The Invisible Work Behind Visible Results

Behind the scenes, everybody struggles. No matter how perfect and put-together things appear on the surface, perfection is a myth. I’d like to share my experience with Outreachy so far and how I’ve learned that struggling is part of the process.

Facing the Unknown During the Application Process

During the contribution phase of the application period, familiarizing myself with Wikimedia’s ecosystem was a bit overwhelming. There are so many platforms used internally that I had never heard of before. Even the app for communicating, Zulip (a chat platform used by Wikimedia communities), was new to me.

For the project I applied to during the contribution phase, we were given a microtask on Phabricator (a task tracking and project management tool) to work on and asked to submit a link to our PAWS notebook (a hosted Jupyter notebook service provided by Wikimedia) to our mentors. Hold up, what even is Phabricator, and what the hell is PAWS? Those were the thoughts in my head when reading the task description.

Finding Comfort in Shared Struggles

When I finally figured out how to join the chat on Zulip, seeing other applicants ask the same questions made me feel a lot less alone.

My favorite line from a book by Mark Manson, “You are not special,” is so true. As I went through hurdles, I learned that one thing about struggling is that it is universal. There is always someone going through something else or something worse. Although it might seem a little bleak, it’s ironically comforting, for me at least.

The path I am walking now, someone has walked it in the past, gone through the same things I went through, and lived. That is what’s comforting.

Asking for help in the chat seemed embarrassing at first, but with time, I became comfortable asking fellow applicants when I was lost, and even past interns, who helped a lot. Over time, I even started sharing things I learned with others who had questions.

Learning New Tools and Terms

We were also told we could submit patches on Gerrit (the code review tool used by Wikimedia for managing contributions). Here came two other things I didn’t know about before Outreachy. As someone who had only used GitHub for collaboration and code reviews, I was familiar with pull requests and issues, not tasks on Phabricator and patches on Gerrit.

Submitting a patch on Gerrit felt like I was going to blow up the codebase. It was dark and scary, to say the least, but I was able to get something merged after multiple crashouts.

The application process was competitive, but the collaboration between applicants was invaluable.

The Flip Side of Struggling: Gratitude for New Struggles

After surviving the application and getting the news I was selected, the excitement and relief lasted until it was time to figure out what I was going to do during the internship.

Even though I struggled a bit to get a sense of direction at the start of the internship, while trying to figure out how things worked and the best way to carry out some features, I felt privileged to have the struggles in the first place.

I might have deadlines to meet and tasks to complete that I don’t know where to start on, but what a privilege to be here, to work on something that people will use, while learning new things and getting paid to do all that.

You might be struggling now, but someone somewhere, or even a past version of you, might wish to have those struggles. Oh, you have assignments to submit before a deadline? On the flip side, you are able to get an education. Your manager won’t get off your neck to get some things done? What a joy to be employed and not have to submit hundreds of applications in today’s horrible job market.

I’m grateful for my struggles because once I scale through them, I’m usually better off than I was before.

Of course, not every struggle is something to feel grateful for. Losing a loved one or having your laptop crash right before a deadline? Yeah… no one wants that.

This brings me to the last vocabulary term, more like an acronym, that I came across only when I started contributing to open source and collaborating with software engineers from different walks of life: LGTM (looks good to me / looks good to merge). After multiple review cycles, failed tests, and refactoring, the relief that comes from finally seeing that is amazing, to say the least.

And that’s the invisible work behind every LGTM. It is a journey of small wins, struggles, and a lot of growth along the way.