Re: [gentoo-project] Improving our people

[Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org>]

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On 16:04 Wed 21 Jan     , Douglas Anderson wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 1:32 PM, Donnie Berkholz <dberkholz@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > On 20:30 Tue 20 Jan     , Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> >> It isn't necessarily obvious from a recruiter's interaction with a
> >> mentor whether he is good at the actual task of mentoring.
> >
> > We could take a tip from the Summer of Code and have both mentor and
> > mentee fill out a quick eval at the end of probation. This would perhaps
> > be more valuable over a longer probation.
> >
> 
> The evaluation is a good idea, but it would have to be something maybe
> only devrel had access to.

How would mentors know what they need to improve upon?

One way to answer this is to have 2 sections -- 1 optional section that 
only recruiters see, and 1 that the mentor sees.

> With the Summer of Code, many students leave the project after they're 
> finished,

The best ones stay. And they fill out evals too, so it's clearly a 
solvable problem.

> but with a new dev they're just starting a (hopefully) long 
> relationship with their mentor. I personally would hesitate to point 
> out the weak points of an experienced developer if I were just 
> starting out here. Something to think about...

I would love to improve my mentoring, and suggestions to help me are 
welcome. Pointing out unfixable weak points is also welcome because 
those are areas I should avoid, instead focusing on what I'm good at.

-- 
Thanks,
Donnie

Donnie Berkholz
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Blog: http://dberkholz.wordpress.com

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