[Pattern Idea] Contributing to InnerSource as a career booster

[spier]

Individuals in an organization may (rightfully so) be motivated by personal objectives like furthering their own career. Therefore they may ask: How does it help me, when I contribute to an InnerSource project? What do I gain? What do I learn? How does it make a difference for me personally?

Below we capture notes from a group discussion about this topic that happened at InnerSource Gathering Berlin 2025.

Advantages on an individual level

• more visibility of the individual in the organization (by contributing outside of your team to another project, more people can see your work(
• increased network (through contributions you get to know more people in the org)
• fullfill requirements for a senior role
• receive appreciation (possibly with some company tools for "kudos" or similar)
• learn how to build pragmatic solutions (i.e. rolling your own solution for every problem is "easy". However making trade-offs and finding something that is good enough while reducing the overall maintenance cost for the company is a lot harder)
• improve social skills / communication and conflict resolution among others (see a related talk)
• work together with more skilled peopled (the idea being that no matter how good the people in your team are, in a large enough org the majority of amazing people will always work in other teams)
• gain agency (you are the master of your own destiny by deciding which projects to contribute to)

Changes in HR processes

• allow for engineers to evolve without becoming managers (individual contributor track)
• TODO: how to hire for that mindset? (growth mindset)
• TODO: cheat sheet how to make typical requirements that already exist in career ladders today

Other notes

• we did not explore how to convince middle managers of the benefits of InnerSource / see pattern draft related to the Middle Management Mindset