriented role or something like that, and most hiring teams aren’t going to dig into your GH in detail until you’re past the first couple interviews. My small contributions to the Godot Engine did help me stand out during my interviews for my current job, but not because of the actual PRs. Just because I was genuinely enthusiastic when I was talking about the project and the things I learned working on it.
That being said, contributing to a project you really like and becoming a part of its developer community is an awesome feeling and is worth it just for the personal and technical experience even if it doesn’t end up helping with the job search. 
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My 2 cents: take a project you genuinely use, and start with invisible contributions: fixing typos in documentation, clarifying documentation where you felt like you didn’t understand fully and a different angle could help, look at GitHub issues of that project, enter the discussion if you feel the same pain, and coordinate with others how you could tackle it together, who does what.
I’ve literally contributed to some projects just by fixing a typo on page 67 of documentation and nothing more – coz that was all I could do at that point 
Coz hey, that was my way of paying respect to the creator who was 10 levels above me, and I didn’t seek anything at all in return. In other words, don’t contribute to projects “because it looks good in CV”.
Just think of it as a maintainer of a project in an LLM era, and it becomes pretty obvious what’s desirable and what’s definitely not.
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I agree with you. I don’t want to build something just to show it off. I genuinely enjoy writing Elixir, and I’ve already chosen my project: Phoenix. Thanks for your advice, and thank you all, you guys are amazing!
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