As discovered by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft has opened several job postings pertaining to ‘Inner Source’. One in November 2018, and another just last week, signaling that it’s ramping up its efforts. To be clear, Microsoft is hiring people specifically to spearhead its Inner Source efforts. The latest job posting mentions a senior program manager position for a 1ES team that focuses on the following: “The broader 1ES team is building the next generation of tools and practices to make engineers across Microsoft more productive and help them focus on building great software. This role is part of an initially small team tasked with bootstrapping, piloting, and ultimately scaling inner source across the company.”
An Open Microsoft
The move could increase efficiency at the company while allowing for new collaborations. Microsoft is looking to make the process as simple and streamlined as possible. However, it’s worth noting that Inner Source isn’t a Redmond-specific buzzword. The InnerSource Commons has 70 members and the idea isn’t a new one in the tech community. This seems more like an effort from Microsoft to continue its transformation into a more open company. “A big part of your job will be to listen to engineers to understand what they find productive and what is just getting in their way, in order to deliver solutions that successfully address real customer problems and improve engineering satisfaction and productivity at Microsoft,” said the posting.
