I'm not joking. While there are exceptional situations where you might get to work on interesting projects, by far the most reliable way to do it is through an academic degree.
Not at all. Only a small number of the people involved in this actually have PhDs (often in unrelated fields) and many of the most prolific contributors are undergrads who get involved via summer projects. If you're interested in internals, probably the best way to learn is to just join our slack (see julialang.org) and chat with all the developers.
Both are true. A PhD program is a great way to find a chunk of time to dedicate to a problem for a few years. At the same time, we've had contributors who were in high school when they started, through GSoC, and just generally interested folks in the community. On the other end, we've had tenured professors and even retired professors contributing to Julia.
Eventually, it boils down to two things. Find a problem that you want to work on and engage in the community as one-more-minute points out. Second, find a way to support that - PhD, an interested employer, a university, a grant, or perhaps you have are just well off and can do whatever you want!
I want a full time Julia role so bad. Unfortunately i have a family to support and a mortgage to pay sp i cant quit my job unless i find something. But i have been contributing to Julia despite having a hectic baking career schedule. The fast `StatsBase.countmap(::UInt16)` for example was my first contribution!
Don't mind a pay cut but I failed at my first attempt to land a (rare) Julia job in Sydney. Willing to relocate!
