Want to Recruit Better Engineers? Open Source Your Code
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 closed source but heavily obfuscated.<p>When a small company open sources everything, their main value driver is in sales or marketing or partnerships or something. Not a bad thing, but not a really engineering centric place.