there are even bigger images

correction: there are even bigger issues

(I said I was in a rush)

Tom

On 18 June 2012 14:49, Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:

Looking at the job description I have some concerns that it has been written without the input of someone experienced in hiring individuals for technical or pseudo-technical roles - especially in the current economic climate.

You seem to be looking for someone extremely versatile, experienced and independent... on a *very* entry level salary packet.

I was under the impression, from previous discussions, that the developer position was to be contractor-style - or at least remote working in the region ~10 hours a week.

As a developer, from the description page, I see the following roles:

• Developer
• Sysadmin
• Project manager
• Advocate

Four very distinct roles.

To pick on one specific issue; expecting this person to work on Mediwiki core, or an extension, is going to be problematic. That's a whole position on its own and you are going to find that ongoing "other work" will make project work of that sort untenable.

(speaking as someone who is in much this position at the moment; my project work is on hold pretty much all the time whilst clearing up management issues).

I worry that there is not a lot of work described in this job; or at least the responsibilities are bitty and ill-defined. You're risking having someone who will sit for long portions of the day drumming their fingers on the desk. (speaking as someone who was hired to do this once, and quit after 3 months due to boredom). It would be good to define (internally, on the WMUK wiki) the roles this developer will have to fulfill and, from a technical perspective, what we'd like to achieve in, say, the next year.

The salary is most concerning though; you're looking for experience and versatility - two major technical skills (sysadmin and developer) plus management experience/skill - at a basic entry level rate. I think you will struggle to find competent applicants.

I'd fit, fairly well, this job description (and I think am pretty good at it) - and any London based job under £35K would struggle to tempt me. Under £30K is not even worth considering. (n.b. I'm not saying this because I'd plan to apply if you raised the salary :)). You;fe

What I recommend is hiring a more general community liaison (we need this anyway IMO), with experience in technical projects. They can do most of the PM style work. Then contract out specific projects (yes, including MW extension writing) as and when needed. Keep a contractor on retainer for sysadmin and internal dev work (~10 hours a week etc.).

Particularly as you have numerous skilled dev/sysadmin contractors within the community who will likely offer discounted rates. Building on the WMF model; with a competent project manager most of the dev/sysadmin work could be community driven. I've already offered to pitch in, but there is no public project to achieve this that I know of.

If we have a budget of £30K to go into development this is not enough to hire a full time developer/sysadmin/manager. It's enough to contract the work and to begin to build a volunteer centric development department.

Mike wrote an excellent starter to this here: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012_Developer_budget The current job description seems to be the opposite of many of those (good) proposals (although I know Mike also wrote the job description). If we take the list of upcoming requirements from that page there are even bigger images; it talks about a robust backup strategy - which is quite a specific set of experience. Even worse is the security review stuff - no dev/sysadmin you hire for £25K will be capable of a robust security review.

As always; just my 2p :)

Tom

(sorry to be over-critical, but I am in a rush today so this is first draft sent :))

On 18 June 2012 13:41, Jon Davies jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:

...

We will shortly be advertising for our developer post. We will be spreading the word far and wide, especially within the community, but all suggestions gratefully received. So far (outside leads: Mozilla Tech hub Civi-CRM Google academy

Thanks

Jon

-- *Jon Davies - Chief Executive Wikimedia UK*. Mobile (0044) 7803 505 169 tweet @jonatreesdavies

Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513 Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Telephone (0044) 207 065 0990. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). It is an independent non-profit organization with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.

Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk

---

Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

On 18 June 2012 15:17, HJ Mitchell hjmitchell@ymail.com wrote:

I may be wrong, but I suspect the idea is to aim high, hoping but not expecting that somebody will apply who meets all the criteria, and failing that, that we'll get somebody who meets most of the criteria and could pick up or be trained in the the skills they need.

I don't think you're wrong about that. The "debate so far" has mostly been in terms of "it would be nice if" or "we are in the business of getting into that business" or other such aspirational stuff.

I'm actually going on my experience of being recruited to do WMUK's admin, six months after it should have been clear that WMUK needed at least a half-time person, at 12 hours a week. Discussions I had after the interview turned out to be utterly fruitless. There were reasons for that, but in any case I completely failed to professionalise WMUK as the first hire, which should have been on the job description.

No amount of corporate jargon and/or penny-pinching can cover up not getting the right person for the job because the position is a vaguish proposition. So I think Tom has a point.

Charles

I can see why one would prefer having a single person in-house, though. In the long term, it's likely to be cheaper, and people (be it the community, the board, or other staff) have a named person they can go to with queries about technical things. A permanent member of staff might also be more easily brought round to the Wikimedia way of thinking (particularly wrt community involvement, doing things in the open, and freely licensing their work).

That's not to say that I disagree with Tom or Charles, I'm mostly playing devil's advocate (not least because I'm not technically competent enough to do much more than facilitate discussion).

Harry

________________________________ From: Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com To: UK Wikimedia mailing list wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, 18 June 2012, 15:41 Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Recruiting for the Developer

On 18 June 2012 15:28, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:

On 18 June 2012 15:17, HJ Mitchell hjmitchell@ymail.com wrote:

...

I may be wrong, but I suspect the idea is to aim high, hoping but not expecting that somebody will apply who meets all the criteria, and failing that, that we'll get somebody who meets most of the criteria and could pick up or be trained in the the skills they need.

I don't think you're wrong about that. The "debate so far" has mostly been in terms of "it would be nice if" or "we are in the business of getting into that business" or other such aspirational stuff.

I'm actually going on my experience of being recruited to do WMUK's admin, six months after it should have been clear that WMUK needed at least a half-time person, at 12 hours a week. Discussions I had after the interview turned out to be utterly fruitless. There were reasons for that, but in any case I completely failed to professionalise WMUK as the first hire, which should have been on the job description.

No amount of corporate jargon and/or penny-pinching can cover up not getting the right person for the job because the position is a vaguish proposition. So I think Tom has a point.

This is right.

One of my experiences in around the last 18 months is that smaller companies (which we are, lets face it) start out contracting technical work because it is significantly cheaper. We've identified several areas of experience we need:

* PHP development * Virtual server sysadmin * SSL (a specific experience in itself!) * Experience with finance/taking money (again; something quite specific) * Security reivew * Project management  * Advocacy

If we have a budget of £29K to spend on people doing this then hiring one person is far from optimal. Anyone you find will lack requisite experience in any one of these, which means our objectives won't be met.

On the other hand you have a major asset in that several community members do have this experience - and might be interested in a robust volunteer driven model.

Contracting the specific expertise needed, whilst developing a robust community department is an excellent model :)

Tom _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

On 18 June 2012 17:48, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:

On 18 June 2012 15:41, Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:

...

One of my experiences in around the last 18 months is that smaller

companies

...

(which we are, lets face it) start out contracting technical work

because it

...

is significantly cheaper.

Is it? I don't know about developers specifically, but generally speaking contractors are a lot more expensive than salaried staff because you have to compensate them for the lack of job security.

To an extent. However you'll stand a higher chance of getting people to lower their rates for the fact it is Wikipedia :)

Also; whilst a salaried staff member will cost less for the same # of hours, specialist contract work will tend to require less hours. You won't find someone who can do good PHP development work *and *also a proper security audit for this price point. But you could certainly hire contractors within this budget.

Contractors are good if it's a temporary position or if you think it

might be a temporary position, so you're willing to pay a premium not to be stuck with someone after the work is done.

Contractors are good for fixed-term specialist work. Things like sorting out SSL and security auditing fit these. As do most of the development projects discussed.

WMUK is going to need a tech person permanently, so should hire an employee.

My big concern here is that this is a "rush" decision that no one has taken a strategic look into. What is our aim for development in a year? Two years? Three years? Does it involve the community? What projects will we focus on.

Even known things are ill defined; QRpedia is regularly mentioned as a task.. but what is the status of this project. Which of the original stakeholders are still involved, and are they going to hand over the development reigns? What work actually, specifically needs doing.

The only reason I can see that WMUK might want to hire a contractor is if it is going to be a part-time role, which might be possible if we could get volunteers to do the work. We haven't done particularly well with getting volunteers to do the work so far, though, and I'm not sure having someone coordinating the volunteers would actually result in any more volunteers crawling out of the woodwork.

I'm not convinced that is an insurmountable problem if we specify the work. There are plenty of developers and tech types around - but I for one have no idea how to assist, and in the last ~18 months that I have been active I've not seen any particular requests for assisstance (apart from a couple of discussions about SSL which I tried my best to assist with).

But we've done quite well crowd sourcing things like software issues, choices of software and so forth on this list...

if you higher a dogsbody developer now, what role does he have if next year our strategic goal becomes "support a community development community".

There is also an

issue that a lot of WMUK's tech work will need to be done on a tight deadline, which is where volunteers tend not to be the best choice.

Specifics?

This is the only real concern I'd agree with - but easily mitigated by finding a good contractor able to do this sort of work.

All I am saying is; is the hiring of a developer urgent to the extent that not hiring one in the next couple of months significantly sets us back?

If the answer is yes; how?

If the answer is no I'd suggest we work out a detailed strategic goal for development over the next few years and see what roles that requires.

For example; we have a budding MediWiki development community in the UK - and they may be interested in also contributing to WMUK projects if we offer them the umbrella of financial and office support... who knows? But as WMUK is here to help existing WM communities as much as start our own it seems a logical place to start?

Tom

On 18 June 2012 19:15, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:

On 18 June 2012 18:12, Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:

[things that make sense to me]

I'd also like to see quantification. Is the current provable need 0.7 of a person or 1.5 persons? I'm still enough of a mathematician to think that it's unlikely to be a whole number (and I guess Tom D. is too).

As a mathematician, I agree with you. Experience, however, tells me that there is always enough work for between 10% and 20% more people than you have! If you have enough work for 0.7 FTE, then as soon as you hire someone you'll find another 0.5 FTE worth of work appears. I don't think there is any real risk of hiring someone and not being able to find useful things for them to do.

Finding make work is inefficient. Especially if you hire them knowing you have 0.8 FTE, but find they lack the experience to perform a quarter of that.

It's better to figure out the work in order of importance (I.e we must achieve this by year end, or this is not so important) ten figure out how to fulfill it.

But from the listed work so far, there is a lot lot less non-specialist work than justifies a full time individual.

Tom Morton

On 18 Jun 2012, at 19:39, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:

On 18 June 2012 19:15, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:

...

On 18 June 2012 18:12, Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:

[things that make sense to me]

I'd also like to see quantification. Is the current provable need 0.7 of a person or 1.5 persons? I'm still enough of a mathematician to think that it's unlikely to be a whole number (and I guess Tom D. is too).

As a mathematician, I agree with you. Experience, however, tells me that there is always enough work for between 10% and 20% more people than you have! If you have enough work for 0.7 FTE, then as soon as you hire someone you'll find another 0.5 FTE worth of work appears. I don't think there is any real risk of hiring someone and not being able to find useful things for them to do.

---

Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

On 18 June 2012 20:46, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:

On 18 June 2012 20:38, Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:

...

Finding make work is inefficient.

I'm not talking about finding make work. I'm talking about real, productive work that you hadn't thought of before but that inevitably comes up as soon as you have scope to do it.

Which is certainly what happened as soon as WMUK hired me.

But Tom M. hit the nail on the head: don't go the dogsbody route. I.e. if anyone argues as Tom D. does, which strikes me as reasonable, don't define the job in such a way as to offer zero career development. Make it a real job, from the start. Make it so the growth of the work actually looks like an opportunity for the hire to grow also.

Rest my case.

Charles

On 18 June 2012 21:55, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:

On 18 June 2012 20:58, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:

...

But Tom M. hit the nail on the head: don't go the dogsbody route. I.e. if anyone argues as Tom D. does, which strikes me as reasonable, don't define the job in such a way as to offer zero career development. Make it a real job, from the start. Make it so the growth of the work actually looks like an opportunity for the hire to grow also.

This is a good point. It's important to think about what the long-term future of the position is. I can see two things this role could become. There's the plan Mike's mentioned, of them specialising in the area(s) they are strongest in and other tech people being hired to take over their other responsibilities and the work and budget grows. Alternatively, they can be hired with the intention that they will become the Head of Technology and will be responsible for growing their team over time.

The second route means paying more (have you to pay a manager's wage even when they don't have anyone to manage), but it is potentially more efficient and straightforward in the long run. It also removes the uncomfortable situation of hiring someone to be the boss of someone that has been around for a while (if the intention is to have multiple people working on tech stuff then sooner or later there will need to be a Head of Technology).

Yes, this is basically what I am driving at. If the long term aim is to expand the department we should outline those goals *now* and hire someone with those goals at the forefront. Although I'd suggest you have a better chance of getting a competent person at the current budget - a role in which they have remit to build and manage a tech department is quite an interesting prospect.

Hiring a developer for a broad role for the pure fact of "we need one" is a poor decision, I know this from observing it happen. We'd end up with someone likely unable to build such a department - and if they become redundant with next years plan/budget then what point is there?

Mike's email gives a lot of useful context to this discussion; Mike I'll drop you a message off-wiki and I will be happy to chat by phone tomorrow or whenever. I still think effort needs to go into an actual tech strategy so we can have a proper role for when someone is hired, but I appreciate the need to take some of the load off Mike :)

To be explicit; we have lots of bits on wiki about "stuff" such a person can do. But no strategic document outlining year-on-year aims, and giving an overview of the skills needed. I suggest we desperately need to do that first rather than waste money by hurrying into a hire we don't fully understand long term. I've given my viewpoint on what we need here - but I also admit it could be wrong (as with all the other views) purely because we lack this strategy.

If that means people like me putting their time where their mouth is and taking some of the current load then fine :)

Tom

Hi all,

So, there are many questions here, and I'm afraid that I don't have the time to answer them all right now in the detail they deserve. :-( So this is a reply to some of the key aspects, and I'll try to follow up on the others when I have a bit more time available.

I'm very aware that there are multiple roles here. If we had the funds available, then we'd be hiring multiple people here - this is something that we'll hopefully be able to do in a year or so. At the moment, an 'all-purpose' hire seems to be the best way forward, with the expectation that they can specialise in one or more roles in the future depending on their abilities. There is a *lot* that can be done here, and the main limitation we're facing is not having someone available that can do them. I don't expect that they will be fiddling their thumbs - probably more likely they'll be rather overworked. :-/

In terms of contractors, we did look into this option, and unfortunately it appears to be untenable at the current time. We were being quoted ~£500 for a person-day with rather generic skills, and my expectation is that those costs would only increase as more of a speciality is needed. Contracting people *really* isn't cost-effective. Unless you know of organisations or advertisement mechanisms that might be able to provide contractors at a reasonable price per hour? We've also had negative experiences contracting people to do development work (e.g. we ran with a rather basic and inefficient direct debit sign-up form last year because the person we were contracting to do a better form wasn't able to deliver), and additionally there are very important incidental benefits to having a tech expert available 'on tap' in the office.

In terms of thinking about this role, and the future direction of it: there's a reason why this has been in the planning process since 2011. We've been thinking about the best approaches for some time, and as a result that thinking has gone through various distinct phases (as have been documented by the various on-wiki pages on this topic). This job description has gone through the full process of board discussion and approval. Hiring paid development/sysadmin expertise is far overdue, and I've been putting in a significant amount of volunteer time to cover that expertise gap as a result. In hindsight in my role as a trustee, I should have been asking for help with that work - but in my role as a volunteer it has always appeared to be easier to do things directly myself rather than bringing other volunteers up to speed on the issues. Sorry about this.

I'm a fan of the potential 'community liaison' role, but a) that role would be much broader than the developer needs that we have, and b) we don't have a budget line (or spare funds that could be turned into a new budget line) right now. This is something that definitely needs to be thought about for WMUK's 2013 activity plan.

I'd really appreciate suggestions of ways to improve the job description - particularly including increasing the information given in the advertisement, and the best salary range to aim at. Tom, perhaps we could talk by telephone about this tomorrow? If anyone else has suggestions for changes, please either make them to the job description directly, or otherwise raise them on the talk page (which is a much more time-efficient mechanism than emails for this sort of thing!)

Thanks, Mike P.S. Charles's experiences with being a WMUK employee aren't particularly relevant here since WMUK has changed *significantly* since then. Charles, I would very much recommend visiting the WMUK office and having a chat with Jon about our current management processes if you're interested in finding out the current staff experiences and recommending improvements to them.

On 18 Jun 2012, at 20:38, Thomas Morton wrote:

Finding make work is inefficient. Especially if you hire them knowing you have 0.8 FTE, but find they lack the experience to perform a quarter of that.

It's better to figure out the work in order of importance (I.e we must achieve this by year end, or this is not so important) ten figure out how to fulfill it.

But from the listed work so far, there is a lot lot less non-specialist work than justifies a full time individual.

Tom Morton

On 18 Jun 2012, at 19:39, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:

...

On 18 June 2012 19:15, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:

...

On 18 June 2012 18:12, Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:

[things that make sense to me]

I'd also like to see quantification. Is the current provable need 0.7 of a person or 1.5 persons? I'm still enough of a mathematician to think that it's unlikely to be a whole number (and I guess Tom D. is too).

As a mathematician, I agree with you. Experience, however, tells me that there is always enough work for between 10% and 20% more people than you have! If you have enough work for 0.7 FTE, then as soon as you hire someone you'll find another 0.5 FTE worth of work appears. I don't think there is any real risk of hiring someone and not being able to find useful things for them to do.

---

Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

---

Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

On 18/06/12 21:28, Michael Peel wrote:

P.S. Charles's experiences with being a WMUK employee aren't particularly relevant here since WMUK has changed*significantly* since then. Charles, I would very much recommend visiting the WMUK office and having a chat with Jon about our current management processes if you're interested in finding out the current staff experiences and recommending improvements to them.

Boris Bike Docking Station right outside, too!

:-)

Gordo

Regardless of what happens with the developer post, we should definitely try to evaluate what technical expertise we have among the community and how we can make use of it. Organising a hackathon or something similarly nerdy is a good step in that direction, especially if it includes an opportunity for somebody like me to learn from that expertise without being judged on my ignorance! :)

If you need a hand organising anything, Lewis, do feel free to drop me a line and I'll do what I can.

Harry

________________________________ From: Lewis Cawte lewiscawte@googlemail.com To: UK Wikimedia mailing list wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, 18 June 2012, 22:30 Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Recruiting for the Developer

On 18/06/2012 15:41, Thomas Morton wrote:

On the other hand you have a major asset in that several community members do have this experience - and might be interested in a robust volunteer driven model.

Contracting the specific expertise needed, whilst developing a robust community department is an excellent model :)

Tom

I'm sure if we wanted to start a volunteer group, if I manage to get round to organising a Hackathon (Its still very much on my mind, I'm going to get things rolling soon) this year, then that'd be a good place to meetup and organise an effort I assume... my knowledge is far from complete but I have experience in certain areas and I'm willing to help out...

-- Lewis Cawte

_______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

On 18 June 2012 17:44, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:

On 18 June 2012 15:28, Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:

...

No amount of corporate jargon and/or penny-pinching can cover up not getting the right person for the job because the position is a vaguish proposition. So I think Tom has a point.

I don't think the problem is a vague position. It's our first tech hire, so the job is to do all our tech work.

All WMUK's existing tech work, or all in prospect. I'm a week into a job that might require tech support, such as deciding how to host a LAMP program within WMUK's hosting, which (as I understand) was or is being changed. I know less than most people on this list in this area; but if you advertise for a handyperson, that is what you'll get. And without certain skills, a new project may require a new person or contractor.

In any case there was a job spec set out 18 months ago, I recall.

Charles

It certainly did make all the difference for me, and I didn't mind the pay cut either. I think it all depends on what motivates people.

Stevie

On 18 June 2012 14:51, Jon Davies jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:

Food for thought - surely the lure of working for Wikipedia with free fruit tea and coffee will make ALL the difference?

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 2:49 PM, Thomas Morton < morton.thomas@googlemail.com> wrote:

...

Looking at the job description I have some concerns that it has been written without the input of someone experienced in hiring individuals for technical or pseudo-technical roles - especially in the current economic climate.

You seem to be looking for someone extremely versatile, experienced and independent... on a *very* entry level salary packet.

I was under the impression, from previous discussions, that the developer position was to be contractor-style - or at least remote working in the region ~10 hours a week.

As a developer, from the description page, I see the following roles:

• Developer
• Sysadmin
• Project manager
• Advocate

Four very distinct roles.

To pick on one specific issue; expecting this person to work on Mediwiki core, or an extension, is going to be problematic. That's a whole position on its own and you are going to find that ongoing "other work" will make project work of that sort untenable.

(speaking as someone who is in much this position at the moment; my project work is on hold pretty much all the time whilst clearing up management issues).

I worry that there is not a lot of work described in this job; or at least the responsibilities are bitty and ill-defined. You're risking having someone who will sit for long portions of the day drumming their fingers on the desk. (speaking as someone who was hired to do this once, and quit after 3 months due to boredom). It would be good to define (internally, on the WMUK wiki) the roles this developer will have to fulfill and, from a technical perspective, what we'd like to achieve in, say, the next year.

The salary is most concerning though; you're looking for experience and versatility - two major technical skills (sysadmin and developer) plus management experience/skill - at a basic entry level rate. I think you will struggle to find competent applicants.

I'd fit, fairly well, this job description (and I think am pretty good at it) - and any London based job under £35K would struggle to tempt me. Under £30K is not even worth considering. (n.b. I'm not saying this because I'd plan to apply if you raised the salary :)). You;fe

What I recommend is hiring a more general community liaison (we need this anyway IMO), with experience in technical projects. They can do most of the PM style work. Then contract out specific projects (yes, including MW extension writing) as and when needed. Keep a contractor on retainer for sysadmin and internal dev work (~10 hours a week etc.).

Particularly as you have numerous skilled dev/sysadmin contractors within the community who will likely offer discounted rates. Building on the WMF model; with a competent project manager most of the dev/sysadmin work could be community driven. I've already offered to pitch in, but there is no public project to achieve this that I know of.

If we have a budget of £30K to go into development this is not enough to hire a full time developer/sysadmin/manager. It's enough to contract the work and to begin to build a volunteer centric development department.

Mike wrote an excellent starter to this here: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012_Developer_budget The current job description seems to be the opposite of many of those (good) proposals (although I know Mike also wrote the job description). If we take the list of upcoming requirements from that page there are even bigger images; it talks about a robust backup strategy - which is quite a specific set of experience. Even worse is the security review stuff - no dev/sysadmin you hire for £25K will be capable of a robust security review.

As always; just my 2p :)

Tom

(sorry to be over-critical, but I am in a rush today so this is first draft sent :))

On 18 June 2012 13:41, Jon Davies jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:

...

We will shortly be advertising for our developer post. We will be spreading the word far and wide, especially within the community, but all suggestions gratefully received. So far (outside leads: Mozilla Tech hub Civi-CRM Google academy

Thanks

Jon

-- *Jon Davies - Chief Executive Wikimedia UK*. Mobile (0044) 7803 505 169 tweet @jonatreesdavies

Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513 Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Telephone (0044) 207 065 0990. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). It is an independent non-profit organization with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.

Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk

---

Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

---

Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

-- *Jon Davies - Chief Executive Wikimedia UK*. Mobile (0044) 7803 505 169 tweet @jonatreesdavies

Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513 Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Telephone (0044) 207 065 0990. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). It is an independent non-profit organization with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.

Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk

---

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You seem to be saying both that there is too much work, so there won't be time for mediawiki development, and that there is too little work so they'll be twiddling their thumbs. Which is it? On Jun 18, 2012 2:49 PM, "Thomas Morton" morton.thomas@googlemail.com wrote:

Looking at the job description I have some concerns that it has been written without the input of someone experienced in hiring individuals for technical or pseudo-technical roles - especially in the current economic climate.

You seem to be looking for someone extremely versatile, experienced and independent... on a *very* entry level salary packet.

I was under the impression, from previous discussions, that the developer position was to be contractor-style - or at least remote working in the region ~10 hours a week.

As a developer, from the description page, I see the following roles:

• Developer
• Sysadmin
• Project manager
• Advocate

Four very distinct roles.

To pick on one specific issue; expecting this person to work on Mediwiki core, or an extension, is going to be problematic. That's a whole position on its own and you are going to find that ongoing "other work" will make project work of that sort untenable.

(speaking as someone who is in much this position at the moment; my project work is on hold pretty much all the time whilst clearing up management issues).

I worry that there is not a lot of work described in this job; or at least the responsibilities are bitty and ill-defined. You're risking having someone who will sit for long portions of the day drumming their fingers on the desk. (speaking as someone who was hired to do this once, and quit after 3 months due to boredom). It would be good to define (internally, on the WMUK wiki) the roles this developer will have to fulfill and, from a technical perspective, what we'd like to achieve in, say, the next year.

The salary is most concerning though; you're looking for experience and versatility - two major technical skills (sysadmin and developer) plus management experience/skill - at a basic entry level rate. I think you will struggle to find competent applicants.

I'd fit, fairly well, this job description (and I think am pretty good at it) - and any London based job under £35K would struggle to tempt me. Under £30K is not even worth considering. (n.b. I'm not saying this because I'd plan to apply if you raised the salary :)). You;fe

What I recommend is hiring a more general community liaison (we need this anyway IMO), with experience in technical projects. They can do most of the PM style work. Then contract out specific projects (yes, including MW extension writing) as and when needed. Keep a contractor on retainer for sysadmin and internal dev work (~10 hours a week etc.).

Particularly as you have numerous skilled dev/sysadmin contractors within the community who will likely offer discounted rates. Building on the WMF model; with a competent project manager most of the dev/sysadmin work could be community driven. I've already offered to pitch in, but there is no public project to achieve this that I know of.

If we have a budget of £30K to go into development this is not enough to hire a full time developer/sysadmin/manager. It's enough to contract the work and to begin to build a volunteer centric development department.

Mike wrote an excellent starter to this here: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012_Developer_budget The current job description seems to be the opposite of many of those (good) proposals (although I know Mike also wrote the job description). If we take the list of upcoming requirements from that page there are even bigger images; it talks about a robust backup strategy - which is quite a specific set of experience. Even worse is the security review stuff - no dev/sysadmin you hire for £25K will be capable of a robust security review.

As always; just my 2p :)

Tom

(sorry to be over-critical, but I am in a rush today so this is first draft sent :))

On 18 June 2012 13:41, Jon Davies jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:

...

We will shortly be advertising for our developer post. We will be spreading the word far and wide, especially within the community, but all suggestions gratefully received. So far (outside leads: Mozilla Tech hub Civi-CRM Google academy

Thanks

Jon

-- *Jon Davies - Chief Executive Wikimedia UK*. Mobile (0044) 7803 505 169 tweet @jonatreesdavies

Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513 Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Telephone (0044) 207 065 0990. Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). It is an independent non-profit organization with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.

Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk

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MW development is a whole job in itself. From experience; it's hard to work meaningfully on a major project (such as that) whilst also doing smaller bits of work (like outreach, sysadmin, smaller development tasks).

Why is that, out of interest?

But anyway - Mike has posted the Board's reasoning here, and I will only echo part of it - which is that the "developer" post has been under discussion for about 18 months, and it is long overdue that we advertised it one way or another.

Chris

On 18 June 2012 21:41, Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:

...

MW development is a whole job in itself. From experience; it's hard to work meaningfully on a major project (such as that)  whilst also doing smaller bits of work (like outreach, sysadmin, smaller development tasks).

Why is that, out of interest?

But anyway - Mike has posted the Board's reasoning here, and I will only echo part of it - which is that the "developer" post has been under discussion for about 18 months, and it is long overdue that we advertised it one way or another.

Sorry Chris: [[argumentum ad nauseam]].

Charles

Just wanted to say your comment about needing a community liaison was spot on. It's something I've been thinking about for a while, but I don't want to plug it too hard because I'd give serious thought to applying if it ever came up!

Best, Harry

________________________________ From: Thomas Morton morton.thomas@googlemail.com To: UK Wikimedia mailing list wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Monday, 18 June 2012, 14:49 Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Recruiting for the Developer

Looking at the job description I have some concerns that it has been written without the input of someone experienced in hiring individuals for technical or pseudo-technical roles - especially in the current economic climate.

You seem to be looking for someone extremely versatile, experienced and independent... on a very entry level salary packet.

I was under the impression, from previous discussions, that the developer position was to be contractor-style - or at least remote working in the region ~10 hours a week.

As a developer, from the description page, I see the following roles:

* Developer * Sysadmin * Project manager * Advocate

Four very distinct roles.

To pick on one specific issue; expecting this person to work on Mediwiki core, or an extension, is going to be problematic. That's a whole position on its own and you are going to find that ongoing "other work" will make project work of that sort untenable.

(speaking as someone who is in much this position at the moment; my project work is on hold pretty much all the time whilst clearing up management issues).

I worry that there is not a lot of work described in this job; or at least the responsibilities are bitty and ill-defined. You're risking having someone who will sit for long portions of the day drumming their fingers on the desk. (speaking as someone who was hired to do this once, and quit after 3 months due to boredom). It would be good to define (internally, on the WMUK wiki) the roles this developer will have to fulfill and, from a technical perspective, what we'd like to achieve in, say, the next year.

The salary is most concerning though; you're looking for experience and versatility - two major technical skills (sysadmin and developer) plus management experience/skill - at a basic entry level rate. I think you will struggle to find competent applicants.

I'd fit, fairly well, this job description (and I think am pretty good at it) - and any London based job under £35K would struggle to tempt me. Under £30K is not even worth considering. (n.b. I'm not saying this because I'd plan to apply if you raised the salary :)). You;fe

What I recommend is hiring a more general community liaison (we need this anyway IMO), with experience in technical projects. They can do most of the PM style work. Then contract out specific projects (yes, including MW extension writing) as and when needed. Keep a contractor on retainer for sysadmin and internal dev work (~10 hours a week etc.).

Particularly as you have numerous skilled dev/sysadmin contractors within the community who will likely offer discounted rates. Building on the WMF model; with a competent project manager most of the dev/sysadmin work could be community driven. I've already offered to pitch in, but there is no public project to achieve this that I know of.

If we have a budget of £30K to go into development this is not enough to hire a full time developer/sysadmin/manager. It's enough to contract the work and to begin to build a volunteer centric development department.

Mike wrote an excellent starter to this here: http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/2012_Developer_budget%C2%A0The current job description seems to be the opposite of many of those (good) proposals (although I know Mike also wrote the job description). If we take the list of upcoming requirements from that page there are even bigger images; it talks about a robust backup strategy - which is quite a specific set of experience. Even worse is the security review stuff - no dev/sysadmin you hire for £25K will be capable of a robust security review.

As always; just my 2p :)

Tom

(sorry to be over-critical, but I am in a rush today so this is first draft sent :))

On 18 June 2012 13:41, Jon Davies jon.davies@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:

We will shortly be advertising for our developer post. We will be spreading the word far and wide, especially within the community, but all suggestions gratefully received.

So far (outside leads: Mozilla Tech hub Civi-CRM Google academy

Thanks

Jon

-- Jon Davies - Chief Executive Wikimedia UK.  Mobile (0044) 7803 505 169 tweet @jonatreesdavies

Wikimedia UK is a Company Limited by Guarantee registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 6741827. Registered Charity No.1144513 Registered Office 4th Floor, Development House,  56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT. United Kingdom. Telephone (0044) 207 065 0990.  Wikimedia UK is the UK chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation (who operate Wikipedia, amongst other projects). It is an independent non-profit organization with no legal control over Wikipedia nor responsibility for its contents.

Visit http://www.wikimedia.org.uk/ and @wikimediauk

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Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

_______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediauk-l@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org

On 18 June 2012 16:57, Andy Mabbett andy@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:

Brilliant self-marketing ploy there, Harry! ;-)

It's a standard politician ploy, accidentially leaking your plans.