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Open source contributions being a great way to learn and to pad out your CV has been considered good advice on all sides of the various seas I’ve lived throughout my career too - it’s not just a dubious code camp thing.
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A robust open source profile is my single favorite hiring profile indicator. However, with the current state of things, if I get a whiff of AI-driven "contribution" it becomes an instant black mark against the candidate.
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It would be wonderful if the instructors at those schools built relationships with open source maintainers and the maintainers knew when their students were submitting PRs.

Could be used as a teaching experience that many maintainers would be happy to participate in, instead of feeling attacked with random low quality PRs.

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You might be underestimating the number of little schools, and computer shops. I can recall even back in 2005, there were HTML shops popping up here and there, in little cities around the world.
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it's externalizing the real work all the way down
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