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Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code

angel.co

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Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code

#31

Post by spondyl »

I have a question for some other HNers that is kinda related to this topic.

I've got a library built solely by myself that I'm interested in open sourcing.

I'm tossing up between putting it on my own Github account, where it probably blends in with the rest, or putting it on the OSS page for the company I work for which, honestly, is a bit of a wasteland (numerous unused forks mainly)

I guess I just wonder what looks nicer on a resume. I would assume having something on an OSS Github org looks better but is it really? I don't recall ever looking at eg; a Google or Netflix project and looking into the authors vs looking into an individuals Github project.

I dunno, just wondering if anyone has any thoughts. I understand legalities come into play too but for this is more of a hypothetical.

Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code

#32

Post by andy_ppp »

spondyl wrote: post #31

I have a question for some other HNers that is kinda related to this topic. I've got a library built solely by myself that I'm interested in open sourcing. I'm tossing up between putting it on my own Github account, where it probably blends in with the rest, or putting it on the OSS page for the company I work for which, honestly, is a bit of a wasteland (numerous unused forks mainly) I guess I just wonder what looks…

Maybe do the other thing - if it's a really useful project with the potential of a community around it, name it well and make an organisation just for your work.

Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code

#33

Post by leipert »

spondyl wrote: post #31

I have a question for some other HNers that is kinda related to this topic. I've got a library built solely by myself that I'm interested in open sourcing. I'm tossing up between putting it on my own Github account, where it probably blends in with the rest, or putting it on the OSS page for the company I work for which, honestly, is a bit of a wasteland (numerous unused forks mainly) I guess I just wonder what looks…

Put it under your account, in case you stop working for the company. If that library gains traction, you can move it to its own ORG, which makes it easier to manage other contributors.

Finally look out if that project could be moved to other big OSS orgs at some point. I created some packages for the Atom editor, and when it became clear I couldn't maintain them, I found another ORGs that were able to pick it up.

Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code

#35

Post by arendtio »

onion2k wrote: post #5

Anecdotally, I look at the public repos of any company advertising a job I'm interested in before I apply, so open source certainly attracts some class of developers. The problem is the assumption that people who do that are "better" in some way. I've known some brilliant engineers who don't care at all for open source code; they wrote great code that no one besides the customer would ever see or use. That doesn't ma…

> The problem is the assumption that people who do that are "better" in some way.

Well, your argument doesn't prove that the assumption is wrong.

In my experience, everybody starts with closed source code and before open sourcing anything the developers asks himself what kind of code he wants to show as his work which in itself triggers a desire for quality and makes them better(tm) developers. Therefore, I would assume too, that the mean open source developer is statistically a better developer than the mean closed source developer (everybody). But that doesn't mean that every open source developer is better than every closed source developer. It just means that when you are targeting open source developers you have a higher chance of finding a good developer.

Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code

#36

Post by emptyfile »

mariusmg wrote: post #12
onion2k wrote: post #5

Anecdotally, I look at the public repos of any company advertising a job I'm interested in before I apply, so open source certainly attracts some class of developers. The problem is the assumption that people who do that are "better" in some way. I've known some brilliant engineers who don't care at all for open source code; they wrote great code that no one besides the customer would ever see or use. That doesn't ma…

>I've known some brilliant engineers who don't care at all for open source code The obvious irony here is those "brilliant" engineers will use open source code even though they don't care for it.

What's "ironic" about that?

Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code

#37

Post by mscasts »

I 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.

Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code

#38

Post by arkh »

sudhirj wrote: post #16
fapjacks wrote: post #3

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 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…

> 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?

You kinda sorta described SensioLabs: the good team is working on Symfony proper. While the other people are on the web agency side of things and quality is usually not the same.

Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code

#39

Post by CathyWest »

> Refactoring your code to be as simple as possible

> Following style conventions for names, whitespace, etc.

> Replacing private information with environment variables

> Commenting your code to contextualize snippets within your broader codebase.

While I do wish more software was released under a FOSS license, I also wish that these points were a given for any codebase regardless of license or source disclosure policy. I really don't think you can be agile no matter how many agile-trademarked tools and processes you pile on top of your project if you don't do this first.

Re: Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code

#40

Post by nellyspageli »

arkh wrote: post #38
sudhirj wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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? You kinda sorta described SensioLabs: the good team is working on Symfony proper. While the other people are on the web agency side of things and quality is usually not the same.

Square is also like this on the Android side of things. The Square Cash team is the penthouse of cool evangelist programmers and the rest of the company is locked in the basement.
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