It’s been already one month since I moved to Qobo Ltd, as a backend developer, so it’s about time to do some benchmarks on the work done.
Open-Source
The level of open source involvement of Qobo is enormous. All the projects I’ve been involved in before were always about open-source: it was either based on open-source, or using open-source solutions into some extend. Every time it ends up locking down the solutions for indoor use. It was either features the company didn’t want to share with the open-source community, or key business aspects that were crucial for competitive advantage. The story repeats over and over - the level of feedback to open source was minimal.
Contrarily, Qobo’s approach towards open-source is different. I didn’t do the exact measures, but it’s approximately 70-80% of code that goes to public repositories. Apart of advocating open-source within the company, we participate in other development communities, which helps us get things better. What’s the point of getting stuck with yet another closed-source plugin/module/library that others troubleshooted/patched and use everywhere. Examples? Well, it’s CakeDC community, CakePHP framework, WordPress, Bootstrap, and many others.
Side-effects of it:
- You write better code (if you want to get things accepted in pull requests)
- You stand on the shoulders of giants (community helps. Always)
- Self-development (you’re not stuck with repetitive tasks)
Teams
Q: how many programmers does it take to change a light bulb? A: none, that’s a hardware problem (c)
Small teams, dedicated to certain projects or split by the expertise in certain technology or business aspects. Mind blowing speed of deployment & accuracy. The most appropriate way of describing the social system and involvement in the projects would be meritocracy - “We do it, because we can”.