Why I Don't do Open Source (ex-Google / ex-Meta tech lead)

Quick Overview

The tech lead argues against open-sourcing projects by highlighting the low impact and lack of reward for such efforts, contrasting it with the tangible benefits of taking ownership and delivering results, which are crucial for career advancement.

Key Points: Open-sourcing projects is discouraged because it yields minimal impact and no tangible promotion or recognition. Focusing on delivering projects with clear impact and ownership is the key to career advancement, not open-sourcing. The speaker contrasts the "victim" mentality of complaining about problems with the "owner" mentality of solving them. Companies like Meta and Google focus on the impact of work, not just the lines of code written. The "difficulty" of a task is subjective; the real differentiator is the ability to deliver solutions and impact. True initiative involves taking ownership and driving projects to completion, which is what leads to senior roles.

Context: The speaker, a former tech lead at Google and Meta, explains his rationale for not contributing to open-source projects. He contrasts this with his approach to his own work, emphasizing the importance of ownership, impact, and problem-solving for career progression within large tech companies. He argues that simply writing code or identifying problems without delivering solutions is insufficient for advancement.

Detailed Analysis

The speaker argues against the practice of open-sourcing projects, stating that it often leads to minimal impact and little to no career advancement. He elaborates that companies like Google and Meta value demonstrable impact and ownership of projects, rather than just the quantity of code produced or contributions to open-source. He criticizes the "victim" mindset where individuals focus on problems and complaints, contrasting it with the "owner" mindset of actively seeking solutions and driving projects to completion. He breaks down the criteria for career advancement into four axes: difficulty, people skills, leadership, and impact. He asserts that while difficulty and people skills are important, it's the impact and leadership initiative that truly lead to promotions. He likens the approach to problem-solving to a "level 4" engineer who delivers sustained impact over time, as opposed to merely refactoring code, which he considers zero impact. He concludes that taking initiative and delivering results is paramount for career growth, and that complaining or contributing to open-source without a clear impact is unproductive.