https://nyghtowl.com/tags/career/ Recent content in Career on Nyghtowl Hugo en-us <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CC BY-NC-SA 4.0</a> Fri, 13 Mar 2026 01:08:59 +0000 https://nyghtowl.com/posts/2026/03/from-gatekeeping-to-gateway/ Fri, 13 Mar 2026 01:08:59 +0000 https://nyghtowl.com/posts/2026/03/from-gatekeeping-to-gateway/ <p>Contributing to open source has never been as open as the name suggests. Every project has its own architecture, unwritten rules, and context that lives in maintainers’ heads. Submitting your first PR is intimidating especially if you’re already underrepresented in the space. Research consistently shows women make up less 10% of open source code contributors, and participation data for many other groups remains sparse. Maintainers are often overextended and unpaid. Feedback is slow. And all of this is intensifying as open source goes global. GitHub reported approximately 36 million new developers joined the platform in 2025 alone.</p>