[gentoo-dev] Delay in approval of new developers

[Andrew Ross <aross@gentoo.org>]

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Peter wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Sep 2006 17:01:02 -0400, Mike Pagano wrote:
>> Maybe a recruiting drive to help with the maintenance.  A typical
>> business brings on new blood and assigns them just that role to free up
>> more senior developers for more complicated projects.
>>
>> New developers should definitely meet a standard, but the possibility of
>> bringing developers with energy and potential to assist in maintenance
>> might be worth a consideration.
> 
> That's a laugh! Problem is that no devs seem to get approved in a timely
> fashion.

As a recently recruited developer, I'd just like to say that I was very
happy with the approval time of my recruitment bug (#139633), which was
filed on 2006-07-07 and resolved on 2006-08-08.

I understand that not all recruitments occur as quickly as mine, but I
also accept that Gentoo is comprised solely of volunteers, and that
devrel (and particularly recruiters) are understaffed (in terms of
available manhours - not necessarily project members).

> Having developers submit ebuild quizzes and
> then not hear for 6 weeks is silly.

I'll assume here that you're referring to hearing back from recruiters,
rather than a mentor. If a mentor is taking that long to respond they
need to be replaced, as per
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/recruiters/mentor.xml

If recruiters are taking that long, but it's due primarily to a lack of
manpower, then there's not much that can be done to improve the
situation. It's not like the potential-dev has to sit around twiddling
their thumbs - bugs still need to be fixed, and if there's a holdup with
devrel the mentor can offer to commit things on behalf of the recruitee.

Not all developers are cut out to be recruiters, and I'm sure some of
those who have what it takes would rather work on something else :-)
Much like infrastructure, my impression is that being a recruiter isn't
exactly a glamorous role. On top of that, the actions a recruiter must
perform for each recruitment aren't exactly 5 minute jobs:

"Recruiters need to possess several talents in order to successfully
oversee additions to the development team. First and foremost, a
recruiter needs to be a good judge of character. While most new
developer sponsors pick only the best candidates, there have been and
will be occasional duds. Recruiters need to be able to analyze an
individual's background, experience, and past contributions, then use
that information to decide whether or not to accept a developer.
Recruiters also need to be aware of the big picture in order to
recognize weaknesses in the organization and accept developers who will
shore up those weaknesses."
	http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/recruiters/

Cheers

Andrew



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