Sometimes the things that change your career don’t start big.
They start with a tiny pull request.
For me, it was on AWS Lambda Powertools for Python, a library I’d used countless times in production.
I wasn’t trying to do anything revolutionary. I just noticed that working with form data in serverless APIs was a little… clunky. So, I opened an issue, wrote a few lines of code, added some tests, and pushed a PR.
That little change ended up helping thousands of developers build cleaner, better-documented AWS Lambda APIs.
And that’s when it hit me Open Source is a force multiplier.
How a “tiny fix” became a big deal
When you contribute to open source, you’re not just solving your own problem. You’re solving everyone’s who runs into that same wall after you.
My contribution added OpenAPI form-data support basically, it let Lambda developers automatically document and validate form submissions without extra code. Nothing flashy. But it saved people time. It cleaned up their docs. It made their lives a little easier.
That’s the magic of open source. You make a small move, and somehow, it ripples outward into something much bigger than you.
What I learned in the process
The code itself wasn’t the hardest part- It was everything around it the reviews, the feedback loops, the back-and-forth with maintainers who genuinely wanted to help me improve it.
Here’s what stood out to me:
1. Small scope doesn’t mean small impact. Sometimes the best contributions aren’t new features they’re refinements that make everyone’s day smoother.
2. Good maintainers are secret teachers. They don’t just merge code they help you understand why something should be done a certain way.
3. Documentation and tests matter just as much as code. They make your contribution live longer than you do in the repo.
4. Community is where confidence grows. Each PR teaches you a little more about how other engineers think, and that’s gold.
Why open source still matters
In a world where AI can generate a function in seconds, what still makes open source special isn’t the speed; it’s the shared understanding.
When you contribute, you’re not just adding lines of code; you’re adding patterns, lessons, and empathy into the ecosystem.
That’s what scales! That’s what lasts!
So, where do you start?
If you’ve been wanting to contribute but it feels intimidating, here’s my honest advice:
Start small.
You don’t need to build a new framework or rewrite an entire service. Sometimes, it’s about fixing something you bump into every day at work.
Fix a typo, Improve a docstring, Write a test for something untested.
The maintainers will thank you, and you’ll get the hang of the flow the issues, the reviews, the merge.
Don’t wait for a “big idea.” Open source grows one small improvement at a time.
That’s literally how another one of my contributions happened.
I was working on an AWS project and noticed that the amazon-efs-utils tool wasn’t correctly handling the --region flag during cross-region mounts.
It was a tiny thing, but it caused big headaches for anyone mounting EFS volumes across AWS regions.
So I fixed it, opened a PR, and it got merged upstream.
Now, that small fix helps every engineer who uses EFS in multi-region setups.
That’s the beauty of open source you’re not just patching your own problem; you’re preventing hundreds of others from hitting the same wall.
Fix the thing that slows you down today, and chances are, you’ll speed up someone else tomorrow.
Final thought
I’ve worked in large systems, seen how much effort goes into building reliable cloud platforms but nothing compares to the shared power of open source.
It’s the one place where a single developer can write 10 lines of code and quietly make life easier for 10,000 others.
And that, to me, is the real definition of scale.
If you’ve ever hesitated to make your first contribution, this is your sign to go for it!!!
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