Welcome to another edition of Coffee With Calyptus where we interview industry leaders to get their perspectives on the ever-changing world of Web3!
Web3 Leader Spotlight: Pradumna Saraf
This week, we had the pleasure of chatting with Pradumna Saraf, Developer Advocate at Livecycle.
Pradumna is a DevOps and Go builder who is deeply committed to open source development. He has mentored countless developers to enter the ecosystem, and he loves sharing his expertise on X where he has 32k+ followers, educating his audience about open source and DevOps tools.
Make sure to give him a follow on X at @pradumna_saraf to stay on the forefront of all-things open source.
What drew you to the world of open source and started your passion to share knowledge with other developers in this space?
The community and people drew me to open source. The open source community is so open and always eager to help and share knowledge to grow together. I saw very few people talking about open source, its role and its value proposition on social media, so this ignited my passion to talk and share my knowledge about it to bring more people to this ecosystem and help them get started with it.
In your experience, how impactful is contributing to open source on a developer's prospects of landing their dream job?
Having a mindset and intention that contributing to open source leads you to landing a dream job, in my view, is a very wrong approach. Open source has always been about adding value and giving back to the community, but people changed the whole perspective. Focus on adding value and testing out your knowledge and everything else, like job offers etc., is an added reward.
Having mentored hundreds of developers to enter the ecosystem, what recurring mistake have you observed most frequently in their career journeys?
Of course, I'm not an expert, but one common pattern I have observed is getting stuck in a learning loop instead of building projects to reinforce their knowledge and chasing trends without having a good command over a single thing.
Another mistake I have seen is contributing to open source with the mindset of getting a job offer. It's essential to maintain a balanced perspective, where career aspirations are seen as secondary to the broader goal of community enrichment and knowledge sharing.
For budding developers looking to make the jump into open source development, what advice would you offer to help?
Start by understanding the basics like terminology and processes involved in version control. Begin with small, meaningful contributions and gradually scale up as you gain experience. However, don't limit yourself to just contributing. Take the initiative to build your own open source projects.
This dual approach not only enhances your skills but also contributes positively to the community. Embrace the learning journey, explore new opportunities and leave your mark!
