Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2021 14:58:31 -0400 From: Mason Loring Bliss <mason@blisses.org> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Mentoring framework? Message-ID: <20210425185831.GS18217@blisses.org>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
--nWEzmRaGLXxZdI3i Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I just wrote about some bugs that nettle me in my "bug bounties" post, sent just prior to my writing this. I'd like to throw out another idea as well. In the post I listed a number of things that I'd encountered that bother me, and in each case I've put some time into trying to either correct or work around the bugs. Between work and family my time is way more limited than I'd like, but I'd like to contribute, and something that occurs to me is the notion of formal mentoring. At work one of my roles involves mentoring junior engineers. We'll either tackle things they're working on, wherein I show them how I'd approach the issues they're trying to untangle and maybe highlight tools and techniques that might be new to them, or I'll share what I'm doing and narrate my actions and ideas as I work through puzzles that have landed on my plate. Either way, the end result is that they end up with more tools and techniques at their disposal, making them feel more powerful and competent. This would be a bit heavyweight for a volunteer project, but for FreeBSD, I can envision folks volunteering as mentors and corresponding via email about particular projects or bug hunts, or occasionally via IRC or somesuch. The underlying idea is that a hands-on donation of time from the folks in the mentoring role would be enough to energize folks like me to the point where bugs get fixed and the mentees start building up momentum on their own. As an example, for the bug I noted where a platform won't reliably boot the kernel, or for the bug that came up on the list a week or two ago where Vultr VMs hang on reboot, a mentor might help identify data collection tools and techniques and some idea of how to determine if a line of inquiry is producing usable results, after which the mentee could dig in with some notion of the short-term goal for the current stage of the investigation. I'd love thoughts and opinions. --=20 Mason Loring Bliss mason@blisses.org Ewige Blumenkraft! awake ? sleep : random() & 2 ? dream : sleep; -- Hamlet, Act III, Scene I --nWEzmRaGLXxZdI3i Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAABCgAdFiEEEXtBZz1axB5rEDCEnrJXcHbvJVUFAmCFu9QACgkQnrJXcHbv JVXawBAA0lKHpiHwH2lHmuhMxK0uSPiU+XsfxphrsbkSX540oC65shFAK/bRkQzc 838y3k+J9oTQTucQxlSOy7Kyj35hAYs4jOGxsbUwWnLUKvy5F1KWZ2AR4Huit7XL lgtbptL68mFmVm87PlvvtSJwWiiw/VNa8QbRmCnIEvRl3R4IGeH0dFvG9JV/A4Sh /OlG9tq/lQGRr6LyJfT5JmDEXv6AGTipUJCY5up3aSkCVhaQUcDWjfNMxwF7SYZY Qe5tmBPLlO5/nQwUX8sFvFOBaDQjyxoGRJ0CopwF3dAoVr8mSbDYnq9iuI35hc19 avQYv3K6nH/FVfTyREzbrGUfL7D6cea53dFgS1BoG85Jv+UOIXvJax9isH56DEub 6GK4cUb3ydGc7S8uV00cQ7ywIlpG3DIOAgGC7WbNLKgBxSDN6W0M9VRf/x/paCvp 8fuYxvUO2JbuimW0sdoz4jJoZj3kpy0R58GLz3glougINTi1bJkcrzEbugxbyhsF VBJ8UWnN2Fo83LR7YYpyupfCRV1OnrkL8Wf9T0gSW2H+tCT9XDKomMXgF1qY5jCn iwUhOdjw6DSaIWqSpUYt+MPbPoZIJW+CGrpO8tnzaXADoCji1ys27FWsS/eN1lhm +aNsfK4gixscT5rSNksFrvuFEV+sAZ8wLkGJqpKYy3vcHMEZLQc= =VBC4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nWEzmRaGLXxZdI3i--
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20210425185831.GS18217>