Re: [gentoo-dev] [Gentoo Phoenix] recruitment process

[Markos Chandras]

On Monday 05 April 2010 21:51:34 Nathan Zachary wrote:
> On 05/04/10 11:07, Jon Portnoy wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 05, 2010 at 08:50:49AM +0300, Eray Aslan wrote:
> >> Just replying randomly.
> >>
> >> On 05.04.2010 04:33, Tobias Heinlein wrote:
> >>> I think this is a good starting point to get rid of the "some important
> >>> questions are too hard to answer" dilemma that can be implemented
> >>> relatively fast. On top of that I like Sebastian's idea to order the
> >>> quizzes by difficulty -- this means just ordering by the categories I
> >>> just mentioned would be sufficient: 1 first, then 2, then 3.
> >>
> >> I am not against this idea but frankly, I do not understand what is so
> >> demotivating about the ebuild quiz.  If you get demotivated because of a
> >> single exam, perhaps the problem is with the motivation and not with the
> >> exam itself.  I took the published quiz just for the fun of it and to
> >> see where I missed.  It is not that long.
> >
> > Agreed...
> >
> > I've been following this discussion with mixed feelings. When we
> > originally began using the quiz system the idea was simply to try
> > to force new developers to RTFM -- and I was not such a fan of the
> > entire concept (as I recall, the quizzes were a "suggestion" from
> > Daniel).
> >
> > As it turns out, the quiz system has repeatedly proven itself useful
> > in another way: developers who whine/bitch/moan and are hesitant to
> > even attempt to complete the quizzes often turn out to be bitchy,
> > unmotivated, or unpleasant developers. I don't want to name any names,
> > but I've seen this often.
> >
> > IMO, those "boring" "too much like high school" quizzes serve one
> > extremely valuable function: finding out up front who's a team player
> > (or at least willing to do something mildly unpleasant for the
> > Greater Good)
> >
> > If that's causing potential devs to drop out... perhaps the system is
> > working as it should? :)
>
> My problem with the quizzes is not that they have to be done, but rather
> the way they are structured.  I have read through the dev manual (which
> is excellent in explaining some things, and a little rough in others),
> but it would be much more enlightening to me to work on creating ebuilds
> while working one-on-one with a mentor.  For instance, in a recent
> ebuild I wrote, the application installed successfully but yielded
> sandbox errors.  By jumping on IRC and chatting with a few people, I
> readily found a solution to that problem.  Later, it was brought to my
> attention that there were other problems with the ebuild.  I would have
> never known about these issues solely from the information presented in
> the devmanual.  Therefore, I think the most valuable aspect of the
> recruitment process is "hands-on" time with ebuilds, commits, et cetera
> WHILE working with a mentor.
>
> --Zach
This is why it is good to train "wanna-be" developers in our overlays. 
Studying and blindly answering the quizzes is not enough. They have to work on 
actuall ebuilds, dealing with as many eclasses as possible and handle all kind 
of bugs in our bugzilla. In other words, recruitment must not be one-
dimensional but it has to cover all aspects of gentoo development
-- 
Markos Chandras (hwoarang)
Gentoo Linux Developer
Web: http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org