[gentoo-project] Should returning developers be handled before first timers?

[gentoo-project] Should returning developers be handled before first timers?

[Petteri Räty]

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Currently the recruiting team handles returning developers in the same
way as people joining the first time. The question that I have been
presented with is if they should get priority? The reasoning being that
in their case it's more about making sure their skills are updated than
making sure they won't cause problems etc. Ideally of course we could
process everyone quickly enough that this wouldn't be a problem but
history has proved this to be challenging to say the least.

Regards,
Petteri


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Re: [gentoo-project] Should returning developers be handled before first timers?

[Petteri Räty]

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On 02/16/2011 07:22 PM, Patrick Lauer wrote:
> On 02/16/11 17:50, Petteri Räty wrote:
>> Currently the recruiting team handles returning developers in the same
>> way as people joining the first time. The question that I have been
>> presented with is if they should get priority? 
> 
> My opinion is that yes, they should be prioritized. They have, in the
> past, already shown that they do know the relevant things, and if they
> wish to return we should make it easy for them.
> 
>> The reasoning being that
>> in their case it's more about making sure their skills are updated than
>> making sure they won't cause problems etc. Ideally of course we could
>> process everyone quickly enough that this wouldn't be a problem but
>> history has proved this to be challenging to say the least.
> That is another issue - recruiting is a difficult and slow process. What
> can we do to make it work better?
> 

I am hoping to get the web application (pending on infra) live and see
how much that helps but let's keep this thread on the main topic. Please
start a new thread for a more general discussion if you think it's
warranted.

Regards,
Petteri


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Re: [gentoo-project] Should returning developers be handled before first timers?

[Patrick Lauer]

On 02/16/11 17:50, Petteri Räty wrote:
> Currently the recruiting team handles returning developers in the same
> way as people joining the first time. The question that I have been
> presented with is if they should get priority? 

My opinion is that yes, they should be prioritized. They have, in the
past, already shown that they do know the relevant things, and if they
wish to return we should make it easy for them.

> The reasoning being that
> in their case it's more about making sure their skills are updated than
> making sure they won't cause problems etc. Ideally of course we could
> process everyone quickly enough that this wouldn't be a problem but
> history has proved this to be challenging to say the least.
That is another issue - recruiting is a difficult and slow process. What
can we do to make it work better?

> 
> Regards,
> Petteri
> 


-- 
Patrick Lauer         http://service.gentooexperimental.org

Gentoo Council Member and Evangelist
Part of Gentoo Benchmarks, Forensics, PostgreSQL, KDE herds

Re: [gentoo-project] Should returning developers be handled before first timers?

[Ultrabug]

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On 16/02/2011 17:50, Petteri Räty wrote:
> Currently the recruiting team handles returning developers in the same
> way as people joining the first time. The question that I have been
> presented with is if they should get priority? The reasoning being that
> in their case it's more about making sure their skills are updated than
> making sure they won't cause problems etc. Ideally of course we could
> process everyone quickly enough that this wouldn't be a problem but
> history has proved this to be challenging to say the least.
>
> Regards,
> Petteri
>
New comer point of view : I would have found this rather normal that a
returning dev would bypass my application as he should consume less time
in the recruitment process and be more quickly operational than me once
he's been integrated back. From what I've seen so far, there's not so
many of them anyway so this shouldn't change much the wait.

In my point of view there is no drawback to getting willing and capable
devs back home so they can help asap. It would be a good process to
preserve an overall efficiency of both the Gentoo recruitment and
development.

-- 
Ultrabug
Gentoo / cluster


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Re: [gentoo-project] Should returning developers be handled before first timers?

["Paweł Hajdan, Jr."]

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On 2/16/11 5:50 PM, Petteri Räty wrote:
> Currently the recruiting team handles returning developers in the
> same way as people joining the first time. The question that I have
> been presented with is if they should get priority?

I think that we should avoid any special treatment for non-technical
reasons.

However, I'd expect that returning developers would have to learn only
about some recent additions to Gentoo like EAPI, PMS, and maybe not even
that. That should make passing the quizzes much faster, with less
round-trips.

Paweł Hajdan, Jr.


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Re: [gentoo-project] Should returning developers be handled before first timers?

[Matt Turner]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 3:31 PM, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr."
<phajdan.jr@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On 2/16/11 5:50 PM, Petteri Räty wrote:
>> Currently the recruiting team handles returning developers in the
>> same way as people joining the first time. The question that I have
>> been presented with is if they should get priority?
>
> I think that we should avoid any special treatment for non-technical
> reasons.
>
> However, I'd expect that returning developers would have to learn only
> about some recent additions to Gentoo like EAPI, PMS, and maybe not even
> that. That should make passing the quizzes much faster, with less
> round-trips.

The round-trips (reviewing the quiz, fixing problems, reviewing again)
takes about 5% the time (just a guess from my experience) of the whole
recruitment process. It's really unimportant when the person being
recruited has waited ~6 months for a recruiter to become available.

The issue is whether former developers should be moved to the front of
the queue. I say yes, because we know that they'll be able to jump in
and start helping quickly, and the number of round-trips, as you say,
in the review process will be much fewer so they should only
negligibly slow down new developers' recruitment.

Matt

Re: [gentoo-project] Should returning developers be handled before first timers?

[Lukasz Damentko]

I think recruiters should be free to pick any order of processing
recruitments they consider the best for themselves and the work they
are doing, the recruits and the project as a whole.

If there's a developer waiting in the queue who hasn't lost his
kung-fu, process him first so he can start contributing right away
rather than wait for you to get through trainees who take longer to
train and examine. If there are new devs lined up for understaffed
projects, process those first to help those projects recover. So on.

Any artificial rule that encourages recruiters to process people in
the same order they are reporting for duty I'd consider problematic
for the recruitment process and in the long term harmful for Gentoo.

Imagine you are obliged to process bugs in the packages in the same
order they are filed without being able to prioritize. So whatever big
fixes you need to make have to wait until you get through everything
filed prior to them delaying important fix for less important ones.
You are able to fix bugs in your ebuilds in any order you please, why
shouldn't recruiters be allowed the same?

My suggestion is: let recruiters decide on their own who should be
processed when on case by case basis. If they feel like bumping
someone and have good reasons to do so, they should be allowed to. If
they feel someone (regardless if it's a returning or a new dev) can
wait a bit longer until other more needed or skilled candidate is
processed. I trust recruiters and their judgement in this matter and I
wouldn't want to limit them with any policies in this matter.

Kind regards,

Łukasz Damentko