On Fri, Nov 8, 2013 at 12:38 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
What might have some degree of traction, based on the discussion, is to have some blessed delegation coming from the original triumvirate of architects.
+1
I'd personally like to see this kept flexible, so that it's relatively easy to both assign and to hand off projects. Gerrit is littered with abandoned bits and pieces. It should be easy to 'assign' a new owner/"architect" to a component when maintainership seems to be flagging, and owners should be encouraged to hand off ownership when they've moved on. Having to go through a formal process would be a drag.
Perhaps every module owner should be required to write a quarterly report, and the next level up in the hierarchy has to write the report for any unowned modules. That would encourage people both to delegate and to hand-off when possible. ;) [mostly joking, we shouldn't be inventing busywork, but I do feel that ownership/"architect" status should ideally come with real responsibilities.]
2) We don't award Architect as a job title beyond the original
triumvirate, but we _do_ introduce a Senior Software Engineer II (same
[...]
I think the second is more consistent with the tenor of the discussion
+1
I'm not a big fan of the actual wording of the "Senior Software Engineer II" title, but I'm sure HR could come up with some comparable titles among our peers. (Maybe "Principal Software Engineer", or something with "Fellow" in it. Other organizations apparently use "Staff Software Engineer" but I'm not a fan of that. [1]) But those are details... --scott
[1] see "Fellow" in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_title ; also see http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/117179/what-is-the-job-title-... some alternatives used elsewhere