gamingindex wrote
it's not my first job as a developer, I have around 2 years of experience in development and done a lot of freelance work. I work around 60-80 hours weekly for this job so it's hard to find time for open source projects. and like you said, cheap labor it is.
I work even more than you, in very stressful environment, but i am able to find 2-3 hours per week to work on this, on totally new subject for me. For example
https://github.com/letscontrolit/ESPEasy/pull/2555
And again, the most difficult part is not the code or algorithms or hi-tech stuff, but its adaptation to the existing project style and to the "taste" of maintainer, it's boring, but reasonable. This skill is an important part of any successful project that is bigger than hello world.
Then you can start your own project as well, if you find something interesting to create.
Let me give you an example of a friend of mine, and his recent career path.
At first, shortly after graduation he worked in a very boring, small, poor company with very stupid bosses. Although he was dissatisfied with many things, he did everything he could to make the company the best on the market. Actually the company was more known as "the company where this genius dude works."
He got the position of technical director, although it was nominal. The amount of stress has increased to incredible levels. It is one of such companies where he have to handle 24/7 issues.
He realized that there was no money(or not profitable to buy it) for an expensive hardware solution to one of the problems, and began to develop his software solution. Although the problem was obvious, no one wrote software for it.
He wrote software at first only for the company, then, I don’t remember the details, either the company refused to pay for it additionally, or out of good intentions, at the end he was able to post it opensource.
Gained a reputation in this specific field, thanks to this decision and opensource project.
Without leaving the old job, he took some time off and vacations, began to go through interviews in many companies, as he realized that there would be no career growth in the old company. Found great offer, and ONLY after that left old job.
(Addition: And by the way, while searching for a new job, he realized what kind of knowledge he didnt have, and spent many sleepless nights studying what he need more.)
Thanks to his fame, because of the opensource solution, he was invited to one of the largest world companies.They allowed him to continue development of this project.
He made a paid version of this project, and began to earn good money in addition to his salary.
I put it briefly and in Russian (this is considered rude in Western culture, well, sorry). If you have shitty excuses not to participate in opensource projects because "you work a lot" and you want to quit job in order to "self-develop", I have a suspicion that you are overestimating yourself and too lazy.