0:02 20 people got into gck last year from
0:04 the 100ex cohort I've personally done
0:07 gck twice it's November right now gso
0:08 application start in March I think it's
0:10 the perfect time to get a high level
0:13 road map of gck in this video I'll take
0:15 you through how I would prepare for G if
0:18 I had to do it all over again today G is
0:20 open not just to students but also to
0:22 working professionals so irrespective of
0:24 where you're looking at this video from
0:25 this video is a high level guide to G
0:28 2025 without any further Ado let's get
0:31 right into it the 202 5 gck road map
0:33 let's kick things off with what exactly
0:35 is gck there are various definitions
0:38 long story short it's a 2 to 3 month
0:40 internship that you do with an open-
0:42 Source organization an organization
0:44 whose code is open source everyone can
0:46 read it and Google sponsors it Google
0:48 pays for the internship the open source
0:49 organization gets a bunch of
0:51 contributors that work on the codebase
0:53 over the summer why would you want to
0:56 get into gck um if you're a student I
0:57 think it's the best internship you can
0:59 do in your first second third year
1:01 debatable third year I think in third
1:03 year it might make sense to go onsite
1:05 but in your first and your second year
1:06 the best internship you can do during
1:09 the summer is a gck if you are a working
1:11 professional it's now open to you as
1:12 well and the only reason I would
1:14 recommend it to a working professional
1:16 is to make sure you're getting out of
1:17 your comfort zone a little bit it's it
1:19 gets a little too easy in companies when
1:20 you're doing the same task again and
1:23 again so if you do Target g-o you'll see
1:25 you're getting out of your comfort zone
1:26 a little bit trying to read through
1:28 other people's codebase and not the code
1:30 base you've been working on for like 1
1:32 to 2 years now my background I've done
1:35 it twice 2015 and 2016 um the first one
1:37 was in Gambit I would call it a luck
1:39 plus effort based I'll talk about what
1:41 this is later U and the things that I
1:43 learned this time was going from
1:45 JavaScript to typescript U I learned
1:47 about the canvas API and this was the
1:49 first time I sort of dealt with backends
1:51 in node js this was the first time you
1:52 know I wrote some backend code so these
1:53 are the things that I learned that was
1:55 2015 I grew a lot in the next one year
1:57 so my next one was purely effort-based
1:59 it was a highly competitive or
2:02 organization mazilla um and I learned
2:03 about real-time communication and
2:04 operational transforms over there these
2:06 were two things I had a very basic idea
2:09 about uh but during the intern I sort of
2:10 learned a lot during the second
2:12 internship I was also interning at
2:13 Amazon so it was like a two timing
2:15 internship that I was doing the things
2:17 that you get from this is number one the
2:18 learning curve is really high especially
2:20 if you're doing two interns at the same
2:22 time also you get some social credit my
2:23 name is still on you know one of the
2:25 Mozilla websites which helps when you're
2:28 pitching clients on upwork this was one
2:29 you know reference I would give fore an
2:31 internet AAL you know client to let them
2:33 see H by I've worked with International
2:36 companies they have my name somewhere
2:37 but if you need some more actionable
2:40 items my proposals from
2:43 201617 and the proposals of all the 20
2:45 people and the proposals of a bunch of I
2:48 Ry people are all present here so you
2:49 can look at the I don't know there like
2:51 50 proposals in there look at what
2:52 contributions they made how are they
2:54 structuring their proposal this is the
2:55 most actionable thing that you can get
2:58 from this video if I were to start again
3:00 this is how I would not to to it um
3:03 contrary to very popular belief I wasn't
3:06 the best developer in 2014 2015 when I
3:07 started when I joined College I started
3:09 to learn coding this is one of my first
3:11 pool requests that I made I made it as a
3:13 naive you know sophomore not even a
3:14 sophomore I was in my freshman year
3:16 trying to get through you know in an
3:17 organization you'll find the link to
3:19 this PR in the description but long
3:20 story short it was a very ugly
3:21 contribution I did not even know what I
3:23 was doing I showed it to one of my
3:26 seniors he you know I understand what
3:28 where his attitude came from when I deal
3:30 with a lot of beginners today sort of
3:31 don't understand why they did what they
3:33 did and this PR is very similar I don't
3:35 know why I did what I did I don't even
3:37 know what I'm talking about here the
3:39 maintainer is clearly telling me I am
3:41 not sure this really fixes the issue and
3:43 my response is if it is so then the text
3:45 is irrelevant they could delete that
3:47 part from a file this is this is
3:50 beginner syndrome um when the person is
3:51 clearly telling you what you're doing is
3:53 wrong you're trying to blame it back at
3:55 them the text that you have added is
3:57 wrong so everyone starts somewhere so
4:00 did I my senior just laughed at at my
4:01 face which is what I do when people do
4:03 these things you pretty much learn by
4:06 you know uh breaking your leg so free
4:08 free to do it although you know now that
4:10 you have people guiding you try not to
4:12 do these sort of contributions U look at
4:13 the contributions you know it's
4:15 basically me not even checking what I'm
4:16 checking in I don't understand GitHub
4:19 yet I put like a bunch of files in there
4:21 so it gets a little infuriating for
4:22 contributors and now that a lot of
4:23 people are
4:25 contributing to try to make sure you're
4:27 contributing to actionable items and you
4:30 know actually helping them this is good
4:31 number one for your selection I mean if
4:33 you're making PRS like this forget about
4:36 getting selected and number two keeps
4:38 the community clean I think open source
4:40 communities have had some controversies
4:43 in the past let's avoid them um my first
4:46 gck I was I was not good I was pretty
4:48 average I was just as I said it was luck
4:50 and effort based U so I was in the right
4:51 organization I'll talk about how can you
4:53 get into these organizations but my
4:55 learning curve sort of started to Peak
4:57 when I got into my first gck that I was
4:59 in my second year and that's why I said
5:00 it's one of the best internships you can
5:02 do in your second and your third year um
5:05 because your learning curve Peaks a lot
5:06 compared to you know let's say a startup
5:08 that's paying you 10,000 rupees that's
5:10 making you build websites or you know
5:11 very simple websites or throwing grun
5:13 work at your face here it's a lot of
5:15 Open Source work usually it's good good
5:16 work so your learning curve starts to
5:19 peek up after my first G I sort of you
5:22 know was learning well so my second g-o
5:24 I wouldn't say created a substantial
5:27 dent in my um learning uh but I think
5:28 the first one was great so if you can
5:30 get in through luck through to being at
5:31 the right place at the right time it can
5:33 really help peak your learning curve
5:34 since then you know my learning curve
5:36 has been stagnant in my first job uh
5:38 there was an on-site job in finance but
5:39 eventually I got into remote jobs and
5:41 you know it peaked again so so long
5:44 story short um one hack to make your
5:46 learning cve Peak a lot is getting out
5:47 of your comfort zone and that will
5:49 happen if you get into gck early U the
5:51 only problem is that's very hard because
5:54 you don't know much so I'm going to talk
5:57 about the luck based gsog which frankly
5:58 happens from time to time it's like it's
6:01 not just me getting lucky a lot of
6:02 people get lucky because it's like very
6:04 hard to tell who's contributing how much
6:06 some organizations are completely empty
6:09 no one is contributing
6:11 there find dogs that don't have a lot of
6:13 contributors um the ones that you see on
6:15 the right for example Gambit is the one
6:18 that I got into in 2016 my first gck U
6:20 the reason was this was literally you
6:22 know the one year that they suddenly
6:23 popped up they came for a few years did
6:25 not come for a few years so people
6:28 weren't contributing as much to I I was
6:29 like I started contributing very late I
6:32 started contributing to Gambit uh when
6:34 they came into GX so like February March
6:37 around that time so the reason these
6:39 luck based organizations work is
6:41 because everyone is contributing the
6:43 effort based
6:44 organizations so that way you know you
6:46 can get an easy in um when you're
6:48 targeting such organizations another one
6:50 might be you know Shaka I don't know how
6:51 many of you have heard of it but if you
6:53 have worked in video you might have used
6:55 it in the past they're also open source
6:58 they also came once in the middle so
6:59 basically for these organizations just
7:01 wait until February in Feb you'll find a
7:03 bunch of augs that not a lot of people
7:05 are contributing to because they just
7:07 randomly came into G this year there
7:08 there's not a lot of competition which
7:10 is why this is a luck based selection um
7:12 usually found after the list is released
7:15 and try impressing them and contributing
7:17 for the last three months try them and
7:23 months April May is you know the
7:24 selection so in those 3 months you have
7:26 to contribute a lot so if you feel you
7:28 don't know much um I would not Target
7:31 zulip you know organizations that are
7:33 heavily crowded and very well-known
7:35 organizations that get selected I would
7:38 select an organization that sometimes
7:40 comes sometimes not comes for example
7:41 processing did not come last year I
7:42 would assume not a lot of people are
7:44 contributing that this year but if they
7:45 come this year they'll be less
7:47 competition there so that's the luck
7:49 based Org the best or you can get if
7:52 you're not yet sure about getting into G
7:54 uh to I would you know optimize a lot
7:55 for that at the same time I would
7:57 optimize my learning organization will
7:59 come and you know you will start contrib
8:01 in to be able to contribute you should
8:03 know some things so make sure you know
8:05 whatever your stack is at this point
8:07 JavaScript python C++ you're getting
8:08 good at it so that when the orc comes
8:11 you can actually contribute effort-based
8:13 G they this is mostly for people who
8:15 know coding um mostly interest based
8:18 there might be some you know software
8:19 that you really use you want to
8:21 contribute to it back in the day it was
8:23 jQuery Firefox Homebrew these
8:26 organizations U these projects usually
8:28 require you know a lot of rust C++
8:31 encoding knowledge for example a good
8:33 example might be you know Firefox
8:36 chromium FFM Peg open CV as you can see
8:38 all of them have extremely high number
8:41 of selections every year 18 for zulip is
8:42 the peak for you know a long time uh
8:44 Mozilla when it used to come it was up
8:49 to 20 uh ffmpeg 7 chromium up to 20 so a
8:51 lot of these augs have a lot of uh
8:53 contributors also have a lot of
8:55 competition so if you know coding well
8:57 if you want to work at Chrome eventually
8:59 you know chromium is a good path to get there
9:00 there
9:01 so that is why you know you might want
9:04 to contribute here but don't try
9:05 contributing here if you're a complete
9:07 beginner you'll get a little overwhelmed
9:09 although last year someone got into
9:10 chromium he was you know decentish he
9:12 was like not great he was pretty good
9:14 but like at the same time he
9:18 said you know I somehow got in so so
9:19 yeah pick and choose uh number of
9:20 selections usually in these
9:22 organizations are really high which is
9:23 why you know just play the odds if you
9:26 think you are able to contribute just do
9:29 it and you know you might get lucky cool
9:32 let's get the timeline next um I think
9:35 November 2024 is the last month up
9:37 hopefully you've done a lot of hard work
9:38 and you know at least one stack well if
9:40 you're starting right now with HTML CSS
9:42 and JavaScript G is going to be hard so
9:45 you know maybe try the year after you
9:47 still can but usually the idea is can
9:50 no you're very good at a stack very good
9:51 is an overestimation you're decent at a
9:54 stack you can build projects websites
9:57 understand code bases U until 15th
9:59 November try to look for an or there are
10:01 a bunch of websites that show you the
10:03 previously came organizations how many
10:05 people got selected their source code is
10:07 on their website just open their website
10:08 go to their GitHub and start exploring
10:11 um until 15th November try to get two to
10:12 three organizations that you would like
10:14 to contribute to and you know that you
10:16 feel have a high probability of getting
10:18 in um set up the code base and talk to
10:20 maintainers until 1st of December um
10:22 talking to maintainers is underrated it
10:23 does help if you know you're in their
10:26 eye of course it will not help also if
10:27 you're pestering them too much so make
10:28 sure you're in the middle you're
10:30 pestering them just enough so that they
10:31 know who you are you're also
10:33 contributing and making sure you're not
10:35 just talking in their IRC you're
10:37 actually making some code changes U
10:38 organizations usually get announced
10:41 around February that's you know that's
10:42 your time to know whether or not luck
10:44 was on your side it might happen you
10:45 were contributing to two organizations
10:46 and none of them came then you have to
10:48 start all over again a lot of people
10:50 start during this time if I'm being
10:52 honest uh if you see last year's video I
10:54 would say I don't know 30 40% of the
10:56 people started around this time so don't
10:58 get too overwhelmed but at the same time
11:00 it helps if you're starting early create
11:03 a proposal around March not really not
11:04 super important your contributions sort
11:06 of speak for themselves but you have to
11:07 spend like 10 days creating a decent
11:09 proposal and lastly keep contributing
11:12 until the results come I think after the
11:14 proposals have been submitted
11:16 organizations are still looking at
11:17 contributions people are still trying to
11:19 filter out the best crowd so don't just
11:21 submit your proposal and sleep keep
11:24 working until the final day my top picks
11:26 uh for organizations basically if I was
11:28 contributing today I would look at a
11:30 bunch of hogs that have a lot of people
11:31 coming and you know have a lot of uh
11:33 selections at the same time the text tag
11:35 that I can understand so generally to
11:37 beginners or even you know Advanced
11:39 people JavaScript and python is the most
11:40 recommended stack a lot of projects
11:42 there um and easy to understand
11:44 languages very commonly available code
11:46 bases usually people have worked on them
11:47 so you can look at these organizations
11:49 code based to start to contribute here
11:51 is the list aot most of them have a lot
11:53 of selections from last year um that's
11:55 how I sort of say picked if I were to
11:57 contribute today my first step right now
11:58 would be to pick one of these
11:59 organizations and start to look at their
12:02 code base last year uh we had around 20
12:05 selections um this year we're hoping for
12:06 50 I don't know it if it'll happen or
12:09 not but go through this video there's a
12:12 lot of alpha in here it's a 1 hour video
12:14 I'm interviewing around 10 students uh
12:16 who got into gck last year U it's pretty
12:18 informative everyone's journey is
12:19 different someone was very close to the
12:21 maintainer someone was aggressively
12:22 contributing someone was contributing
12:24 organization did not come then restarted
12:27 contributing and got in so they're like
12:28 I would say five people have the
12:29 standard path and five people have
12:32 extremely weird parts so this video is
12:34 super it'll be helpful if you know U you
12:35 want to I don't know just look at other
12:37 people's experiences who recently got
12:40 into gck just last year and their
12:41 proposals are also available on the
12:43 website Linked In the description I have
12:45 a gck playlist it has around 13 videos
12:47 most of these are contribution videos so
12:49 it'll help you go through code bases
12:50 some of these are just Alphas talking to
12:52 students things like these super I I
12:54 think it's like underrated playlist no
12:55 one really watches it but if you want to
12:58 U I think this playlist has a bunch of
12:59 technical videos that are also pretty
13:01 good and then alpha videos as well what
13:03 really matters when you're contributing
13:06 to G um 70% of it is your contributions
13:09 if I'm being honest I wish you know NE
13:11 there is some level of nepotism as you
13:12 can see sometimes organizations just
13:14 select you know whoever there students
13:15 sometimes the organizations are
13:17 universities they will just select their
13:18 students even if they're not
13:19 contributing much so there's some level
13:22 of nepotism some level of luck 10% to
13:24 the proposal maybe 10% to how active you
13:25 are in the community but really what
13:28 matters is how how many contributions
13:30 you've made how high quality of
13:31 contributions they are because of course
13:33 you might get unlucky with nepotism uh
13:34 but there's a very high probability if
13:36 you're one of the biggest contributors
13:37 you'll pretty much make it in so
13:40 proposal and you know superficial things
13:42 like talking to the maintenance they do
13:44 help but not too much contributions is
13:45 what you should focus on and lastly
13:47 which org do you want me to contribute
13:48 to I've made some contributions in the
13:50 past I can almost tell you the
13:51 contributions that I make or the report
13:53 that I Target a lot of people will flock
13:56 there so let me know um if you feel
13:57 there's some specific or that's really
13:59 hard to set up or you just you just want
14:01 to see the setup of one or uh I happy to
14:03 make a video on it although you'll only
14:05 learn this if you do this yourself uh
14:06 handholding isn't the best thing in open
14:08 source code bases it's decent if you're
14:09 a beginner and you know you're learning
14:11 and copy coding but if you're looking at
14:13 a code base U and if you're asking
14:15 someone for help or you know handholding
14:16 that's the same as doing a job and
14:17 asking someone to help you out in a job
14:18 no one does that right you're getting
14:20 paid for it you're supposed to work on
14:21 it same thing here so if you're opening
14:23 an open source code base make sure you
14:25 know you're trying to figure it out
14:27 yourself this is the final meme for
14:29 today fancing getting into gck which is
14:31 I would say you know 90% of the people I
14:32 don't think they even open an or or you
14:34 know get overwhelmed when they open an
14:36 or U looking at road map videos that's
14:38 probably you know that's probably again
14:39 the 90% lot looking at contribution
14:41 videos I think most people filter out
14:43 here compare a road map video with you
14:44 know a video where I'm contributing
14:46 you'll see the number of views are I
14:48 think 1/4 or something like that and
14:50 lastly contributing yourself that's the
14:51 best thing you can do if you really want
14:52 to take something from the video
14:54 contributing helps if even if you don't
14:56 get into gck you learn 10 different
14:57 things that will help you out eventually
15:00 you're going to join a job
15:02 to better just you know take some
15:03 accountability and start doing it
15:05 yourself if you are a working
15:06 professional as I said it gives you a
15:08 decent idea of where you stand and there
15:09 are students who are getting into these
15:10 organizations and you've been working
15:13 for 5 Years it'll give you an idea
15:16 of you were to step out in the industry
15:17 again I'm not saying you would need to
15:20 um but if you have to you'll know where
15:21 you stand compared to college students
15:23 who are currently you know contributing
15:25 to similar code basis so that would be
15:27 my advice that's all I had for this one
15:28 I'll see you guys in the next one bye-bye
