Introduction
Prompts
- What is your current status, are you a student/transitioning into a new career?
- What are your goals and aspirations?
- Why are you interested in this mentorship opportunity?
- Tell us something that makes you unique as an applicant.
Hey, I'm Winston!
I'm a final year Computer Engineering student at the National University of Singapore (NUS), with a passion for software engineering. Since the start of university, I've learnt from 10 back-to-back internships at renowned firms such as Binance, Tiktok, Coinbase and ByteDance, where I've had great impact/contributions to the teams I've joined.
My short term goal is to learn what it means to be a good engineer, and to become one.
I believe strongly in learning from experience, and that unique experiences drive growth. This is why I'm interested in this mentorship opportunity - although I have experience shipping production code for companies that impact millions, I haven't had the experience of contributing to open-source. I think the opportunity to translate the skills and knowledge I've obtained into impact in the open-source world would be a wonderful experience
I believe that my strong passion and willingness to learn/grow as an engineer stands out, especially since I already have a proven record of being a sufficiently good engineer. The experiences I've had have shaped me to also know how to thrive in ambiguity and independently work through problems, which I think will be handy when working in open-source.
Cover Letter
Prompts
- How did you find out about our mentorship program?
- Why are you interested in this program?
- What experience and knowledge/skills do you have that are applicable to this program?
- What do you hope to get out of this mentorship experience?
To whom it concerns,
I learned about the LFX mentorship program through a friend. I was quickly interested as contributing to open-source was something I was always interested in, and this interest only grew when I read more about the program.
I am particularly interested in the program as I believe it aligns with my background and aspirations. My short term goal is to discover what good engineering means and to learn to grow into a proficient engineer. My belief is that learning and growth comes from (unique) experiences, which is why I optimise for experience and have done 10 back-to-back internships at reputable companies such as Binance, TikTok, Coinbase and ByteDance. This belief is also the main reason why I want to experience contributing to (mature) open-source projects.
I believe that my experiences have made me a sufficiently good engineer who is technically strong, can communicate well and also navigate through ambiguities. I have shipped production code that affects millions of users - for example, the changes I made to the payments platform at Coinbase directly improved the routing capabilities for all payment methods at Coinbase. Beyond code, I also value documentation. At every place I contribute to, I seek to improve the state of documentation and the onboarding process.In all my past experiences, I have proven myself to be a valuable asset through positive impacts/contributions, which is what makes me a fit for the LFX mentorship program.
My main hope is to be able to contribute to a more technical problem than I’m used to, where I can translate the skills and knowledge I have into some impact in the open-source world, and in doing so gain the knowledge and skills from my mentors who are seasoned maintainers of open-source projects.
Thank you for considering my application. I look forward to the possibility of learning from—and contributing to—your open-source ecosystem.
Sincerely,
Winston Lim