Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Andrew Ross <aross@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-dev] Delay in approval of new developers
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2006 09:30:52
Message-Id: 4513AC06.8020803@gentoo.org
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] Re: seeds, GLEPs, and projects by Peter
1 Peter wrote:
2 > On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:01:02 -0400, Mike Pagano wrote:
3 >> Maybe a recruiting drive to help with the maintenance. A typical
4 >> business brings on new blood and assigns them just that role to free up
5 >> more senior developers for more complicated projects.
6 >>
7 >> New developers should definitely meet a standard, but the possibility of
8 >> bringing developers with energy and potential to assist in maintenance
9 >> might be worth a consideration.
10 >
11 > That's a laugh! Problem is that no devs seem to get approved in a timely
12 > fashion.
13
14 As a recently recruited developer, I'd just like to say that I was very
15 happy with the approval time of my recruitment bug (#139633), which was
16 filed on 2006-07-07 and resolved on 2006-08-08.
17
18 I understand that not all recruitments occur as quickly as mine, but I
19 also accept that Gentoo is comprised solely of volunteers, and that
20 devrel (and particularly recruiters) are understaffed (in terms of
21 available manhours - not necessarily project members).
22
23 > Having developers submit ebuild quizzes and
24 > then not hear for 6 weeks is silly.
25
26 I'll assume here that you're referring to hearing back from recruiters,
27 rather than a mentor. If a mentor is taking that long to respond they
28 need to be replaced, as per
29 http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/recruiters/mentor.xml
30
31 If recruiters are taking that long, but it's due primarily to a lack of
32 manpower, then there's not much that can be done to improve the
33 situation. It's not like the potential-dev has to sit around twiddling
34 their thumbs - bugs still need to be fixed, and if there's a holdup with
35 devrel the mentor can offer to commit things on behalf of the recruitee.
36
37 Not all developers are cut out to be recruiters, and I'm sure some of
38 those who have what it takes would rather work on something else :-)
39 Much like infrastructure, my impression is that being a recruiter isn't
40 exactly a glamorous role. On top of that, the actions a recruiter must
41 perform for each recruitment aren't exactly 5 minute jobs:
42
43 "Recruiters need to possess several talents in order to successfully
44 oversee additions to the development team. First and foremost, a
45 recruiter needs to be a good judge of character. While most new
46 developer sponsors pick only the best candidates, there have been and
47 will be occasional duds. Recruiters need to be able to analyze an
48 individual's background, experience, and past contributions, then use
49 that information to decide whether or not to accept a developer.
50 Recruiters also need to be aware of the big picture in order to
51 recognize weaknesses in the organization and accept developers who will
52 shore up those weaknesses."
53 http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/recruiters/
54
55 Cheers
56
57 Andrew

Attachments

File name MIME type
signature.asc application/pgp-signature

Replies

Subject Author
[gentoo-dev] Re: Delay in approval of new developers Peter <sw98234@×××××××.com>