Leadership in Open Source

Key Takeaways

Microsoft and Sheryl Hong Director ecosystem at CN CF today we're gonna be talking about leadership and open source and we're gonna get right into it and start with the basics how did you get started at open source well for me I was a developer you know for the long part of my career doing not open source software and at some point you know more and more things were in particularly in the sort of infrastructure world distributed system world being done open source and it just seemed like a natural progression I don't really remember ever making a conscious decision and suddenly like everything I was doing pretty much was in in the open so I actually started in open source I was contributing Docs to you open stack and open shift and I wanted to contribute more so I learned Python so that I could do that and I have not left open source so like Liz I started out as a developer not in open source actually coop Khan was a big reason that I got into open source because I came to keep on as a diversity scholar and then got into all the events got into community and speaking and doing more of that and that's how I've ended up elephant in the room when we talk about open source is kind of business model and remuneration and you know particularly in this little community where you know we're part of here at kcon and this all kind of works because of companies who sponsor the work you know they employ people they you know my salary is paid for by a company and and I think that's true for a lot of people and you know there is this sort of idealistic view of being able to just contribute to open source and magically money will come from somewhere and it is more complicated and difficult than that it is very much the philosophy of the Linux Foundation of which the CNC F is a part that companies need to play their part in sustaining open-source because we can't rely on people in their evenings and weekends and in their free time to do it but then you do end up with a bit of tension between those who care about the individual developers versus the corporates interests and what do you feel makes a good leader in today's open-source community for me on my team I focus a lot on upstream contributions Microsoft has not always had the best reputation in open-source so on my team we have a focus on contributing without an agenda lots of large companies contribute with an agenda so I think that that's important absolutely I think communication skills are so so vital because this is a global community and you need to be able to reach out to people who are from very different walks of life doing very different things in different companies and be able to have that empathy and understanding with what people really need and want that is the best answer absolutely we have actually just been joined by Leo Peterson who's an engineer over at 2 Sigma thank you very much we're so happy to see you late because I was helping up the diversity luncheon hack which was a great success actually wondering what some things that you'd like to see for those that are interested in those leadership roles what do you think they can do to help bolster their skills expand on that a little bit for example if you're just a software developer that wants to get into some leadership track in the open-source community and what what sort of skill sets should you focus on what skills should you pick up that will make that path easier for you in some way can we double down on communication I would have said the same thing yeah yeah because if you at some point you have to spread your impact to beyond what you can do as an individual and an open-source part of that is communication and part of that is being willing to put yourself out there and say I I can do this you know I I want to put my effort and my time into making this happen and it's a long process you know you have to show some sustained contributions over time for people to really trust that you have the best intentions of the community at heart and you're not just someone trying to jump in at the last minute and go I want to be a leader what can I do I think there's also a very distinct difference between some leadership in kind of corporations and leadership in the community because for the former you get a kind of you know a stamp of authority and you basically can say you know I'm the boss of you and that just isn't true when you are in a community like an open-source community and it becomes much more collaborative and you know leading is almost leading by example rather than anything more kind of you you have to establish your own credibility and and people will respect you for the things that you do not for the role that you have right absolutely and it's you always have the feedback - there's a constant feedback chain you're not just making the decision and that's it that is the ultimate decision it's final no questions you always have feedback from somewhere yeah it's always collaborative it should always be collaborative absolutely I work with a lot of end users within the CM TF and some companies who are new to open-source will say I want to get a feature in the next six months can you just make it happen no not really I mean all the projects are self-governing if you want to have something done you have to kind of go in there and put your time and and do it yourself there's no central authority that you can appeal to and be like can you tell me am i doing the right thing or am i how do I fix this problem or how do I get my feature into the next release it just doesn't exist and that is that is really big the change at peeve is it's a very different model to corporate you know there's a company a vendor that you can purchase support from none of that exists with an open source I think maybe the first impression is when you say oh this person is a leader in the in the community versus this person is a leader in a corporate hierarchy that gives it Pallister one different very different impression so I don't think it's a bad term because I do think that leaders just just like leaders in a well idealistically in a in a big company should be able to have a broad impact and also have the depths of technical expertise and have enough kudos within the community that you know people can trust them and trust their word so I don't think it's a bad term but perhaps the first impression is it's not the same how do you think the community can work toward improving that pipeline for those underrepresented minorities in tech to get to those leadership positions what do you think can be done better and how can underrepresented minorities make their claim not necessarily stronger by I guess the word is basically what can we do to help themselves and what can the community do to help to serve them better to get them to those positions how was the diversity luncheon I do think that we tackled a lot of these topics there were a lot of roundtable discussion also hands-on kubernetes help and pair programming so I think those initiatives where you can go and connect with a small group of people who have similar experience to you and you can feel like you can reach out to them in the future and then also I know a lot of the pair programming specifically they were they were helping directly like how do you get started contributing to kubernetes what are your personal blockers and let's work through them and it was a learning together experience and I think I do hope that some blockers were lifted or people kind of saw their way forward and if not connected with people who hopefully could help them in the future yeah contributing is one part that you can do on your own with enough initiative but I think that the other part is having leads who were mostly white men the ambassadors for underrepresented people so I looked into a survey that github did in 2017 of contributors in open source projects and they split it out by men and women and couples the answers kind of fascinated me so both men and women were equally likely to say they were interested in contributing to open source but when they asked people okay the last time that you got some help how did you where did that help come from and the answers were I asked in a public forum like a mailing list or I got help from somebody I knew oh I got unsolicited help or other and what they found was women were half as likely to report that they had they used a public forum and half as likely to report that they received unsolicited help and not even mansplaining but you know I could have guessed that women you know maybe not winning I was willing to put themselves out there in this public forum but being half as likely to report unsolicited help that kind of surprised me and that's something that the community as a whole need to get better at and reaching out to make it to bring in these underrepresented groups - Utley agree and I think there's a conversation between mentorship versus sponsorship absolutely and that kind of who do you have access to and what agency and what cultural capital do they have in the community to give you the confidence to say look here here's an issue if you work on this I am going to help you and advocate for you and I have the power to make sure that gets merged and I think having access to people like that is critical and I think that the social that dynamic there is that people in these positions of power are going to look at people and say this person has potential and like why do they think that they think that because that person reminds them of themselves and so they're going to take a chance take a risk put themselves out there for someone who they identify with and unfortunately we don't have you know enough diversity up there to pull diversity up and help new people get their foot in the door I do you think and this doesn't just apply to open source but that we are learning more about things like unconscious bias and I think a lot of people are recognizing that you know perhaps they had privileges that they didn't realize they had and that perhaps that kind of means they should put more effort into finding people who maybe don't have that privilege and sharing some of that with them and helping them and advocating for them and say the fact that we you know we're starting to recognize that and the more allies the more advocacy that happens it's got to be a good thing absolutely and I think the CNC F has actually done a good job of this it's pushed for women for more female speakers and speakers from underrepresented groups it's put a lot of money into the diversity scholarships to bring people from underrepresented groups to coupon and these are long-term initiatives so they can't they're not gonna pay off in six months but the goal is that within a year two years we'll really see the the impact and you and you do see the difference you know just as a sort of at an anecdotal level you come to a conference like this and they're right there is a more diverse crowd it's you know then perhaps some more corporate events absolutely and protip I do this I get asked to speak at conferences all the time you see those same speakers year after year after year how many times do I need to speak at the same conference so I will pass that opportunity off to somebody else in an underrepresented group so that they have an opportunity to have the stage yeah definitely and I also can say from personal experience I'm new to tech so I got into tech through a boot camp about four years ago and I became involved in kubernetes right from the beginning and I do feel like it's been so inspiring and encouraging for me in my career and I really think that the diversity scholarship program cuke on the CNC F have been pivotal in my career advancement in general that's alyssum yeah I found that when I was submitting my PR for the blog post for the diversity luncheon it was really helpful for me because I actually have a really severe learning disability once I hit a certain point when it comes to programming I can't do it anymore javascript algebra no it doesn't work for me so I had to have but they really they really came through for me and they really helped me out and they made sure that my PR got merged and it was really nice to have that support and I know that it's like now I get to say I'm a contributor to open source and that's neat because I would never have that opportunity before I think it's really quite a recent development that people are recognizing you know contributions don't have to just be towed and there are all sorts of other ways that people I think you did a really good talk about that I think that's important people that you don't have to just program you can blog you can write you can help people in so many different ways you can draw amazing dofus open-source projects are a business at the end of the day and they need all kinds of business help from all kinds of people and what are some pieces of advice that you give to people in open-source that are interested interested in getting those more in-depth roles in the community what what sort of Tibbets would you give them be consistent as you contribute pick a project that you like and be consistent that is true don't just have one sparse contribution here and they're just trying thank you for joining us and I really appreciate it and we're live here from Cuba and we'll see you later on today