Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: "Andreas K. Huettel" <dilfridge@g.o>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o
Cc: Joonas Niilola <juippis@g.o>
Subject: Re: [gentoo-project] Question for 2020 council candidates: Dev recruitment status
Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2020 23:12:22
Message-Id: 2672930.Ex9A2HvPv6@noumea
In Reply to: [gentoo-project] Question for 2020 council candidates: Dev recruitment status by Joonas Niilola
1 Am Sonntag, 28. Juni 2020, 14:43:16 EEST schrieb Joonas Niilola:
2 > This is the yearly repeating question: How do you view the current
3 > recruitment status in Gentoo?
4 >
5 > In your opinion...
6 > - are we getting enough new devs on board?
7
8 No.
9
10 > - does the current recruitment system work?
11
12 Yes, as in the recruiters are doing their job.
13 No, as in we do not have enough people mentoring.
14
15 My mentor was Theo (tampakrap). He mercilessly had me rework my quizzes 4 or 5
16 times (I still have the versions somewhere) and expand on the questions in
17 many different ways far beyond the obvious, literal answers. I learned a lot.
18 His comment was "we only go to the recruiters once you're really ready".
19
20 Afterwards, the actual process with the recruiters was fast and easy.
21
22 So, message to all devs: If you think Gentoo is short on man- or womanpower,
23 find someone to mentor, and mentor her/him well! Be aware that this is a
24 significant time commitment though from both mentor and mentee.
25
26 > - why do we have hundreds of contributors who'll never become devs? (is
27 > there a problem in "marketing", or is the recruitment process too hard,
28 > or something else?)
29
30 I don't think it's hundreds.
31
32 Technically, the quizzes process is (also) one way to make sure you are able
33 to put up an effort. (One of the reasons why we have so many scientists here
34 is, if you've ever written a thesis, writing down the Gentoo quizzes may be a
35 bit tedious but since you want to achieve something (get commit access) you
36 just do it and get it done.)
37
38 However, I agree that there may be contributors for whom literally "doing the
39 quizzes" is not the ideal way for signing up. I do not mind if we end up being
40 somewhat flexible there when someone clearly shows a lot of technical
41 knowledge, but that is then at the *recruiters'* discretion - they need to
42 figure out somehow if the candidate is OK.
43
44 > I'm also asking this because I have a suggestion to renew
45 > recruitment process a bit. Should I post my suggestion to -core for
46 > every dev to see, -project for everyone to see, or contact recruiters
47 > who can silently approve/disapprove/modify my suggestion, without anyone
48 > else knowing what I suggested?
49
50 Start talking informally to recruiters. But since you've already joined there
51 anyway (great! keep the momentum, it's work but worthwhile...) you'll find a
52 way.
53
54 > From git log:
55 > - 2018 we had 8 new tree-access devs,
56 > - 2019 we had 5 new tree-access devs,
57 > - 2020 we've had 0, and publically 1 candidate can be found.
58
59 Yeah... 2020 is a tad "special", I fear.
60
61 Cheers,
62 Andreas
63
64 --
65 Andreas K. Hüttel
66 dilfridge@g.o
67 Gentoo Linux developer
68 (council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)