Sample Project
https://github.com/winston-lim/blockchain-voting
Personal Questions
Why do you want to be a MLH Fellow?
I value experiences over knowledge. I believe knowledge can be gained from experience, but not the other way around. This is why I am always seeking to gain experience and have done 10 back to back internships in my university journey.
I also value unique experiences. I believe that unique experience directly lead to growth - perhaps the increased exposure leads to forming more well-rounded opinions and insights, or maybe it's just human psychology. For whatever reason, the result is I always choose to look for unique experiences, which is why I believe that becoming a MLH Fellow will be great for me.
I also believe that I will be great as a MLH Fellow. Through the various opportunities given to me, I have shipped production code that now processes millions of payments at ByteDance and Coinbase, ensures content safety at TikTok and have had positive impact at the places I contribute to. This makes me well equipped me with technical and soft skills that I believe will allow me to contribute well to open-source projects. Therefore I believe becoming a MLH Fellow will be a wonderful experience that will translate the skills and knowledge I have into something great in the open-source world.
The MLH Fellowship is a diverse community that welcomes Fellows from a wide range of experiences and backgrounds. What perspective or experience will you bring to the fellowship to strengthen our community?
I was educated and raised in Singapore, where the scarce resources we have meant that we had to be resilient and intelligent. Beyond my local community, I have experienced a good amount of both east and west influence through my internships - I've joined US-based (e.g. International Payments @ Coinbase) and China-based unicorns (Trust & Safety @ TikTok), and contributed to projects affecting an even wider audience. For example, I worked on a project related to European (SEPA) payments at Coinbase, and more close to home, I worked on Indonesian (SNAP) payments at ByteDance.
Through these experiences, I learnt to collaborate with people from diverse backgrounds (of different cultures, language and timezones) and developed soft skills to gel well with people I worked with. I have also learnt that I thrive well in ambiguity and am very open to navigating and working through open-ended problems or goals. These experiences will allow me to work will with other Fellows or mentors that will lead to a fruitful program.