A tech professional named Abhijitam Dubey shared how he landed a job at an Abu Dhabi-based startup without submitting a formal application. He detailed the experience in an article on X.
"I posted on X on 3rd Feb that I need a job. Signed the offer letter on 19th Feb. In between? Pure chaos, rejection, and one random GitHub issue that changed everything," he wrote.
He said he had been applying on LinkedIn, X, and through cold outreach, but nothing was converting. "I had one referral, did a demo for a California-based company. Still nothing. The problem was clear: I lacked open source contributions and work experience."
He decided to focus on contributing to open source projects. "So I made a decision. Stop spraying applications. Start contributing." He joined a YC-backed open source project, studied the codebase, and picked an issue to work on.
"Two days later - on a Monday around 10am - I messaged my full approach to solve it. Then I went to sleep," he added.
He received a response from the founder the same day. "I woke up at 6pm to an email from the founder. I couldn't believe it. The email said: 'Would you like to have a meeting and see if we can work together?'"
The next meeting focused on his work and preferences. "The meeting happened the next day - mostly about me, my work, my preferences. It went well. Then he said, "meet my tech lead in Delhi."
During the meeting with the tech lead, he demonstrated live projects including Chess, Solana Atlas, an Excalidraw clone, and an npm package for Next.js Turborepo. "My laptop kept turning off because of power cuts. The Excalidraw demo crashed. But the npm package saved me - something @kirat_tw told me to build way back in cohort 3," he wrote.
After the meeting, feedback from the tech lead came via WhatsApp.
"I was on my way home when the WhatsApp came in: 'Tech lead has all the good things to say about you. We will be sending you an offer letter shortly.' The offer letter arrived at 3am. I didn't sleep again. That Friday I finally crashed and slept for 10 hours straight. Monday, I joined the company," the post reads.
What Helped Him Secure The Job?
He listed factors that helped him secure the job. "Freelance background + running a tech agency. Live projects + a lot more on GitHub. Taking open source seriously at the right moment. Being active on X and GitHub - increasing surface area. Being ready every single time, even on no sleep. The job didn't come from a portal. It came from a single GitHub comment on a random Monday morning. Increase your surface area. You never know which door opens," he said.
Netizens reacted with congratulations and questions. "Increasing our surface area is truly a phenomenal trick. Although I need to work on preparation ahead of meetings," wrote one user.
Another commented, "Crazy world... that's what I love about open source >>> 3." A third asked, "Great Man congrats on the offer. I have a question: how did you find the open source project."
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