Written by Jorge Samaniego, Open Mainframe Project Summer Mentorship 2026, mentee researcher, guided by mentor Francesco Giordano
Most of the opportunities that change your life don’t arrive with your name on them. Mine started with an email I never read, sent by someone I’d never met, about a project I didn’t know existed.
It began with a former student of my professor, someone who’d gone through her classes years before me and never forgot it. When they came across an opening to contribute to an open-source mainframe project, the first thing they did was write to her a thank you letter, and a tip that there was a chance to work with Frank on the mainframe project, in case she knew anyone who’d be a good fit. The email wasn’t about me. But she thought of me.
I keep coming back to that, because it’s the whole point. I didn’t apply to anything or stumble onto a job board. A stranger’s gratitude toward a teacher traveled through a chain of people and landed in my inbox. The professor who kept a door open for her students, and me, present enough in class that when the moment came, mine was the name she remembered. You can’t engineer that. But you can be the kind of person it happens to.
Being recommended gets you in the room; it doesn’t get you the seat. Once my professor connected us, I interviewed Frank Giordano, the maintainer behind the project and it wasn’t a formality. What struck me was how much of it was about how I think. How I’d approach a problem I didn’t understand yet, how I’d handle feedback, whether I’d read the documentation or guess. Those turned out to be exactly the muscles the work would train. By the end I had what I’d been recommended for, a spot contributing to the Zowe Client Java SDK, part of the Open Mainframe Project under the Linux Foundation, mentored directly by Frank.
The mainframe still quietly runs the world, and Zowe is the open-source effort to make that world approachable to modern developers. My work centered on two issues: #470, a method to list the z/OSMF workflows on a system or sysplex, and #472, one to cancel a workflow, both talking to IBM’s z/OSMF REST APIs. And here’s the honest part: my first submissions weren’t merged into the open source. Frank sent them back with real changes. Rename the methods to match the rest of the SDK. Use a proper input object instead of loose parameters. Parse the JSON and return a typed list, not a raw string. Every comment stung a little and taught me a lot. That’s what a mentorship is, anyone can accept your code; a mentor tells you why the good version beats the merely working one.
If you’re waiting for the perfect opening to announce itself, you’ll wait a long time. Opportunities don’t usually knock they get passed to you, hand to hand, by people who thought of you when they didn’t have to. So be memorable to the people who teach you, say the thank-you that might travel further than you’ll ever see, and stay ready. I never read the email that started all this. But I’m grateful for everyone who passed it along, and for a mentor willing to correct me until I was worth the recommendation.
Stay tuned for more mentee blogs as our Summer Mentorship Program continues!
- Learn more about this year’s summer mentees and mentors
- Watch past mentee presentations on our Mentorship Playlist on YouTube
- Follow our blog for the latest updates from the program
- Connect with us on LinkedIn
- Sign up for our quarterly newsletter
