This is about the myth of meritocracy, or at least, the myth that skills matter more than anything. While its /more/ true in software than anywhere else (where what is valued more is social signals, diplomas, other signifiers of possible skill), it has never actually been true in the way that many say it.
In my life I've seen the most brilliant, talented, driven, and effective people be completely unable to find paid work doing what they do best. This isn't even because there is no money in doing what they do best - many of those things are multi billion dollar industries. Its because they put all their points into a single skill tree. The second they start putting points into relationships, and manage to get past the early stages, suddenly their skills become relevant and it starts working, and they're seen for what they can do.
I suspect this is what happened to OP:
> During the day, I worked 8-9 hours for this startup, and until late at night I continued my open source contributions. Surely, they would take me somewhere.
When you play Starcraft at a decently high level, scouting is super important - not even necessarily to see what the other side is actively doing, but the important information to learn is what they cannot be doing. If they have 3 of one building producing units, they can't be building a different type of unit. I shoe-horned that Starcraft analogy to say: if you're spending every waking hour coding, you're unlikely to be building relationships. Especially if your goal is to be paid for doing something useful, relationships with people with money to pay you are necessary.
I'm almost certain I'm not as talented an engineer as the OP. I have my moments, but my attention and desire to work out different skill trees is too high to prioritize time like they have. All this to say: there's a lot of myths out there about what is valued, and if you take some advice literally you will find yourself pidgeonholed into doing exactly that and only that.
>if you're spending every waking hour coding, you're unlikely to be building relationships.
I think this is a critical skill that our industry hasn't done a great job of building, and I think few industries do that well. Engineers have a stereotype of being bad at this by default and there isn't much clear help on how to improve, in contrast to the many freely accessed guides on how to improve with technology.
The following is less mask-on comment directed at neurodivergent people, as I'm neurodivergent and have people as a special interest, and often am in the position of helping people with social skills. I'm code switching, which is why my pattern of speech might not match other times I've commented.
In my experience, any direct help or advice on improving relationships doesn't work. Building relationships first requires one to value people and relationships, which when you're the type of person to take to computers over people, its usually for a reason: people can be jerks, they're unpredictable, and in a lot of nerds and neurodivergent people's formative years they're both wildly immature and often cruel. This can turn people off of other people as an interest for a long time, even a lifetime. Some find good outlets or the right group, and develop a sense that people are valuable, but often people are not seen as a reliable way to get needs met, or they find themselves in a very insular group that devalues other groups.
Most of the business world is run by not-nerds, by neurotypical people, who found that developing relationships would be the key to their success. This is inherently a foreign language, it has a lot of well-known downsides (hype-trains, incentives for agreeableness over depth or correctness to name a few), but like, if you can't appreciate what the role is and how its valuable, you may not be able to interface with it well. Thankfully most tech/engineering management is a hybrid of nerd and people persons - if one is so deep into their exclusive interests that they can't interface with a hybrid engineering+people specced person, its a warning sign for their ability to maintain work!
In my life I've seen the most brilliant, talented, driven, and effective people be completely unable to find paid work doing what they do best. This isn't even because there is no money in doing what they do best - many of those things are multi billion dollar industries. Its because they put all their points into a single skill tree. The second they start putting points into relationships, and manage to get past the early stages, suddenly their skills become relevant and it starts working, and they're seen for what they can do.
I suspect this is what happened to OP:
> During the day, I worked 8-9 hours for this startup, and until late at night I continued my open source contributions. Surely, they would take me somewhere.
When you play Starcraft at a decently high level, scouting is super important - not even necessarily to see what the other side is actively doing, but the important information to learn is what they cannot be doing. If they have 3 of one building producing units, they can't be building a different type of unit. I shoe-horned that Starcraft analogy to say: if you're spending every waking hour coding, you're unlikely to be building relationships. Especially if your goal is to be paid for doing something useful, relationships with people with money to pay you are necessary.
I'm almost certain I'm not as talented an engineer as the OP. I have my moments, but my attention and desire to work out different skill trees is too high to prioritize time like they have. All this to say: there's a lot of myths out there about what is valued, and if you take some advice literally you will find yourself pidgeonholed into doing exactly that and only that.