An even better way to get a job working on mongodb
On Friday night late I posted a puzzle, with an invitation to apply for a job if you solved it.
The response was overwhelming. Over 6000 people visited my blog; the post was #3 on hacker news and #33 on wordpress (its hard for algorithm questions to compete with stabbings and royal weddings). A few days later, I have gone through hundreds of comments and we have a few interview cycles going. Thanks to everyone who participated; I hope you had fun, and I hope we hire someone from this contest.
However, if you’re really interested in working on mongodb, there’s an even better way: contribute something useful to mongodb. A number of our developers have been hired from the community. While I am a former math guy and I like smart programmers, in the end the most important thing is your ability to create working code. Puzzles are interesting and I expect to continue to post them – and yes, solving them will help you get a job, but it won’t help as much as coding something useful.
— Max
Max Schireson's blog 
Although the startup scene is not my thing, I’d certainly submit my resume to 10gen over most other NY startups any day.
The other side of the contribution coin is, if you want community contributions, make the community want to contribute. While a job possibility might be an incentive, being good to the community and interacting with them is even better. You guys do that. Its always a pleasure to interact with 10gen employees on the mailing lists, and at the conferences. Compared to some other OSS projects I’ve contributed, I feel much better about the process of getting my code in the repo with you guys.