Thread: call for applications: mentoring program for code contributors

Hi,

I'm working to start a mentoring program where code contributors can
be mentored by current committers. Applications are now open:
https://forms.gle/dgjmdxtHYXCSg6aB7

Nine committers have volunteered to mentor one person each; hence, the
anticipated number of acceptances is less than or equal to nine. In
the future, we may have more mentors, or some mentors may be willing
to take more than one mentee, or some mentoring relationships may end,
opening up spots for new people, but right now I have nine slots
maximum. Even if less than nine people apply initially, that doesn't
guarantee that your application will be accepted, because the way this
works is you can only be matched to a committer if you want to be
matched with them and they want to be matched with you. If you don't
already have a significant track record on pgsql-hackers, it is
probably unlikely that you will find a mentor in this program at this
time. Even if you do, you may not match with a mentor for any number
of reasons: not enough slots, time zone, language issues, your
particular interests as contrasted with those of the mentors, etc.

The basic expectation around mentorship is that your mentor will have
a voice call with you at least once per month for at least one hour.
Before that call, you should give them some idea what you'd like to
talk about and they should do some non-zero amount of preparation.
During that call, they'll try to give you some useful advice. Maybe
they'll be willing to do other things, too, like review and commit
your patches, or email back and forth with you off-list, or chat using
an instant messaging service, but if they do any of that stuff, that's
extra. Either the mentor or the mentee is free to end the mentoring
relationship at any time for any reason, or for no reason. If that
happens, please let me know, whether it's because of an explicit
decision on someone's part, or because somehow the monthly voice calls
have ceased to occur.

Periodically, someone -- most likely not me, since a few people have
been kind enough to offer help -- will contact mentors and mentees to
get feedback on how things are going. We'll use this feedback to
improve the program, which might involve adjusting mentoring
assignments, or might involve taking such other actions as the
situation may suggest.

In the future, I would like to expand this program to include
non-committer mentors. The idea would be that committers would most
likely want to mentor more senior contributors and senior
non-committers could mentor more junior contributors, so that we pay
it all forward. If this is something you'd be interested in
participating in, whether as a co-organizer, mentor, or mentee, please
let me know. It might also be advantageous to expand this program, or
have a separate program, to mentor people making non-code
contributions e.g. mentoring for conference organizers. I've chosen to
focus on mentorship for code contribution because I know enough about
it to function as an organizer for such an effort.

If you apply for this program, you can expect to receive an email from
me in the next couple of weeks letting you know the result of your
application. If for some reason that does not occur, please feel free
to email me privately, but note that I'll want to give a bit of time
for people to see this email and fill out the form before doing
anything, and then I'll need to talk over possibilities with the
mentors before finalizing anything, so it will take a bit of time.

Finally, I would like to extend a special thanks to the mentors for
volunteering to mentor, and a more general thanks to everyone who
contributes to PostgreSQL in any way or is interested in doing so for
their interest in and hard work on the project.

Thanks,

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com

On Jun 20, 2024, at 13:12, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm working to start a mentoring program where code contributors can
> be mentored by current committers. Applications are now open:
> https://forms.gle/dgjmdxtHYXCSg6aB7

This is amazing! Thank you for putting it together, Robert.

Best,

David

Hi,

> > I'm working to start a mentoring program where code contributors can
> > be mentored by current committers. Applications are now open:
> > https://forms.gle/dgjmdxtHYXCSg6aB7
>
> This is amazing! Thank you for putting it together, Robert.

Great initiative! Thanks Rovert and to everyone involved.

-- 
Best regards,
Aleksander Alekseev

On 20/06/2024 19:12, Robert Haas wrote:

>
> I'm working to start a mentoring program where code contributors can
> be mentored by current committers. Applications are now open:
> https://forms.gle/dgjmdxtHYXCSg6aB7

> Periodically, someone -- most likely not me, since a few people have
> been kind enough to offer help -- will contact mentors and mentees to
> get feedback on how things are going. We'll use this feedback to
> improve the program, which might involve adjusting mentoring
> assignments, or might involve taking such other actions as the
> situation may suggest.

I'm offering to help with this part.

-- 
                Andreas 'ads' Scherbaum
German PostgreSQL User Group
European PostgreSQL User Group - Board of Directors
Volunteer Regional Contact, Germany - PostgreSQL Project

On Thu, Jun 20, 2024 at 1:12 PM Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm working to start a mentoring program where code contributors can
> be mentored by current committers. Applications are now open:
> https://forms.gle/dgjmdxtHYXCSg6aB7

Applications are now closed. Initially, I had imagined just keeping
this form more or less indefinitely, but that looks clearly
impractical at this point, so what I'm going to do instead is create a
new form at some future point TBD and repeat this process, taking into
account what needs we have at that time. Part of the reason it seems
impractical to keep the form open is because a significant percentage
of applications are from people who have posted a total of zero (0)
emails to pgsql-hackers, and I don't want to waste my time or that of
other committers by relying to such inquiries one by one. Hence, the
form is closed for now, but with the intention of having a new one at
some point when the time seems opportune. That will also give people
who did not find a match this time an opportunity to resubmit if
they're still interested.

Matching is largely complete at this point. I expect to send emails to
all applicants letting them know what happened with their application
soon, hopefully tomorrow (my time). In preparation for that, allow me
to say that I'm very pleased with the number of acceptances that I
anticipate being able to extend. Some committers ended up deciding to
take two mentees, which is really great. More details on that soon.
Nonetheless, I am sure that those who did not find a mentor for one
reason or another will be disappointed. I hope that no one will be so
disappointed that they give up on hacking on PostgreSQL. Remember, if
you didn't get matched to a mentor, you're no worse off than you were
before, and your work on PostgreSQL is no less valuable than it was
before! I am also hoping to start up something to provide some more
limited support to people who didn't match to a mentor, and I'll tell
you more about that when and if I have more to say.

Thanks,

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com

Hi,

I've now sent acceptance and rejection emails to, I believe, all
applicants. If you applied and didn't get an email, let me know.

For those who may be interested in the statistics, I received 34
applications. Although I initially anticipated being unable to accept
more than 9, because we had 9 committers volunteer to mentor, it
turned out that five of those committers ended up wanting to mentor
two people each, so I ended up being able to send 14 acceptances. I'm
fairly satisfied with that, especially because 12 or 13 of the people
who were rejected have not, to the best of my ability to figure such
things out, ever sent an email to the list. Of course, it would be
nice to do better, but I feel like for the first time around, this
went well.

Let's see how things go from here!

...Robert