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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

#51

Post by hardwaresofton »

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…

Why wouldn't they do this? It's good marketing, you can tally it up as a recruiting expense, same way/reason companies sponsor conferences and send people to speak. These days I see the term "developer evangelist" bandied around a lot -- it seems like they basically get paid to hang out in the dev community, make cool things with the product (tm), and then talk about it at conferences. These days I also see more and more ~1 hour informercials for product X at conference Y.

One, two or ten projects cannot possibly reflect people and decision making processes of an entire culture -- The best it can tell you is about that team inside the organization. You could only tell the culture of the company in aggregate, and companies where the F/OSS output is anywhere near the total of what they produce is pretty low.

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

#52

Post by _ph_ »

One obvious benefit of open sourcing the code, or at least important parts of your code, is to identify developers who are really interested in that part of your product. This goes both ways. As a developer, I have a list of open source software I use and have used. Some of the software I selected because I had a specific problem to solve at a time, but a a large part of that list is software I keep reusing across projects and which I am actually fond of. So, if I were to look for a new job, of course, those software packages would make their main maintainer very attractive to me as a potential employer. And for the employer, who is better to hire than an engineer who already took interest in the software before even being paid for it?

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

#53

Post by arendtio »

fipple wrote: post #42

On 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…

Seriously, the Dropbox client? I mean, I never used it but I can hardly imagine anything that makes it so special. I use Nextcloud and from what I can tell, there is nothing that sets the Dropbox client apart from the Nextcloud sync client (which is 100% open source).

In addition, some parts of the Dropbox sync client are open source too: https://www.dropbox.com/de/help/desktop-web/linux-commands#b...

Sure if your business model depends on selling the software then open sourcing it might be a bad idea. But if you are selling software to other companies they most likely are not interested in the software but in the service you provide, so they will require Service Level Agreements which should be the base of your business model.

However, with consumer software that doesn't work very well, since nobody gives a about service levels (even if it would solve many of their problems) ;-)

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

#54

Post by oever »

cwkoss wrote: post #17

Quasi-ethical business idea: Sell open source software 'ghostwriting' services It makes an engineer look good to have solid commits to an open source project on their github profile. The people who actually make the bulk of these commits put in tons of (at times thankless) free labor. Create a grey market for open source software contributors to sell their diffs (that they've already written and actually entail usefu…

A slightly more ethical alternative is to add sponsor messages to your commits.

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

#55

Post by oblio »

fipple wrote: post #42

On 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…

I think your comment is close to the truth but not quite there. Companies don't open source their core business, basically an extension of "don't outsource your core business" (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/10/14/in-defense-of-not-...).

Google: Search engine? Closed source. Ads service? Closed source.

Facebook: yes, the network is important, but still: Ads service? Closed source. Data science stuff they use for harvesting relevant data from users? Closed source. Dropbox: agreed.

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

#57

Post by avip »

cwkoss wrote: post #17

Quasi-ethical business idea: Sell open source software 'ghostwriting' services It makes an engineer look good to have solid commits to an open source project on their github profile. The people who actually make the bulk of these commits put in tons of (at times thankless) free labor. Create a grey market for open source software contributors to sell their diffs (that they've already written and actually entail usefu…

Welcome to fiverr.

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

#58

Post by KaiserPro »

"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 engineer's" solution? everyone singing a pledge to stop committing PII & keys to git.

The argument was: "well, committing 60,000 PII records to github was done by an idiot[1], not one of us, there is no way it could happen to _us_. We can't work on private repos, because that means we can't collaborate"

[1]They are not an idiot, they weren't in the trendy department.

If you want good engineers, don't let your tech department be run by penises. Let me put that into a list:

o hard limit on work hours(rota for Out of Hours support, if needed) no more than a 40 hours week, ever (averaged over a month)

o Solicit feedback from everyone, more importantly, action it.

o Pay well

o only use data for decisions (HR or otherwise)

o keep no secrets

o Balance empowerment with maintainability

o aggressively kill legacy

o correct or eject bullies

o allow differences (live and let live)

o don't all look and think the same

o Train the next generation

o don't allow silos (rotate at least twice a year, bonus points for feature teams)

Its really that simple

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

#59

Post by [deleted] »

oever wrote: post #54
cwkoss wrote: post #17

Quasi-ethical business idea: Sell open source software 'ghostwriting' services It makes an engineer look good to have solid commits to an open source project on their github profile. The people who actually make the bulk of these commits put in tons of (at times thankless) free labor. Create a grey market for open source software contributors to sell their diffs (that they've already written and actually entail usefu…

A slightly more ethical alternative is to add sponsor messages to your commits.

[deleted]

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

#60

Post by zmmmmm »

hashr8064 wrote: post #13

So here's some of the reason's they give for why Engineers want to work on Open Source: > They want to work in the open because it creates some visibility to them > The best companies align business needs with the desires of individual contributors (Engineers) to create their personal brand > Smart developers like to hang out with smart code. When you open source useful code, you attract talent. Some of these may pla…

I don't really care about any of those things. The reason I want to create open source as part of my job is it means I can take it with me when I leave. What's the point in building up deep expertise in something that you just throw away and never see again if you shift jobs? When I'm working on open source I see myself accumulating a lifetime resource / skill compared to something that is relatively ephemeral.
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