From Imposter Syndrome to Core Committer: A GSoC Journey
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A walkthrough of my journey from Google Summer if Code in 2005 to Drupal core committer and beyond, along with some life advice learned along the way.
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From Imposter Syndrome to Core Committer: A GSoC Journey
- 1. From Imposter Syndrome to Core Committer: A GSoC Journey Angie “@webchick” Byron August 27, 2021
- 2. As a teenager I discovered free/open source software
- 3. And believed it would change the world
- 4. But also believed you must be “this” smart to contribute
- 5. Enter Google Summer of Code
- 6. Lesson: Imposter Syndrome is a dirty, evil little liar. (It’s ok to be scared, try it anyway!)
- 8. (Knew it through the Spread Firefox project)
- 10. What the? What is a “hook”? How do I “cvs”?
- 11. Oh no. They think I’m smart. I better not ask questions or they’ll know I’m not. :(
- 12. Luckily my mentor detected this and helped me out. :)
- 13. Lesson: Don’t be scared to ask for help! (But be respectful of others’ time.)
- 14. Wow, you mean ANYONE can contribute?!
- 15. Let me help out here!
- 16. And also there!
- 18. Lesson: Be a helper. (And document as you go, to pave the way for the next person.)
- 19. Companies started to take notice, hiring offers
- 20. Attended/spoke at my first (of hundreds) Drupal event
- 21. Joined ALL the teams!
- 22. Served on the Drupal Association Board
- 23. Got promoted to Core Committer
- 24. Turned contributing into a full-time job
- 25. Wrote a book. (Twice.)
- 27. (And so on for ~10 years, until…)
- 28. Burn. Out.
- 29. Lesson: Don’t forget to take care of yourself. (No one is going to enforce boundaries for you, but you.)
- 30. Governance++
- 31. Governance++
- 32. Travel--
- 33. Lesson: Learn to scale yourself. (Your life will thank you!)
- 34. In summary... ● Push through imposter syndrome — it lies. ● Don’t be scared to ask for help, but do your homework first. ● Help out wherever you can, and pave the way for others. ● But, don’t let it get out of hand. :) ● Scale yourself
- 35. Thank you! :D
Editor's Notes
- We asked this year's students what they wanted to hear about and over 375 replied and it is clear they are looking to hear from folks who can show them how GSOC helped them with their careers and how they can make a career in open source or any other tips. They want to be inspired. :) These are some of the suggestions that came from multiple students that might be of interest for you to include in a talk (totally up to you) : Open source project maintainers, core developers and engineers who are willing to share some advice. Open source enthusiastic people who motivate us to make more contributions. Projects that were done thanks to GSOC Or if you have anything you think you could have benefited from knowing/doing when you were in university and launching your career I'm sure they'd be happy to hear about it. Our plan is to have a mix of Google speakers (some ex-GSoCers and folks across our open source team) and also non-Googler mentors talking about their experiences and advice, tips, cool open source projects, etc. We are thinking of this as an 'inspire and inform' type of event for the students. I hope this helps you kind of formulate what things you'd be interested in talking to the students about.
- As a youngster, I was completely fascinated by the Internet and tried to teach myself all aspects of it: programming, networking, server configuration… at some point I stumbled into Linux/FLOSS and my brain exploded. "Linux password file" by Christiaan Colen is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
- I loved the empowerment aspects, I loved the collaboration methods, and truly believed this was the way forward for a better world. "Earth" by Kevin M. Gill is licensed under CC BY 2.0
- Buuuut, I also fundamentally believed you had to be basically Einstein to contribute to open source. And so I continued to cheer on open source from the sidelines for about a decade. "einstein-chuza" by dorfun is marked with CC0 1.0
- That changed with the appearance of Google Summer of Code. I reasoned that since they know we are students, they must know we don’t know everything yet. Photo credit: http://glaforge.appspot.com/article/google-summer-of-code-2005-tshirt
- So the takeaway here is: don’t listen to that little voice in your head that says you’re not good enough. Give it a shot, you never know where life will take you. :)
- So I applied to a project called Drupal, which is a powerful, modular content management framework.
- I learned about it because I’m one of those people who “views source” on every site she visits to see what’s happening under the hood. Spread Firefox was a cool site allowed anyone to create events, posters, etc. to promote the Firefox browser.
- Miraculously, I got accepted! I was so excited to get started!! "Fireworks" by tsuacctnt is licensed under CC BY 2.0
- But it was hard. There were a bunch of new Drupal-specific terminology to learn. As well as concepts they weren’t teaching in school at that time, like version control. "Overwhelmed" by Walt Stoneburner is licensed under CC BY 2.0
- I started to withdraw, thinking maybe if I bashed my head against the table long enough, I could figure it out. "Cat paws under bed" by piropiro3 is licensed under CC BY 2.0
- Fortunately, my mentor was extremely pro-active and caught this. :) "Helping Hand In A Stark World" by JD Hancock is licensed under CC BY 2.0
- So please, ASK FOR HELP! But make sure to try things on your own for at least a few minutes before asking, and let folks know what you tried already.
- So once I got on “this” side of the “You must be this smart to participate” perception, I was HOOKED. "File:Rabbit Looks Surprised by Monique Haen.jpg" by M. L. Haen is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
- I started to help out everywhere in Drupal that I could. Like creating add-on modules...
- Working on and reviewing others’ core patches...
- And especially contributing to documentation, so that it was written for someone at my level, who was new.
- My biggest advice on standing out in an open source community is to make Mr. Rogers proud and be a helper. Look for places you can offer your skills and assistance, both technical and non-technical. But most importantly, document as you go so that the next person has an easier time.
- Once GSoC ended, I expected to get some boring corporate job. Instead, Drupal companies offered to hire me because they’d seen my work in the community. "Binoculars at The Top of the Rock" by compujeramey is licensed under CC BY 2.0
- This was particularly true after I attended and spoke at my first in-person Drupal event. A little hard to do during COVID, but extremely important in terms of building relationships to help you in the future. Photo credit: https://flickr.com/photos/puregin/98477489
- I then threw myself in head-first, joined ALL the teams: documentation, webmasters, security...
- ...I served on the Drupal Association board and was a founding member who helped kick off the governance.
- After a few years of proving myself, I got promoted to core committer. Photo credit: https://dri.es/files/state-of-drupal-august-2008.pdf
- I was able to negotiate with the project lead to be hired by his company to do what I was doing in “nights and weekends” time as a full-time gig
- I wrote a book.Twice. :D The second while having a small baby.
- I was able to travel all over the world to speak at conferencs, participate in sprints, etc. "Airplane" by viZZZual.com is licensed under CC BY 2.0
- Repeat this general pattern of saying “yes” to everything, volunteering for all the things, leading big, Drupal-changing initiatives, until...
- About 10 years in, I hit a major patch of burnout with work, and my personal life fell apart as well. "Burnout!" by Skley is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0
- So my biggest takeaway here is don’t let your enthusiasm get the best of you; you need to make sure you’re taking care of yourself as well, because no one else is going to.
- So, we focused on improving Drupal’s governance to make sure I wasn’t a single point of failure, and there were committees set up instead of individuals to handle critical community functionality.
- And we expanded the core committer team, so that there were defined roles and more people filling each.
- I also started recommending other up-and-coming contributors, especially women and people of colour, to take on speaking engagements and other outreach. This helped lift them up while allowing me to have more quality time with my family. "File:Chocolate-dipped heart-shaped cookies.jpg" by Mk2010 is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
- So my biggest takeaway here is don’t let your enthusiasm get the best of you; you need to make sure you’re taking care of yourself as well, because no one else is going to.
- "My first lolcat" by Niklas is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0