The clock struck 2:20 AM while I was building a personal project. I got the intuition to open Gmail to check whether I've been accepted into the Linux Foundation Mentorship. DAM! It took me a while to digest that I've been accepted as an LFX Mentee under the Kubernetes project.
The enormity of the Kubernetes ecosystem is undeniable, and the opportunity to collaborate with the Kubernetes Release Engineering Team, guided by a mentor, is truly something not to be overlooked. My assigned task involved building a Golang Library and a CLI Tool that will interact with the OpenBuildService Platform, facilitating the management of system packages for upcoming Kubernetes Releases.
Achieving acceptance into the mentorship program doesn't come with shortcuts. Every mentee including me has to go through the project and try to understand the problem statement you'll be working on during your mentorship. Once the problem statement is understood, the next step is to do your homework - try to understand the project, get yourself familiar with the codebase, and so on. The most important thing of all this is to keep connected with your mentors irrespective of whether you get selected or not. The main goal of mentorship should be to gain knowledge rather than target getting accepted. If you're curious enough about the project, acceptance will be a by-product of it.
Mentorship Period Begins - Key Takeaways
The first meeting of the LFX Mentorship began with an introductory call with respective mentors - Marko Mudrinic & Carlos Panato. All the tasks for the first week were allocated. Marko and Carlos were very flexible when it came to the time required to finish the task. One of the best things about Marko and Carlos is that both of them were cool with the time duration. Each of us was working on the project asynchronously and there were a lot of weeks when the meetings couldn't be scheduled due to some reasons. However, none of this could stop anyone of us from keeping ourselves up to date with the project.
One of the best things about my mentorship was receiving early feedback. Whether it was pushing changes to GitHub or trying to understand a topic, Marko and Carlos didn't leave any stone unturned. Both of the mentors made sure that I got a suitable learning environment with some great career lessons to keep in mind. I'd push changes to GitHub late at night and go to sleep. Early morning, I'd see my email filled with GitHub Notifications of changes being reviewed by Marko - that was too quick!
While the journey was exhilarating, it was not without its moments of self-doubt for not getting selected for the Release Shadow Program and that's when Marko conveyed valuable suggestions to me.
"Let me give you some more unsolicited advice here. Why not me is a question that's in our nature, but it's not a helpful one. It's actually only making things worse. It's much better to ask What can I do better and how can I better prepare for the next time? Overall, be relaxed, make sure you don't overwork and burnout yourself, and focus on one thing. Do the best you can as part of LFX, mentorships are great opportunities, and we're there to help you as much as you can."
Well, this is just the tip of the iceberg. During the mentorship phase, I learned a lot of stuff about how API calls work in Golang, how interfaces work, and most importantly about writing clean code. At every step, the mentors made sure to provide proper feedback on how the project timeline was going on, what areas I needed to improve, and so on. Not only this, the mentorship also provided an opportunity to submit a talk for the Kubernetes Contributor Summit with the mentor around System Packages that eventually got accepted.
Wants to get accepted?
Although I've already written a short paragraph on what you'll be required to get accepted into the LFX Mentorship period, I think summarising and adding a few more points can lead to a better understanding.
Try understanding the project. Be curious.
Don't try to learn everything at once, do your homework and ask questions irrespective of the fact who basic they sound to you. Google is your best friend too.
While submitting your proposal, make sure you also submit your approach to solving the problem and a timeline that describes how much time you plan for each task.
Be in contact with mentors before and after the Internship. LFX is a way to get started and not to ghost.
Take meeting notes when having project meetings with your mentors.
Convey your interests and engage in meaningful discussions with the community in general.
Summarizing this up
The Linux Foundation Mentorship program is a great way to get involved with Open Source projects hosted under CNCF. If you're passionate about a project that you'd like to work on, trust me, you'll find a way to get involved. Even if you do not get selected in the first attempt, try again for the next attempt with a strong profile. Personally speaking, this mentorship offers a unique position in my career. Not only did this help me understand a specific language or framework, but it helped me learn some of the great career lessons that I might not have learned this early in my career.
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