Re: Description of tasks
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 12:04:26 +0200, Ingo Juergensmann
<ij@2004.bluespice.org> said:
> And: current officers tend to not let other people in to do their
> work. If those make a secret out of their job, it's really unlikely
> that others can take over their jobs - and thus making it easy to
> argue: "hey, there's simply noone else that can make my job!"
Hmm. I am working 50 hour weeks, and put in around 15-20
hours a week on my packages, working on policy bugs, and putting in
the work that lets these GR's go off fairly glitch-free, and you
wonder why I don't spend more time making notes about what I do
(most of which is fairly vosoble and routine) just in case?
Most of the duties are not rocket science -- and I do believe
that anyone reasonably competent -- anyone able to do the job itself
-- can pick it up without cliffs cheat notes, as I did.
> Let me use an old example (just as an example, not as a base for a
> new discussion): Administrating a buildd is surely somewhat that
> sounds complex and difficult to many people. Setting up a buildd and
> all the stuff is not something that average Joe User can do. But
> that doesn't mean that other people can't learn how to do this.
> When I started with my m68k buildd, even some porters didn't really
> know how to setup a buildd. We had to ask Roman Hodek for
> details. But we (i.e. m68k porters) have learned and shared that
> knowledge, which led to a broad number of m68k buildd admins, giving
> a redundancy not only in buildd machines but as well in buildd
> admins. Some other ports decided to go a different way and to act
> with single buildd admins. There are known problems with this.
That is the difference -- some people were interested in the
task, had put in a certain amount of effort, and thus at least were
aware of the background and the tasks. Telling people already
committed and working about some task is far easier than writing a
fool proof manual.
If you want to learn to do what a Secretary does
a) Read and memorize and _understand_ the constitution
b) download devotee, and play with it. There are simple wrappers
that are on master in my home directory (~srivasta/bin) that are
visible to DD's -- including the graph generators.
Put in some effort. Do not expect to be spoon fed.
> Conclusion: Either you can share your knowledge and broaden your
> workload to many shoulders or you can act on your own and make a
> secret out of your business and a single point of failure out of
> yourself.
Wrong attitude. I am stretched far enough just doing what I
do (and am several weeks behind, really). You want to learn, do what
the ancient Indian students did -- spend some effort and get
started, and ask when you are stuck.
> And you could harm the project when you're loaded with real life
> work, so you can't do your Debian work as much as you should do.
That is certainly true for me. So, you want to replace me now?
>> My point is that I think there should be documents describing the
>> role positions and their exact extents. Moreover, the keepers of
>> role positions should be persuaded to extend these job descriptions
>> with all kinds of resources they have accumulated during their
>> terms. Such a document must be able to convey the extent of the job
>> and allow someone with enthusiasm and time to get up to speed in
>> short time.
Au contraire. Look at what happened in release management --
people were inducted as journeymen rm's, and learned hands on. No
document is ever likely to be as comprehensive. Instead of
burdening people who do the work with the task of spoon feeding
people, let the people interested in the roles put in some effort.
> And not only job/task descriptions! There has to be manuals
> describing regular problems and how to solve them!
Ah yes. And who is tasked with writing them?
> Yeah, an accident can happen to everyone. What is the emergency
> plan, when something like that would happen to some important role
> persons in Debian?
When the previous secretary went missing, I stepped in, read
the constitution, and wrote devotee. And coped. This is not rocket
science, people. Stop wanting to be spoon fed.
manoj
--
Talent does what it can. Genius does what it must. You do what you get
paid to do.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
1024R/C7261095 print CB D9 F4 12 68 07 E4 05 CC 2D 27 12 1D F5 E8 6E
1024D/BF24424C print 4966 F272 D093 B493 410B 924B 21BA DABB BF24 424C
Reply to: