How to Master Software Engineering and Get Hired Without Applying (Terraform Core Contributor)
TL;DR
Open source can replace the resume if you do it consistently — Bruno Schaatsbergen says he hasn’t made a resume in years because companies and recruiters approach him through GitHub, including the path that eventually led him to HashiCorp as a Terraform contributor.
The fastest way to get PRs merged is to copy the repo’s existing style — his practical trick is to find active contributors on GitHub, filter for merged pull requests, and mirror their PR titles, commit structure, and descriptions to lower reviewer cognitive load.
Reading great code is how you earn the confidence to contribute — Bruno credits a decade of Terraform ecosystem work from Mitchell Hashimoto, Armon Dadgar, Martin Atkins, and others with shaping how he writes Go today, and tells beginners to read before they write.
AI lowers the barrier to contribute, but it also floods maintainers with slop — he argues open source is being “killed with kindness,” where well-meaning contributors use agents to generate lots of low-effort PRs, forcing maintainers into reject-by-default workflows like Ash Carter’s ‘vouch’ prototype.
Use agents, but don’t let them steal your identity as an engineer — Bruno uses tools like Amp and Claude via OpenCode to research codebases and draft features, but insists on polishing the final code and PR himself so he remains the author and owner of what ships.
Contributing works best when it solves a real problem you actually have — his own first Terraform contribution came while consulting at Adidas on an AWS machine learning platform, where missing provider resources blocked the team and his merged PR immediately made him more valuable at work.
The Breakdown
Open source as escapism, craft, and career engine
Bruno opens with a very personal frame: open source isn’t just career strategy for him, it’s escapism. After consulting gigs, he’d put on headphones and work on tools like Terraform because he liked “shaping the kitchens and pans and pots” that other engineers use. That habit didn’t just sharpen his craft — it directly shaped his career and eventually got him hired by HashiCorp.
Why some PRs get ignored — and the fix is surprisingly simple
When the host brings up the pain of stale pull requests, Bruno gives a concrete playbook: study the repo’s most active contributors, filter for merged PRs, and imitate their style. He’s not talking about copying code ideas, but the whole proposal package — title, commit messages, structure, and tone. His point is blunt and useful: if you “speak their language,” you reduce cognitive load for maintainers and make it easier for them to say yes.
The beginner move: read code before you try to impress anyone
On imposter syndrome, Bruno doesn’t say “just start shipping.” He says read a lot of code, especially in projects with a high quality bar that match your niche. For him, reading Terraform and adjacent Go code from people like Mitchell Hashimoto, Armon Dadgar, and Martin Atkins fundamentally changed how he writes software.
The Adidas story that kicked the whole thing off
His first real contribution came while working at Adidas on an AWS machine learning platform. Terraform’s AWS provider was missing resources the team needed, so he took a shot at adding them, got the contribution merged quickly, and came back to the client with a real unblock. That moment gave him both credibility at work and the addictive satisfaction that made him keep contributing.
Don’t force open source if it isn’t your thing
Bruno pushes back on the idea that every engineer should contribute. Echoing Mitchell Hashimoto, he notes that some of the best engineers don’t have an active GitHub presence because they avoid unnecessary context switching. Open source is valuable if you want to understand the tools beneath your day job or learn the social side of engineering, but it’s not a mandatory path to becoming good.
AI has made contribution easier — and maintainership much harder
The conversation turns sharply to the current mess: low-effort, AI-generated PRs, README churn, and bug bounty spam. Bruno says open source is being “killed with kindness,” meaning many contributors genuinely want to help but don’t want to put in the real work. He points to examples like curl shutting down its bug bounty program due to junk submissions, Ash Carter’s reject-by-default “vouch” idea for Ghostty, and Flux maintainers using agents to reproduce reported bugs instead of burning maintainer time.
Use agents like pair programmers, not as a replacement for judgment
Bruno is very pro-agent, but with a line he clearly cares about: don’t let them steal your identity. He uses Amp for exploring large codebases and Claude through OpenCode for feature work, sometimes even comparing multiple generated approaches in parallel. But he still spends serious time polishing code and rewriting PR descriptions because he wants to remain the author — and therefore the owner — of what he submits.
Trust, conferences, and getting hired without applying
The final stretch is about how online contribution turns into real-world trust. Bruno built deeper relationships by chatting asynchronously in Slack, then meeting maintainers at KubeCon, AWS re:Invent, and HashiConf, even going back to his hotel room to code on ideas they discussed and showing up the next day with working changes. That consistency, plus years of visible contributions, is why he says most jobs came through people reaching out on GitHub — even though, as a university dropout, he once felt he had more to prove than engineers with fancy diplomas.