At Bitpool, we’ve always been about the wider community. It’s a critical part of who we are and why we do what we do. We hold ourselves to account to do better, to do right, and to share our collective wins, because then we become better and stronger together. The whole really is greater than the sum of its parts when it comes to software engineering. 

Eating your own dog food is a well known and simple premise. If you’re going to use something, understand it completely. Fix it when it breaks, improve it if you can and grow as you learn - that’s how credibility is earned. 

At Bitpool, open source is a way of life. Every connector, API, and model that powers the platform is something we’ve tested, extended, and improved from the ground up. 

Where the dog food really gets eaten 

Our Service Delivery team use feedback from our platform every day as part of our managed service.  They’re always on the front line, listening, monitoring, tuning and optimising our solution to really amplify performance, so every insight and improvement gets fed into the development pipeline.  

In my mind, this embodies the true spirit of ‘eating your own dog food.’ Using our own platform in production means your feedback and platform updates are live and constant. This keeps us connected to the live issues and opportunities our customers are facing - and relentlessly focused on what works best in the real world. 

Practice what you preach 

In our team, every engineer is expected to understand the inner workings of the open frameworks our platform is built on. That means getting hands-on with libraries, digging into documentation, and participating in community forums.  

Too many companies treat open source like a shortcut to accelerate development. Of course, the byproduct of open source is that we move faster, however at our core, we’re invested in contributing to the wider network so that the industry benefits and we move forward together. 

The credibility loop 

This contribution-first mindset changes other’s perceptions of you as a developer and impacts the visibility and credibility of your brand.  When you engage with open-source communities, you become trusted collaborators. And people who both consume solutions and create them are highly valued and trusted. 

My first-hand experience proves that these community relationships pay back in unexpected ways. A bug fix shared on a GitHub thread can lead to an introduction with a global developer. A shared repo can turn into a new integration partner. At the end of the day, open source is the world’s biggest peer review process. If you can stand up to community scrutiny, your code will stand up anywhere. 

Coding with humility 

It’s important never to think you’re infallible and open source is a critical part of that journey. There’s a certain humility that comes with open-source participation and becoming part of the conversation. When you contribute code to a global community, you know you’re not the smartest person in the room. 

You might start by thinking you’ve solved a problem better than anyone else, until you see how someone on the other side of the world managed to achieve the same thing in three lines of code – it’s the ultimate in perspective giving!  

Learning through contribution 

For me personally, and for Bitpool, open-source engagement is a way of life and learning.  By giving back to the community, we stay plugged into the latest technologies, standards, and innovations while sharpening the curiosity and expertise of our people. 

And if you ever needed to learn about coding well, open source teaches you how to write modular, well-documented code that others can understand, while still exploring new ideas and solving problems at speed. 

The moment you stop contributing, you stop learning. 

Long-term value over short-term wins 

Our focus will continue to be about long-term value, over short-term wins.  We want to be remembered for helping build the foundation of a smarter industry so that, if someone in five years uses our code to make their building more efficient, everyone has won. We’re not about owning intelligence, but enabling it, one contribution, one collaboration, and one line of code at a time.