Do not do this unless your code is reasonably well constructed. And make sure you’re not fooling yourself. Otherwise you’ll scare away good engineers.
Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
101–110 of 146 posts
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I challenge the notion that product is so precious that there's a benefit to it remaining closed source. If there is a line, I'd draw it at business process, not product. I'm a former Artsyer. There, a good bit of core product code t is actually open source, including the entire website and iOS app. As it turns out, the real value in most businesses is the data, business relationships, the domain knowledge, and the p…
Not every company is Artsy. Artsy is an Internet company, not a place where new frontiers are being conquered. It makes sense to build Artsy in the public square, not so much Waymo.
Artsy CTO here. Interestingly for the first 2 years we were conquering the frontier of nearest neighbor search applied to art, using some pretty new algos. Then ElasticSearch just built something 10x better and we tossed our entire codebase. I wish we just did it in the open, the advantage was quickly lost to a stronger open-source effort.
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#103"personal engineering brands" You do not want to hire engineers with "personal brands", in the same way that hiring celebrities for anything other than showbiz, normally causes problems. At a previous large company with massive opensource scheme, "personal brand" engineers blocked many attempts to increase security, specifically filtering git commits for keys, PII and other expensive mistakes. the "personal brand eng…
For me the problem is that to create a brand around yourself you need a pretty damn big ego, and ego is just bad in a team setting. The best engineers I know have zero ego.
This is a really important point. I work with someone who has quite a bit of an ego. Definitely cares far too much about his personal brand, which has been built up over the years through open source projects. Any time you work on a project with this person you basically need to use all of his open source libraries if any of them are at all relevant for the project, regardless of if they are the best option for the task or not ... sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't.
By far, the best developers I've ever worked with are quite humble.
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#104On the contrary, I’ve found that companies who are actually doing hardcore software engineering, where the code is the main value driver for the business, rarely open source their best stuff, but they’re great places for engineers. Google doesn’t open source its self driving car code. Facebook’s value driver is the network, not the code, so it can open source anything. Dropbox’s client is amazing and is not only clos…
Think the MBA speak for this is “commoditising you competition”. It’s when you use open source or zero pricing to either offensively or defensively to nullify an advantage your competitor has. Google attacks Apple by offering an open source OS (Android). Now everyone can make a phone. They defend against Facebook controlling the internet by offering an open source browser (Chrome/ium). Microsoft defends against irrel…
So open source is just a service model where the product is free but you get loyalty.
So "you are the product" seems to fit open source as well then, eh
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#105Artsy CTO here. I am excited to see this article and, putting aside that it quotes me :)
A couple of things I wanted to highlight that are not in the article and should have been.
- Pay attention to how Microsoft has used open-source to turn things around in terms of developer credibility.
- Becoming open-source by default can still be an advantage as 99% of companies don't do it. It can still fix your hiring pipeline, but that advantage won't last as it's becoming more mainstream.
AMA
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#106I was listening to a friend's music podcast tonight and they were talking about how industry will seize on any shred of creativity so that they can use it to sell cars, and this contributes to people getting defensive about the things they like becoming popular. There is a latent fear that just over the horizon, some marketing asshole is waiting to get their hands on something that is meaningful to you, in order to a…
It’s really difficult to have your engineering quality or culture NOT reflected in your open source projects. What are you going to do, keep the regular coders locked in the basement working on CRUD apps and a penthouse full of cool evangelist programmers writing OSS for no good reason? A company’s OSS is an excellent reflection of the people, decision making processes and culture that permeates it. Look at React, Go…
The marketing is working on you. Go is a small part of Google, but you highlighted that and not their Java or C++ or ads. 90% of people are not working on Go and flying cars; they are maintaining legacy search/ads systems with duct tape or launching a dozen DOA messaging apps a year.
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#107I don't know about you people, but I don't give a rats ass if the company I work for open source their code or not. I care what benefits i receive and mostly the salary and the possibility to work remotely. Also it is a positive thing if what I do is fun and/or meaningful.
Open sourcing the code is important to me because its frustrating being a senior hired onto a team of all newbs. By senior I mean a person who can write code quickly. By newbs I mean people with high insecurity that just want to dick around with code style and framework tooling.
How does open source changes anything in that situation? You think that open source people would care less about code style and framework tooling?
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#108On the contrary, I’ve found that companies who are actually doing hardcore software engineering, where the code is the main value driver for the business, rarely open source their best stuff, but they’re great places for engineers. Google doesn’t open source its self driving car code. Facebook’s value driver is the network, not the code, so it can open source anything. Dropbox’s client is amazing and is not only clos…
Think the MBA speak for this is “commoditising you competition”. It’s when you use open source or zero pricing to either offensively or defensively to nullify an advantage your competitor has. Google attacks Apple by offering an open source OS (Android). Now everyone can make a phone. They defend against Facebook controlling the internet by offering an open source browser (Chrome/ium). Microsoft defends against irrel…
> Chris Lattner tried to open source for the sake of OSS, with LLVM and Swift, but he left.
Maybe there's some history here that I'm missing: but it looks like LLVM and Swift are open source. Did Chris have any trouble open-sourcing them? Was the reason for his departure related to that?
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#109I was listening to a friend's music podcast tonight and they were talking about how industry will seize on any shred of creativity so that they can use it to sell cars, and this contributes to people getting defensive about the things they like becoming popular. There is a latent fear that just over the horizon, some marketing asshole is waiting to get their hands on something that is meaningful to you, in order to a…
> I was listening to a friend's music podcast tonight and they were talking about how industry will seize on any shred of creativity so that they can use it to sell cars, and this contributes to people getting defensive about the things they like becoming popular. There is a latent fear that just over the horizon, some marketing asshole is waiting to get their hands on something that is meaningful to you, in order to…
It's called I Hate Music. [0] I really enjoy it, and I think some folks around here would, too, but I'm really a poor barometer of what others might enjoy. My assessment is also maybe a bit clouded by my affection for the guy.
Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Think the MBA speak for this is “commoditising you competition”. It’s when you use open source or zero pricing to either offensively or defensively to nullify an advantage your competitor has. Google attacks Apple by offering an open source OS (Android). Now everyone can make a phone. They defend against Facebook controlling the internet by offering an open source browser (Chrome/ium). Microsoft defends against irrel…
> Chris Lattner tried to open source for the sake of OSS, with LLVM and Swift, but he left. Maybe there's some history here that I'm missing: but it looks like LLVM and Swift are open source. Did Chris have any trouble open-sourcing them? Was the reason for his departure related to that?
He succeeded at open sourcing those two projects. Not sure why he left, but other than WebKit, which was probably a defense against Microsoft and IE, don’t think anything else can come out of Apple.