Ep. 26: Radical Engineering Transformation through Inner Sourcing

In today's episode, Asim sits down with Arnold Goldberg, the VP/GM of Payments at Google. Over the last 30 years, Arnold has worked with four notable high-growth companies – PayPal, Box, LinkedIn, and eBay, primarily focusing on scaling people, processes, and technology. They discuss the what, why, and how of inner sourcing. They cover the inner source approach to engineering, how to get the most out of it, the mistakes to watch out for, and much more.

[00:00] Introduction

[02:29] What is Inner Sourcing?

[04:55] Changing Company Culture to an Inner Sourcing Culture

[08:14] Engineers Control Their Own Destiny

[12:10] Who is the True Owner of an Inner Source?

[14:23] Inner Sourcing in Giant Companies Like PayPal

[16:27] Engagement Models For Team Success

[19:08] Talent Retention and Executive Buy-In

[22:23] How Arnold Pilots and Scales Inner Sourcing in Teams

[23:20] Mistakes to Watch Out For with Inner Sourcing

[25:41] Where to Find an Inner Sourcing Community

[26:19] Teams and Organizations Where Inner Sourcing Cannot Work

[28:05] Parting Thoughts

What is Inner Sourcing?

Inner Sourcing is a software development strategy where companies adopt an open-source engineering culture that teams can use to collaborate more effectively. This growing trend is often found in high-performing teams. Engineers and developers create proprietary software and open the work internally so everyone can contribute to the source code.

According to Arnold, the best engineers use inner sourcing to build better software, faster. But how big or small should the organization be for an innersource to be effective? He explains that the strategy is effective for organizations of all types and sizes. As businesses grow and differentiate their products, they quickly realize that traditional development methods no longer work. The slow hierarchical practice of gathering information, holding daily meetings, and developing in silos is not what drives success for technology companies today. Arnold believes inner sourcing is the only way companies can keep pace with customer demands and guarantee speed, reliability, and functionality.

Links and Resources:

Arnold's LinkedIn 
Adopting InnerSource by Danese Cooper and Klaas-Jan Stol