Re: a few thoughts on the schedule

On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 10:35 AM, Andres Freund <andres(at)anarazel(dot)de> wrote:
> I'm not sure. ISTM that a painfull couple hours every now and then are
> much less bad than the continuous CF we had lately. I personally also
> find it frustrating to go through the CF and see a good portion of
> things that I never can see going anywhere, but that still suck up
> resources.
>
> I'd actually be willing to do triage every now and then; but I don't
> think it should always be the same person. For one it does come with
> power, for another it's nice to now always be the person having to tell
> people that their stuff isn't relevant/good/whatever enough. It's also
> not good to needlessly build up SPOFs.

It's pretty hard to tell someone that they're working on something
that doesn't matter to us. That's why it happens comparatively rarely.
If I told some new contributor that their patch was not worth our
time, I'd fully expect some other experienced hacker to show up 5
minutes later and tell me I'm wrong, unless perhaps the idea was
shockingly bad, which is rare.

>> Unless talented reviewers can get such job offers, we are going to
>> continue to have trouble making ends meet.
>
> Hasn't every talented reviewer gotten job offers shortly afterwards in
> the last few years? The ones that accept don't necessarily work that
> much in the community, but several seem to. And I think in the case of
> several people the reason they don't, is less the company, but that it's
> emotionally draining.

I think that's very true, and often unacknowledged. Reviewing other
people's work can be very difficult. I do not enjoy conflict with
other people on this mailing list one bit, and that's getting harder
to deal with on a personal level over time, not easier.

--
Peter Geoghegan