Re: [gentoo-dev] Recruitment process is moving back to quizzes

[Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org>]

On 15 July 2012 21:27, Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 7:56 AM, Ciaran McCreesh
> <ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 13:15:26 +0800
>> Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>> The first time I did the quizzes, it took me 9 months. After having
>>> been away for a couple of years, I recently returned as Gentoo
>>> dev, and the second time I did the quizzes it took me 3 months.
>>> I've seen others take a long time doing them as well. Davide (pesa),
>>> one of our most valued contributors in the Qt team, took close
>>> to two years I think.
>>
>> If it's taking you that long, you're doing something wrong... The
>> quizzes are pretty easy, and only test the bare minimum of what you
>> should know. They shouldn't take you more than a couple of hours.
>
> I'd be interested in why it was taking so long as well.  I took the
> quizzes first when becoming an AT, and later when becoming a dev.  The
> level of rigor was much higher of course when becoming a dev - which
> was appropriate.  I did struggle because policies were not always
> spelled out, so many of the questions took interaction with my mentor
> to resolve.  Sometimes the indirectness of some of the questions was
> frustrating, but it didn't take more than maybe 8 hours in total with
> revisions/etc.

It's not that it takes all that much time. It can be done in say one or two
workdays. But you need to set aside a block of time (and usually two,
one for each of the quizzes, or more if you need to break it up or
iterate over it after feedback) in which you can be relatively
distraction-free and well concentrated. You need to make sure
to check the documentation to find the wanted answers, and word
your answers carefully to be precise and cover all angles.

Since it is a low-urgency and low-fun task, most of us will end up
doing other things on our to-do list, or simply being distracted.
It then gets postponed again and again and again.

-- 
Cheers,

Ben | yngwin
Gentoo developer
Gentoo Qt project lead, Gentoo Wiki admin