call for applications: hacker mentoring 2025

Hi,

About a year ago, I attempted to start a mentoring program for code
contributors. In the end, 34 people applied, 21 of whom had some
on-list presence on pgsql-hackers, 10 committers agreed to mentor a
total of 15 applicants. Now, it's time once again to open
applications. Of the 15 mentor-mentee relationships, nine will
continue for the coming year, and six will (for various reasons) be
dissolved. Now it's time to reopen applications so that some new
people can hopefully get involved. If you're looking for a committer
to mentor you, here's the form to fill out:

https://forms.gle/mxTMigxM3Mg3o3me8

For the avoidance of doubt, I will email the six people who are not
continuing with their current mentors just after I send this email, so
that they know that they should fill out this form if they want to try
to find a new mentor. The nine people who are continuing with their
current mentors do not need to reapply.

I have made some changes to the form for this year in response to
feedback. A major concern that I heard was that not all mentors are
willing to provide the same kinds of support; for example, I will give
people advice about projects they're currently doing, but I rarely
suggest entirely new projects. That might work for some people, but
not others; hence, this year's form allows mentees to say what they
want their mentor to do for them, so that potential mentors can judge
whether there is a fit.

Also, a number of mentors stated that they really wanted to be
mentoring people who were either on their way to becoming committers
themselves or at least people who were highly involved. Therefore,
this year's form asks about what kind of work each applicant intends
to do and how much time they anticipate being able to spend on it.
This is intended to help committers understand, when offering to
mentor someone, how involved that person intends to be, and also to
judge the level of fit between the applicant's interests and their
own.

I plan to leave this form open for applications until April 4, so you
have a bit more than 2 weeks to fill it out if interested. After that,
I'll contact committers and see who is willing to mentor which
applicants. Given the fairly large number of mentees continuing with
their current mentors, the number of new spots may be quite limited.
So, please don't feel bad if you don't get matched with someone. On
the other hand, please do apply if you're interested: it's entirely
possible that some new committers will agree to participate, in which
case we have more spots, and in any case, somebody who might not have
agreed to mentor anyone else might agree to mentor YOU. You won't find
out unless you try!

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