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.
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!
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.
Yes, this exactly 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 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.
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.
Hi @antoviaque, I hope you had a nice weekend. 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 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. This should not happen in my mind-scenario
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 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)
I’ve time set aside this sprint to work on the bounty list. This means that in at most two weeks time there should be work for Alfred and Chris to start on. If it so happens that they need work sooner, please feel free to ping me about it.
Very nice to meet you, @adolfoI know you guys work in 2-weeks sprints and I feel it’s best to keep the order you are used to. So, just take your time to build the bounty list and please do share it once it is done and they will tackle it as soon as the next sprint starts.
One thing I wonder is, once you complete the bounty list will you be the one in charge of adding more and more task to the list so Alfred and Chris continuously have things to do on all future sprints?
Not really. Unless I’m reading this all wrong, Alfred and Chris’ work on the bounty list is just a trial. I’m responsible for the list because I double as OpenCraft’s community liaison and also Serenity’s recruitment manager, but the idea is for the list to be eventually tackled by any community member.
Once this gets into gear they will be assigned to a cell (likely Falcon) and their tasks will come from epic owners in that cell.
If everything goes the way we expect they will be newcomers and start working on tasks from epics on the next sprint.
I mention this because if tasks in the bounty list are up in two weeks, Alfred and Chris will probably be working in epic’s task which are the ones they need to take care of, but, of course, like you mentioned, they can, like any community member, tackle those tasks in the bounty list.
Hi @adolfo , I hope you are having a wonderful day so far. Some days ago you posted this:
Today I visited Bountysource to see if there are more bounty tasks and I found there are 55 listed there, but I’m not quite sure if all are actually unresolved. I say this because the 2 bounty task that Chris and Alfred tackled, which have been completed, are still open in Bountysource as you can see if you click on them:
I think we missed a step, here. While it’s a great sign that Alfred and Chris were already able to start contributing (both of their commitment and as a test of our public board), we should’ve first:
Agreed on which ones they were going to tackle;
Agreed on acceptance criteria, a due date, and an estimate for the work;
The second one would’ve been particularly important not only so that we can pay you, but as a small test of how they handle this kind of process. It is basically what we do sprint-to-sprint, here at OpenCraft.
Now that we’re here, though… It happens that, at least as far as I’m concerned, the contributions I can see are good examples of their work. Alfred was a great help with Lilac, already, by tackling this documentation update, and Chris’s mergedPRs are good examples of his communication skills.
Unless anybody has any objections, I think they’re good to go regarding actual cell work. @raul, since you’re handling Falcon recruitment, care to take it from here? You’re in an uniquely ideal position to move forward with them. ;)
Which is to say, @essio, there’s no longer a need for them to take on “bounties”. I’m actually quite surprised that the BTR tickets show on bountysource.com. Had no idea! I certainly didn’t set that up. This is the board we actually use in the BTR group. Looks like some kind of scraper at work.
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 
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.
I’m positive they will pass with flying colors those reviews.
This should not happen in my mind-scenario
See you very soon
I know you guys work in 2-weeks sprints and I feel it’s best to keep the order you are used to. So, just take your time to build the bounty list and please do share it once it is done and they will tackle it as soon as the next sprint starts.