Earlier in 2020, I determined to build my career as a Web Developer with very minimal knowledge in this area. Being a final-year undergrad student, I was still at a loss to find the right track for me. Finally, I started learning JavaScript and different tools to build my career as a Web Developer. But it's not that easy as there's a whole lot of things to know and learn in this field. I wanted to land a job or internship ASAP. But the COVID-19 situation again made it more difficult. The stress level was on top! But eventually, 2020 paid off for me. I got a remote internship at Mozilla through Outreachy. Now, I find all those struggles, sleepless nights, studying hard, stresses WORTHY!
Now let's talk about Outreachy, How I landed on such an opportunity, and How you can seize this.
What is Outreachy?
Outreachy is a non-profit organization that provides 3-month long remote paid internships. They support diversity in open source and free software. Interns get paid a stipend of $5,500 and a $500 travel grant to attend any national or international event related to their project approved by their mentors. Interns work with experienced mentors from open source communities.
The intern projects may include Programming, UI/UX, Documentation, Illustration, Graphical Design, Data Science, Project Marketing, etc. (Every possible field in Tech anyone can think of). Tech companies like Red Hat, Apache, Mozilla, Wikimedia, GNOME, and more add projects to the Outreachy site and allows aspirants to work with their best developers.
Outreachy internships run twice a year. In simple terms, Summer and Winter internships. But interns can participate only once in this program. To know about the timeline, eligibility rules, visit their website outreachy.org.
The Process of Becoming Outreachy Intern
Initial Application
The initial application verifies your eligibility, also considers your experience as a minor or under-represented group in the tech industry of your country. Remember It's purpose is to lessen gender bias or discrimination in the tech industry. So if you ever felt like a minor in Tech, express properly in your initial application. Another thing important here is to ensure your work time availability. Interns are required to work 40 hours per week. So you need to make sure you don't have any time commitments during that period. After getting the approved initial application, you can now choose projects and start contributing to the final application.
Contribution Phase
Here comes the most important phase! This phase requires some important steps to follow. Let me explain them to you.
1. Project Selection
You have to find out the project that matches your skillset and fascinates you. This is where many people do mistakes. The difficulty level of the projects varies depending on the company, its tech, tools, and architecture. The process can be overwhelming TBH. But you have to keep your nerves calm and pick a project that excites you. You can select multiple projects. But this can be risky too. If you have a strong skill set you can go for multiple projects. If you are a beginner I suggest you stick to one or chose beginner-friendly projects. Even if you don't get selected you would gain knowledge about contributing to Open Source, talking to mentors. In that case, you have nothing to lose, and you can come back stronger for the next round (only 5-6 months away).
2. Reaching out to Mentors / Joining Project Chat
This one is important! Now that you have selected the project reach out to a mentor or join the project chat group ASAP. You will feel confident to see yourself as an early bird for that project. If you delay, you may see so many candidates introducing themselves, talking about issues, tools used in there, and all. This may be intimidating for you if you are applying for the first time. You may feel 'lost in the crowd'.
3. Contributing!
In the Outreachy site, you'll see your first-time contributing guideline for each project. These are set by mentors. So read them thoroughly before asking anything to mentor (They become super busy this phase, get lots of unnecessary questions too, try to avoid that). Ask them questions on a specific topic, tool, or ask for help if you are stuck on setting up the project. Do some research before you ask about anything. (They appreciate this)
Now that you have set up your project and have an understanding of contributing, start contributing. And keep contributing till the deadline. Even after that if you have unfinished tasks. Outreachy requires at least one contribution to be eligible for the final application and internship. But contributing more shows how much you are interested in and reflects your skill level, how you handle several tasks. These are the things that the mentor notices. And keep recording your contribution to the Outreachy site.
Final Application
For submitting the final application you have to record at least one contribution to each project. And some other fields are asking about your experience open-source software user/contributor. There is one field that's quite important is the 'Timeline'. Here you have to break down your internship task in detail. It's like your planning of how and when will be deliverables of your tasks. It's just for reference, it won't be exact after all. But the mentor will be impressed if you can show them that you have understood the task process and have somewhat knowledge of how and when to do the tasks. Some projects may have a task list during the internship. Some don't, in that case, you can contact a mentor about what will be tasked during the internship. You can also ask help with the 'Timeline'. Make sure you discuss with your mentor the timeline 5-7 days before the submission deadline. So that you can work with the timeline depending on your mentor's response.
To avoid any sort of technical issues/faults submit the final application at least 2-3 hours before the deadline time or maybe a day if possible.
Now that you have submitted the final application, you can still contribute and record them. You can also talk to your mentor about your next move. Ask for suggestions if you need to learn about any tools used by the project. And finally the least favorite part WAITING for the result.
How to Prepare For Next Outreachy Round
Outreachy round happens 2 times a year. So the next round is always soon. It's really important to prepare yourself before the Outreachy application opens. As it's focused on free and open-source projects you should gather some experience beforehand to get yourself through the Outreachy application process easily. Let me explain how you can prepare step by step.
If you have no experience working on Open Source projects, you better start to do some internet search about that and try to get into contributing to some projects. If you are just starting out, these are some websites that may help you -> opensource.guide/how-to-contribute, github.com/freeCodeCamp/how-to-contribute-t.., firsttimersonly.com.
You should keep eye on the Outreachy site to know when the next round is opening. It's better to subscribe to their newsletter too. That's what I did. It's a good idea to explore previous projects and skills in the Outreachy site so that you can have an idea about the requirements of the common project and prepare for it.
If you are new to open source and first time trying for Outreachy, you should start contributing different open source projects for practicing. You'll gain experience of collaborating, you'll practice VCS (Version Control System, as git).
Practice communicating with project maintainers. Contributing to open source can be intimidating. It's important that you have good communication skills. During the contribution phase as there are lots of applicants fighting for task assignments and all. You'll be really intimidated by that but if you know how to communicate, you'll stand out.
Post Outreachy Internship Selection Phase
The Internship
If you have made it this far, BRAVO! It's time for the amazing experience of working remotely for 3 months. You can read the internship guide from Outreachy here -> Internship Guide by Outreachy.
Working Hours and Tips
During the internship phase, there's a lot of things that need to be scheduled such as meeting with the mentor, blogging, Outreachy chat, etc. It's always better to plan these things so that your workflow doesn't get interrupted. Sometimes the timezone or working hours don't match with the mentor, in that case, be super active during the hours you have in common. Keep your mentor always updated from your side. It will be easier for your mentor to guide you better. As Outreachy requires an intern to work 40 hours per week, you should track your working hours and make sure you work 40 hours per week.
Payment
Outreachy interns are paid $5,500 USD total for three months of work and a $500 USD travel grant to attend conferences and events. As international travel is prohibited for COVID-19 Outreachy will be paying $6,000 USD in total as a stipend. The stipend is paid in three parts: $2,000 initial stipend, $2,000 mid-point stipend, $2,000 final stipend. Outreachy requires 3 feedbacks during the internship from both the mentor and the intern. The stipend is paid after organizers receive successful feedback from the project mentor. So it's important to keep your mentor updated about the feedback also.
They provide several options to receive the payment such as PayPal, Wire transfer to a local bank (Outside USA), and Check via post (the USA and the Outside USA, Not recommended though). For successful payment, Interns will need to provide payment method details and they also require a filled tax form either a W8-BEN or a W-9. According to their instructions for the person who is not in the USA, the citizen has to fill W8-BEN otherwise it's W-9. I filled W8-BEN, so I'm providing some information about that.
The tax form is not that hard to fill, I had confusion in two-point. Box no 6 and 9. In 6, I filled it with my e-TIN number. People from different countries can have different names for that. And another important one is field 9 in part II, Tax Treaty. A tax treaty is a bilateral (two-party) agreement made by two countries to resolve issues involving double taxation of passive and active income of each of their respective citizens. If any country doesn't have a tax treaty with the US they can cut up to 30% of your income as tax. Bangladesh has a tax treaty with the US. So, I put the country name I'm residing, Bangladesh in field 9. Field 10 can be left blank.
If you are residing in Bangladesh then some tax information you should know. As Bangladesh has a tax treaty with the US they won't cut any taxes on your income. Here in BD, some banks might consider this income as Inward Remittance. And they would cut 10% of the money as tax. But this is an independent contractor, which is considered freelancing in BD and there is NO TAX applicable for such income till 30 June 2024. You may need proof as to the Tax circular article about the Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) income from the NBR website. And you may need to provide the Outreachy contract to show that this is an independent contractor. I did show my NDA with Mozilla to prove that it's a software development internship and falls in the ITES category. So you will get money sent by Outreachy without any tax cuts!
Outreachy Blog and Chat
Outreachy requires every intern to write a blog bi-weekly. So you better start working on a blog set up early if you are a noob in this area like me. I struggle writing blog posts, I just can't get the right words out. You can plan out future blogs and also schedule the chat time. The chat is organized by the Outreachy community, the topics are also listed on the internship guideline page of the Outreachy site, the blog prompts are also there. Although you can modify the prompt of the Blog post keeping the theme or topic the same. It's better to add these to the calendar events so you can keep track of upcoming chat and blog posting dates.
Meeting With Mentor and Project Team (Organizational)
My mentor has scheduled weekly project meetings about the progress and workflow of the internship tasks. Your project may have a team so you might have some internal meetings with the whole team about integrating updates of the Project (Not just your tasks). I have these meetings too, but I mostly get nervous to attend as I feel my task updates are less important to discuss. And most of the time I don't have any important updates to discuss. My mentor encouraged me to attend these as it's not about sharing the updates but listening to what everybody is up to. How they discuss project tasks and records the progress. So it was quite interesting to attend.
Adjusting Your Expectations
You may have created a 'Timeline' of your task deliverables. Or even if you haven't created the 'Timeline' you may have made some plans about progressing with the internship tasks. Now that you have been selected as an intern you'll find for some cases your plan is just not working out. And there is nothing to worry about as long as you are putting 40 hours/week time on your project. Sometimes we can get the work done in time or we could have made wrong anticipations. It's time to adjust it. Talk to your mentor about what they are expecting from you, ask if you are going well enough, and give tips on your approach to tasks. I believe talking to your mentor is very important for your progress.
Enjoy Your Internship
It's likely that we may feel pressured when we work on deadlines or plans. But the internship is very much different. It's more like adjusting yourself to the working environment, developing yourself. So worrying too much about the tasks and everything might make you feel you are not enjoying the internship. This happens to me too. I then just take some time off, re-live my memories about how badly I wanted the Outreachy internship and I just appreciate the opportunity and everything that's happening at the moment.
I believe you enjoyed reading my post. Don't hesitate to ping me if you want to know more about Outreachy. I'd love to chat with you! You can find ways to contact me here -> Hasna Hena Mow