Phoon: I'v never heared of any OS project that hires programmers. It's entirely your task to find projects which you'd like to contribute to. In particular, most of the time that doesn't even start with coding. Take part in discussions (feature requests, design, etc.) and generally ask questions to get an idea of the overal picture.
Also, running programs and reporting bugs, or helping out with web site maintainance is important, too. Just don't sit in your corner and wait for anybody else to pick you up...