From Community to Core

1. How It All Started

For over a year, I was actively involved as a community volunteer with Appwrite. I spent time on GitHub creating issues, raising minor PRs for the frontend (mainly the website, console dashboard), and occasionally for the backend. I also helped out in the Appwrite Discord server, sometimes submitting security issues too (who doesn't love some swags, right?).

I really enjoyed the product and felt pretty familiar with it. Then, one fine day, one of the core members, @TorstenDittmann, reached out to see if I'd be interested in some sort of contract work. Naturally, I said, "Yess!" 🚀

2. Stepping into the Role

Starting as a Contract Software Engineer, I worked on a mix of bug fixes and new features. Some tasks were challenging to pinpoint and replicate, while others were smaller and quicker to resolve. I genuinely enjoy debugging and have always had a knack for spotting hidden bugs or unexpected issues.

Beyond those, a few tasks felt especially rewarding (and ones I'm particularly proud of):

• Implementing an Alert Promo Modal to showcase newly introduced features like Roles, Backups, etc. Kudos to the Design Team for its sleek design!

• Leading the frontend work for Appwrite's new Backups feature, and

• Adding pagination & search to the blog page.
  Previously, around 120 posts were loaded all at once, which I flagged on GitHub months before joining. Being assigned to fix it felt like a full-circle moment, finally addressing something I wanted to improve for a while 🙌.

3. From Community to Core

Initially, I hadn't planned on going full-time. With my own projects in the mix, I figured another contract term would be a good balance.

But a few weeks before my contract was set to end, I received a call with an offer to join the core team as a Product Engineer. I was genuinely excited—and a bit surprised as well! I took some time to weigh the opportunity and how it fit with my personal goals before deciding to accept. I then arranged for a 6-week break to wrap up personal things and projects before fully committing.

4. A New Beginning

Today marks my first day as a full-time Product Engineer at Appwrite. It definitely feels like the beginning of an exciting new chapter. It's refreshing to see how contributors in the Appwrite community are often welcomed into the team.

I'm excited to contribute to a product I believe in and look forward to improving it for both developers and end-users.