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Ask HN: Anyone joined a company after contributing to their OSS projects?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone joined a company after contributing to their OSS projects?

#31

Post by francisofascii »

I know a person who got a great paying job at a streaming service company, by working on a set of open source tools heavily used by company. He didn't have to do any sort of technical interview. Now he works on those open source tools full time remotely, and got about a 70% pay increase.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone joined a company after contributing to their OSS projects?

#32

Post by dasil003 »

Minor contributions I made to Rails in 2007 led to being recruited as the first tech lead and eventual CTO for a nascent startup. There was no premeditation here though, it was just serendipity. I've found most big breaks in my life this flavor. It's more about being open to opportunity so you can recognize it when it comes rather than trying too hard to orchestrate it.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone joined a company after contributing to their OSS projects?

#34

Post by cestith »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #20
charcircuit wrote: post #4

If you already work for them for free, why should they pay you?

Imagine you make $300 for every hour someone spends and you pay them $100. Crude, and you can disagree with the numbers, but this is the general idea when employing people. You get 4 hours a week for free, you make $1200 - $0 = $1200 You get 40 hours a week for $4000, you make $12000 - $4000 = $8000 By hiring them, you make more profit. You could try to get 10 people doing 4 hours a week for free, but maybe there is…

You also get to align their projects within your codebase to the rest of your efforts and strategic vision by way of paying them.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone joined a company after contributing to their OSS projects?

#37

Post by em-bee »

peteforde wrote: post #23
charcircuit wrote: post #4

If you already work for them for free, why should they pay you?

This dumb question has an important answer: accountability and longevity. It's the same reason CIOs of large companies pay more to work with companies that provide a Service Level Agreement: their bosses (aka the board of directors) wants to know that there's someone smart who will pick up the phone if there's a real problem, 24/7. And someone to sue if things go south. If someone is making excellent OSS contribution…

code ownership could also be a factor. if a contributor gets hired, their new code gets owned by the company

Re: Ask HN: Anyone joined a company after contributing to their OSS projects?

#39

Post by axelthegerman »

I think it depends a lot on the company. If their oss project doesn't get much love and someone is trying to force their way in, I don't think it will work out well.

But Posthog for example have oss in their DNA and I was using their product, communicating with their excellent support and fixed a tiny bug in their Ruby SDK. A while later they reached out with a job opportunity. It didn't work out in the end but it was a fantastic experience!

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