[gentoo-project] Question for 2020 council candidates: Dev recruitment status

[gentoo-project] Question for 2020 council candidates: Dev recruitment status

[Joonas Niilola]

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This is the yearly repeating question: How do you view the current
recruitment status in Gentoo?

In your opinion...
 - are we getting enough new devs on board?
 - does the current recruitment system work?
 - can the current devbase handle "everything" (we have a lot of
low-manned projects)? If not, how could council aid in?
 - why do we have hundreds of contributors who'll never become devs? (is
there a problem in "marketing", or is the recruitment process too hard,
or something else?)
 - should council stay away from this topic, and leave every decision to
recruiters? (If I remember correctly, recruiters project were dropped to
1 person because they had internal issues deciding how to handle future
recruitment). I'm also asking this because I have a suggestion to renew
recruitment process a bit. Should I post my suggestion to -core for
every dev to see, -project for everyone to see, or contact recruiters
who can silently approve/disapprove/modify my suggestion, without anyone
else knowing what I suggested?

Below are some stats I dug up, and expect no reply.

From git log:
 - 2018 we had 8 new tree-access devs,
 - 2019 we had 5 new tree-access devs,
 - 2020 we've had 0, and publically 1 candidate can be found.

Disclaimer: I don't wish to belittle devs without commit access, it's
just harder to find their recruit dates.

Looking at recent git activity, we seem to have ~90-100 active devs
working regularily on ::gentoo tree. And currently ~30 somewhat
inactiveish devs. ~+15 000 packages.

Disclaimer: I don't have any distrust towards recruiters. I want to know
our nominees thoughts on this subject.

-- juippis



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Re: [gentoo-project] Question for 2020 council candidates: Dev recruitment status

[Mikle Kolyada]

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Hello,  Joonas

On 28.06.2020 14:43, Joonas Niilola wrote:
> This is the yearly repeating question: How do you view the current
> recruitment status in Gentoo?
>
> In your opinion...
>  - are we getting enough new devs on board?
No
>  - does the current recruitment system work?
Clarification needed. Do we define "recruitment" as a period of time
between quizzes submission  and the final decision, or do we also
include mentoring period?
The hardest part of the entire process is mentoring.
It is really _hard_ to find a mentor. Very little amount of people
want to devote their time on teaching, even less do it with
great enthusiasm. From my  very personal observations
the more time a mentee spends with a mentor the less time
a recruiter spends to finish the review.
>  - can the current devbase handle "everything" (we have a lot of
> low-manned projects)? If not, how could council aid in?
We could do much better, that is for sure.

>  - why do we have hundreds of contributors who'll never become devs? (is
> there a problem in "marketing", or is the recruitment process too hard,
> or something else?)
Some people consider quizzes difficult, overall, I have already explained
before why quizzes are like that. I could only repeat myself, but
I guess you know the answer (not sure if I must bring this up to the thread
again). Apart from that, proxied contributions are easier
to conduct and a proxied person takes much less responsibility.

>  - should council stay away from this topic, and leave every decision to
> recruiters? (If I remember correctly, recruiters project were dropped to
> 1 person because they had internal issues deciding how to handle future
> recruitment). I'm also asking this because I have a suggestion to renew
> recruitment process a bit. Should I post my suggestion to -core for
> every dev to see, -project for everyone to see, or contact recruiters
> who can silently approve/disapprove/modify my suggestion, without anyone
> else knowing what I suggested?

The entire story was based on the opinion of a single council member
who suddenly decided not to contact recruiters before posting anything
to the - core ml. I guess this was explained very well by gokturk.

If you are interested in helping out, consider this my reply an invitation
to become a recruiter.
> [..]
> -- juippis
>
>



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Re: [gentoo-project] Question for 2020 council candidates: Dev recruitment status

[Joonas Niilola]

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On 6/28/20 4:11 PM, Mikle Kolyada wrote:
> Hello,  Joonas
>
> On 28.06.2020 14:43, Joonas Niilola wrote:
>
>>  - does the current recruitment system work?
> Clarification needed. Do we define "recruitment" as a period of time
> between quizzes submission  and the final decision, or do we also
> include mentoring period?
>
Yep, I meant the whole process. Finding a mentor, filling a quiz, going
through the quiz with your mentor, involving recruiters, finishing up
with recruiters. I see your answer covers the whole spectrum.

-- juippis



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Re: [gentoo-project] Question for 2020 council candidates: Dev recruitment status

[Joonas Niilola]

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On 6/28/20 4:11 PM, Mikle Kolyada wrote:
> If you are interested in helping out, consider this my reply an invitation
> to become a recruiter.
>
(This thread isn't about me, but) Thanks, I accept this invitation!

-- juippis



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Re: [gentoo-project] Question for 2020 council candidates: Dev recruitment status

[Michał Górny]

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On Sun, 2020-06-28 at 14:43 +0300, Joonas Niilola wrote:
> This is the yearly repeating question: How do you view the current
> recruitment status in Gentoo?

I know I'm not being asked but I'd like to leave a short note
to the context.

> In your opinion...
>  - are we getting enough new devs on board?
>  - does the current recruitment system work?
>  - can the current devbase handle "everything" (we have a lot of
> low-manned projects)? If not, how could council aid in?
>  - why do we have hundreds of contributors who'll never become devs? (is
> there a problem in "marketing", or is the recruitment process too hard,
> or something else?)
>  - should council stay away from this topic, and leave every decision to
> recruiters?

I would suggest we leave Council out of recruitment problem, and let
the Triumvirate deal with it.

> (If I remember correctly, recruiters project were dropped to
> 1 person because they had internal issues deciding how to handle future
> recruitment).

For the future, please don't spread rumors like that without confirming
them first.  Some people may assume this to be true and never look into
the next mail correcting this.

>  - 2020 we've had 0, and publically 1 candidate can be found.

Please remember that in middle of covid-19 people have higher priorities
than looking into joining open source projects.  In other words, 'it's
not just us'.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny


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Re: [gentoo-project] Question for 2020 council candidates: Dev recruitment status

[Aaron Bauman]

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On Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 02:43:16PM +0300, Joonas Niilola wrote:
> This is the yearly repeating question: How do you view the current
> recruitment status in Gentoo?
> 
> In your opinion...
>  - are we getting enough new devs on board?

No, I do not believe we are seeing enough recruits come on board. Given
the unique year that is 2020, we are obviously seeing an even lower
amount of recruits. 

While I do not believe we are seeing enough recruits, I do not have a
good reasoning as to why. Quizzes to much of a barrier? Easier to simply
push items through p-m? Not even interest in Gentoo overall?

Just a few thoughts...

>  - does the current recruitment system work?

I believe it does and to attest to zlogene's comments, it really matters
on the quality of the mentor and the recruit. There are, of course, a
few individuals who say the quizzes are not an effective method and have
"held out" because of this. Ultimately, I think spending the time to do
it is worth while and regardless of an individuals background... you
will learn something. Whether from the quiz directly or from your
mentor and recruiter.

>  - can the current devbase handle "everything" (we have a lot of
> low-manned projects)? If not, how could council aid in?

Absolutely not! This is not to imply that our devs are not capable, but
the amount of devs to ebuilds is not an effective ratio... this is
magnified by the fact that we all (mostly) volunteer our time here.

>  - why do we have hundreds of contributors who'll never become devs? (is
> there a problem in "marketing", or is the recruitment process too hard,
> or something else?)

See above for my thoughts.

>  - should council stay away from this topic, and leave every decision to
> recruiters? (If I remember correctly, recruiters project were dropped to
> 1 person because they had internal issues deciding how to handle future
> recruitment). I'm also asking this because I have a suggestion to renew
> recruitment process a bit. Should I post my suggestion to -core for
> every dev to see, -project for everyone to see, or contact recruiters
> who can silently approve/disapprove/modify my suggestion, without anyone
> else knowing what I suggested?
> 

I have had this same discussion with the recruiters and through the
insight of zlogene I began to understand it more. Once a recruit is
properly prepped and quizzes are done the process is pretty seamless...
if the mentor and recruit fail in this phase then it will cause
slowdowns. I have seen recruits submit their quizzes and within a week
or two are onboarded by the recruiters. Further, I have seen quite the
opposite. It works.

-- 
Cheers,
Aaron

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Re: [gentoo-project] Question for 2020 council candidates: Dev recruitment status

[Benda Xu]

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Aaron Bauman <bman@gentoo.org> writes:

> While I do not believe we are seeing enough recruits, I do not have a
> good reasoning as to why. Quizzes to much of a barrier? Easier to simply
> push items through p-m? Not even interest in Gentoo overall?
>
> Just a few thoughts...

IMHO, Gentoo quizzes are easier than Debian new maintainer interviews. I
don't think the difficulty of quizzes is the main factor.

Benda

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Re: [gentoo-project] Question for 2020 council candidates: Dev recruitment status

[Andreas K. Huettel]

Am Sonntag, 28. Juni 2020, 14:43:16 EEST schrieb Joonas Niilola:
> This is the yearly repeating question: How do you view the current
> recruitment status in Gentoo?
> 
> In your opinion...
>  - are we getting enough new devs on board?

No.

>  - does the current recruitment system work?

Yes, as in the recruiters are doing their job. 
No, as in we do not have enough people mentoring. 

My mentor was Theo (tampakrap). He mercilessly had me rework my quizzes 4 or 5 
times (I still have the versions somewhere) and expand on the questions in 
many different ways far beyond the obvious, literal answers. I learned a lot. 
His comment was "we only go to the recruiters once you're really ready".

Afterwards, the actual process with the recruiters was fast and easy.

So, message to all devs: If you think Gentoo is short on man- or womanpower, 
find someone to mentor, and mentor her/him well! Be aware that this is a 
significant time commitment though from both mentor and mentee.

>  - why do we have hundreds of contributors who'll never become devs? (is
> there a problem in "marketing", or is the recruitment process too hard,
> or something else?)

I don't think it's hundreds.

Technically, the quizzes process is (also) one way to make sure you are able 
to put up an effort. (One of the reasons why we have so many scientists here 
is, if you've ever written a thesis, writing down the Gentoo quizzes may be a 
bit tedious but since you want to achieve something (get commit access) you 
just do it and get it done.)

However, I agree that there may be contributors for whom literally "doing the 
quizzes" is not the ideal way for signing up. I do not mind if we end up being 
somewhat flexible there when someone clearly shows a lot of technical 
knowledge, but that is then at the *recruiters'* discretion - they need to 
figure out somehow if the candidate is OK.

> I'm also asking this because I have a suggestion to renew
> recruitment process a bit. Should I post my suggestion to -core for
> every dev to see, -project for everyone to see, or contact recruiters
> who can silently approve/disapprove/modify my suggestion, without anyone
> else knowing what I suggested?

Start talking informally to recruiters. But since you've already joined there 
anyway (great! keep the momentum, it's work but worthwhile...) you'll find a 
way.

> From git log:
>  - 2018 we had 8 new tree-access devs,
>  - 2019 we had 5 new tree-access devs,
>  - 2020 we've had 0, and publically 1 candidate can be found.

Yeah... 2020 is a tad "special", I fear.

Cheers, 
Andreas

-- 
Andreas K. Hüttel
dilfridge@gentoo.org
Gentoo Linux developer 
(council, qa, toolchain, base-system, perl, libreoffice)