We are having difficulties with capacity. How do we address this?

Discussions - Public
47

Awesome! I can’t wait to review it :blush:

48

@Fox @gabor A couple notes about this:

  • Regarding capacity planning, please let me know how many hours would be needed for the new epic in June (and beyond). Even if Serenity ends up owning the epic, we might need to farm out some tasks to other cells, at least in the short term, to make sure we can finish the work quickly :slight_smile:
  • Regarding sustainability (CC @daniel), if we can’t take the hours for the new epic from onboarding budgets of newcomers, could we still associate the new epic and its tasks with the (non-cell) OpenCraft - Recruitment (OC-RECRUIT) account? That would be great because if we had to associate the new epic with a cell-responsibility account, sustainability might become a blocker (at least for Serenity and Bebop).
2 Likes
49

We have used the Opencraft - Recruitment account in other documentation improvements coming from newcomers (e.g. SE-2340, SE-2116, …) so I think it’s acceptable. Though I don’t have the authority to decide it, because it’s a non-cell account and we just handle the cell accounts. In any case, „recruitment“ makes perfect sense since it’s about improving recruitment.

What we usually do in those tickets is: we acknowledge that documentation improvements are unending, so we set a timebox to avoid consuming too much time.

2 Likes
50

@daniel @tikr We can use a non-cell budget for this, but it would be better to create a new dedicated one and keep the “recruitment” budget for work more directly linked to a specific recruitment, otherwise it will end up being hard to tell what goes in there. @gabriel Could you create one?

2 Likes
51

Sure, just let me know what the name should be, and I’ll create an account.

2 Likes
52

Job description

I have done another iteration over the job description, based on additional thoughts I had in the meantime, as well as feedback gathered from candidates & additional people I’ve asked advice to over the past week. See my edits in the document history - I have:

  • Tried to highlight more of what makes OpenCraft unique, for example put additional focus on open source and being good at handling remote work, about compensation, freedom, and about work-life balance
  • I have also emphasized the requirement of a contribution to a third party project as this is one of our main filters for candidatures – to encourage people without a contribution to do one before applying (since we would be filtering them out otherwise, it could increase the number of candidatures we would consider), and linking to the bounties to allow candidates to get paid for that contribution work if they can deliver it on Open edX

Since the changes are significant, I’ll wait until Monday to do the changes on all the ads, to give a chance for reviews – particularly from you @Fox since you have led that effort.

Recruitment process changes

I have also made corresponding changes on the recruitment form, and further modifications to test a change of process: adding a second interview after the technical interview, with me, for candidates who pass the first interview, and group all the contract discussions at that time (review of contract, setting the rate, answering questions about invoicing, etc.). We’ll need to see if that’s worth it, as that means that we would filter people who are out of price range later, but since that’s the step where we are losing more people than we used to currently (ie we have more applicants, but a larger proportion of them end up going for another offer), that would allow me to discuss more directly with candidates during that phase, answer their questions and address their hesitations when they have some, and also generally spend more time with them, to show that we value them.

Another benefit is that the candidatures are now immediately accessible to recruitment managers without any need for further automation, since there wouldn’t be any rate information to filter out in the initial form. CC @usman @adolfo @paulo – I’ll need to do a pass to update the recruitment process accordingly, as we are discussing with @paulo on Log in - OpenCraft

Bounties

I have also looked into bounties. @adolfo I don’t think you have provided the list of potential bugs yet, right? I looked at https://github.com/openedx/build-test-release-wg/projects/1 and spotted two potential tickets, for which I’ve created corresponding bounties on Bountysource:

I wasn’t able to credit the bounties though, as Paypal is throwing a tantrum and doesn’t let me pay – I’ll need to look into it more closely. That gives you time to confirm the tickets @adolfo , and provide an hours estimation. Also, I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be better (or at least complementary) to post the bounties on our site, and offer them to the candidates who want to apply but don’t have a merged contribution to an open source project – that’s actually a large portion of people applying, that we currently reject. We would also have more control on the assignation and awarding of the bounties, and not have to pay for them upfront without knowing if the work will actually be done.

Recruiters

I’ve reached out to a recruiter I had met a few years ago and who was a really nice and serious person – I don’t know what to expect from his work, but that could be a way to test this approach. I have a meeting scheduled with him on Monday.

Temporary contractors

@raul I’m replying to you here to keep things fully transparent here. Thanks for submitting the recruitment form for the two contractors. Looking at their profile I notice that they don’t have any contribution to a third party project listed – are there some that you could link to? I had assumed that since they do contract work for scrappinghub they would have many, but maybe I was wrong? Having existing contributions is a hard requirement for any developer joining the team, even for contractors. (Also could you respond to @Fox’ questions & remarks above, to also have this discussion here?)

Website & handbook update

Maybe something like “OpenCraft Website - Recruitment improvements”?

4 Likes
53

@antoviaque oh right sorry, yeah actually most of the scraping contributions are private because they deal with client’s data. But they do have opensource contributions, here are some from Chris and Alfred. Also looking at the bounty related tasks, I think they could take care of those before starting any work here if that’s ok with you.

I think they would be very similar to newcomers in that sense, with less onboarding time and limited access

Yeah I think a buy-out option is totally possible :+1:

1 Like
54

@raul OK - since their contributions wouldn’t qualify in our current recruitment, let’s do this:

  • Let’s start by having them work on the bounties tasks I mentioned above, after confirming with @adolfo that they are good tasks for this, and getting a timebox from him on this – if they get the work done & merged, we would then cover their time spent on this at their standard rate, up to the timebox set by @adolfo – good?
  • In the meantime, @paulo @adolfo @usman could you allocate them between your cells, based on the urgency of your respective availability requirements? I’m going to add them to the candidatures spreadsheet (they are the two with the description “Bitmaker” and no assignation), so you can then proceed to interview them normally, and we can take a decision there
  • If the decision is positive, I’ll send you a contract for each of them @raul

That’s great - what would be the terms for this? I agree with @Fox that it’s best to discuss this upfront, to make sure we don’t end up with ambiguity causing issues later on.

2 Likes
55

A post was merged into an existing topic: Recruitment boards

56

I have no experience in headhunting, and I agree most of it is simply spamming developers on LinkedIn. I’d be willing to try it if we had a few guiding rules.

(Sorry for the delay, never got the email notification)

:+1: :+1:

1 Like
57

Sounds good to me!

1 Like
58

Sure, I created the OC Website - Recruitment Improvements account :+1: cc. @daniel @tikr

2 Likes
59

:wave: Hi, long time no see! (For any newcomers, I was an OpenCraft core member for about a year in 2018 - 2019.)

I have a few thoughts about the recruiting process – take them as you like. :slight_smile: (Apologize if this is a bit messy, typing fast.)

  • Embrace the rejection process. Most candidates won’t do well at OpenCraft, so be more upfront about that and market yourself to people who are looking for an experience, not a job.

    • College students who want something impressive to put on their CVs
      • Student job fairs or college internship boards?
    • People transitioning back into the workforce after injury/illness/childbirth.
    • People who are not the primary breadwinners in their household

    Some of those people will stick around and many won’t, but as (I think) Tim pointed out, any job offer a candidate gets aside from OC will not still be there when the trial period is over. So people have to be okay with the idea of another job search a few months after joining. People who need a jumpstart to their career or just want to do something fun during their summer break will leave OC with fond memories (hopefully) but people who are already exhausted from job hunting and were expecting a full-time position will resent being let go (and complain about it on job boards, etc, thereby driving off other developers considering OC).

  • More information about rate, before people apply. (A link on the job ad to documentation would help.) The “floor” which I saw mentioned in another post is great, but even above that, not every candidate knows how to price themselves. In a perfect world, that would be the candidate’s own affair, but we don’t live in a perfect world and helping people out with figuring a number is an important part of keeping people.

    • (U.S. perspective) Many contractors assume they will be able to bill in 8 hour increments. Be very upfront: "You can only bill the hours worked. That means, for an eight hour work day, you can expect to get paid 4 - 7 hours (depending on how much work is available and how many breaks you take).
    • (U.S. perspective) Tax consequences and healthcare. :sob: If a candidate has only worked W2 positions (regular employee or “contractor” for a temp agency), the doubled tax bill and $4k - $8K per year for health insurance will come as a nasty surprise.
    • . . . workers in every country have unique considerations? Fees? Limitations in getting unemployment? Mandatory insurances? OpenCraft could share that wealth of gathered experience openly.
    • A checkbox on the application like “Contact me anyway” could take a lot of the stress out of things. Women and minorities frequently under price themselves and that’s not fair. Giving applicants who want too much but are otherwise very interesting a chance to submit a second bid could open the door to more great people, while encouraging applicants to put what they really want and think is fair.

  • Don’t lower standards. I know, it’s very tempting when recruiting is at a low ebb, but working at OpenCraft doesn’t offer many traditional workplace benefits (an office, a 9-to-5, a dental plan, departments, a boss handing out assignments, etc) so bringing in the people who are looking for that is just going to be an enormous waste of time and money and will breed resentment which hurts brand reputation. There’s a big difference between someone who is green-but-eager-to-learn (a good fit for OC) and someone who is stuck in the mindset of “I’m a Python developer, I don’t do [project planning/client communication/infrastructure/blah]” Those people will kill the culture here (and probably the company, too).

tl;dr: market to the people who want a short term position and coach them about pay rate before they join

9 Likes
60

:wave: Nice to see you stopping by @seamus_external !! And thanks for this - it’s a very helpful perspective!

I guess that the implicit point you’re making is that the idea of the trial period and potentially having to look for another job soon are a big barrier and turning lots of people away who would otherwise apply.

I had kind of assumed that wasn’t a big factor, because in the world in general demand for experienced developers has always exceeded supply. (Even now, as Xavier mentioned, we get lots of people going through our process and then taking other competing job offers at the last minute. And when we post job ads for developer roles vs. non-technical roles, we see consistently that the non-technical people put in far far more effort on their cover letter, resume, application, etc.) But if that is a big barrier that’s filtering out a lot of candidates, it would be helpful to know that.

+1 to your other points.

61

Hi @antoviaque and everyone, I hope you are having a lovely day wherever you are in the world. :slightly_smiling_face:

I first want to introduce myself. I’m Essio Colom, the COO of Bitmaker. I’m also from Peru and living in Barcelona at the moment.

Secondly I want to congratulate everyone here for the awesome job you’re doing in Opencraft. I think I have an idea as I’ve talked a lot about the company with @raul over the past.

Now I’d like to get into the topic that brings me to this forum. I’m very happy about the idea that Raul shared with you to help you out with the issue you are currently facing to confirm a new core member in the last several months, specially with OpenCraft’s growth and the urgency you have to get new talent onboard.

Still, I’d like to make it clear that this is not our usual way of work with any companies and the reason we are happily willing to do it is because Raul has a special place in his heart for OpenCraft and he truly wants to give a hand to a company he’s proud to be a part of,

I would like to give some pointers to take into account so we can actually have some common ground in which OpenCraft and Bitmaker will be happy with:

  • For any developer we would provide to OpenCraft (Alfred and Chris to start) we would need a 3 months Work Order to assure our devs are only focused on OpenCraft
  • If you would like to keep any of these developers working with you for a longer period of time we’d need a 1 month notice before the end of the 3-month Work Order. If this is not done we will immediately assume that the developer is free for other projects after the Work Order has been completed
  • Before a buy-out is possible we would need at least 4 Work Orders for the same developer (1 accumulated year of work with OpenCraft through our company)

We feel that Alfred and Chris will get a great understanding of OpenCraft during these first months working on your projects and then, with all the expertise gained, they could be critical on the onboarding of new talented developers on open source and edx experience in case you need more hands in the future.

From our side, we have some future projects coming and I was counting on Alfred and Chris, but right now and for some time there is no issue at all to help you guys out so there’s no need to worry about this. Time will show how things go.

Contributions Status

That’s all I wanted to share with you guys and I think that for the best interest of everyone all communication regarding this partnership should be done with me from now on.

Looking forward to your thoughts and wishing you all the best.

Cheers!

5 Likes
62

Hello @seamus_external :) It’s good to read you again! And thanks for stopping by to chip in on this – I agree with your main points, more transparency would likely help. The more upfront we are about the points that are different at OpenCraft, the less surprising it will be – and also the more attractive we’ll be to people who like the approach we take. I’ve added a point in my list to incorporate your comments on the next pass on the job description.

Yes, that has historically not been an issue - we have always had many applicants, and even if some would be turned away, that wasn’t a blocker. There are plenty of appealing aspects of the work at OpenCraft that made it worth the risk of the trial. But currently with everyone and their dog recruiting remotely, I think people have more offers to consider at a given time which makes it a bit harder to differentiate ourselves, and show that it’s “worth it”. The feeling of uncertainty and the many lost jobs that Covid brought probably didn’t help, even if the development field hasn’t really been affected. We still have plenty of advantages over other remote companies (being “really” remote, doing open source work, flat structure, etc.), but we might need to become better at showing that difference.

@essio

Nice to meet you! And thanks for stopping by here to discuss this :) Btw, I’ll be in Barcelona from mid-June, so we could likely use the opportunity to see each other in real life – which is quite a luxury nowadays! :slight_smile:

Those conditions seem acceptable to me - it’s fair for you to get enough warning, and we could even start with a 6 months work order, as it takes some time to get onboarded and familiar enough with the platform to be productive. We however have a trial period at the beginning (2 months, renewable once), at the end of which we do a full review based on the actual work done, before confirming a newcomer. During that time, both parties have a 2 weeks notice period – is that ok with you? We need it to make sure team members match the team’s quality standards, and that both parties are actually happy with the work conditions.

For the contributions, sounds good! Make sure to check with @adolfo on the timebox to set, to not end up with more time spent on the contribution work than we would accept for the initial bounty.

63

Yes, this exactly :point_up: And we could probably also tout a bit more the fact that we’ve been doing remote-only for a long time, since way before it became cool necessary :slight_smile: In terms of refinement of workflows and processes we should still have an edge at this point over companies that only started to figure out – sometimes reluctantly – the “remote thing” in the midst of the pandemic.

Great, thanks!

It looks like this is the approach we’ll need to take in the short term. See this update over on the private thread for details.

Hey @seamus_external! Good to hear from you :slight_smile: :wave:

1 Like
64

The Epic for this is Log in - OpenCraft. It’s possible it won’t affect Serenity’s load much at all–most of the writing’s on my end, and then @Ali and her team are doing design/implementation-- assuming that it can all be done via WordPress plugins, which right now it looks like it can. Our devs will only be involved if this turns out not to be the case.

1 Like
65

Hi @antoviaque, I hope you had a nice weekend. :sunny: Say no more! Please let me know when you are coming and let’s meet. I live close to Arc of Triumph and Sagrada Familia, so I’m guessing we’ll be close because it’s more likely you’ll rent a place around this area which is more centric.

Makes sense :+1:t2: I’m positive they will pass with flying colors those reviews.

@adolfo and myself can have a talk regarding this because what I would like to have is a backlog that would allow Alfred and Chris to have an unending stream of work to help you guys within the time spent limit you are mentioning. If they have things to do they learn more and get familiar with the platform to be productive as you put it. So I’m very interested in having them busy as I don’t want them to be like “and now? what else can I do?”. No good. :smile:This should not happen in my mind-scenario

66

@essio

Yup, I’ll be in Raval, so we won’t be far :) I’ll send you an email to organize a lunch.

As long as they can handle the work, there should be plenty of it. :) We’ll handle them like other newcomers to the team, including assigning them a proper mentor, with whom they will be able to organize their backlog of work. Before starting that though, we need to formally start – here are the next steps I see before we can have them officially starting:

  • Have them being formally interviewed by @usman
  • Have their current bounties work completed and merged upstream, and done within the timebox defined by @adolfo
  • Have their contract signed (I’ll send you the contracts this week)
  • Agree on a start date (it will be the beginning of the following 2-weeks sprint after the other steps have been completed, to give time to complete their onboarding)

Sounds good? Do you see other steps?