collect feedback on TOC and TAG engagement and employer recognition

[rochaporto]

Following the discussion during the TOC meeting of April 2nd, this issue tries to collect feedback on how TOC and TAG members are managing to get recognition for their engagement with the different CNCF bodies from their employers, with some context on what the employer's position is - vendor, end user, ...

Both successes and challenges are of interest. The outcome could be a document with suggestions for existing and potential members of the TOC/TAGs to help making their contributions sustainable.

[krook]

Speaking here not as an employee of the CNCF, but instead as a former member of the staff engineer review board at my previous employer that reviewed CNCF and LF contributions from promotion candidates:

As a vendor company, a person's role in open source was recognized as a key part of a career ladder that looked for broadening scope, impact, and influence in three key areas to evaluate them for promotion: Project Success; Skills Development; and Giveback (including IP and Eminence Building).

• Being an open source project contributor or maintainer had a direct impact on Project Success if the vendor built a profitable or strategic product upon it. This was recognized through quarterly awards from the OSPO (or equivalent) and promotion opportunities through the staff engineer board. This also could be used to show clear public evidence of Skills Development (hard and soft) for the board and other yearly assessments.

• Being part of a TAG or TOC would be recognized in a similar way, but more in the area of Eminence and Leadership which are key towards building up influence without authority as a respected expert in the industry. The lengthier and more substantial contributions here obviously had greater impact on a promotion case than a short term involvement that started only recently (for example, perhaps seen as an easy way to beef up their promotion package). Any leadership roles (chair, tech lead) also deepened the value of the candidate's work.

• Related to both of those types of contributions, any speaking engagements were considered valuable indicators of staff engineer growth, as these put the candidate in a position of representing the company and their work (and indirectly, their products) to conference attendees (potential customers and folks who they could recruit into their company as employees). This was often also a prerequisite for justifying travel approval.

In short, contributions to open source and serving in a leadership role at a foundation were mutually beneficial for both the company and the growth of the individual and provide opportunities to demonstrate quantifiable impact in the industry. To support that, my former employer had incentives at quarterly, annual review, and promotion milestones.

[mrbobbytables]

@krook I don't disagree with it being a part of people's career growth, but vendors rarely TRULY value spending time in an area unless they can relate it to something more tangible. The influence is not something that can be expressed well to those who aren't familiar with the space. A person's manager may know, but as you go up the ladder, the more "concrete" something needs to be. Otherwise, the intangible stuff will be the first to go regarding a person's assigned job duties when the vendor is resource-constrained.

The TOC has firm codified responsibilities and influence. They are the ones who vote and approve projects entering and going through the levels. They also get time on the keynote stage, etc.

TAGs (right now) have no "true" responsibility; they have some very vague influence over projects graduating levels but nothing codified. I know there are discussions around this, so it might be fixed in the future, but I do see it as something that has been an ongoing issue and may become worse if more vendors are strapped for headcount =/

The other thing that I think makes it difficult is the lack of a report or something that DOES convey the work being done in the TAGs. They get maintainer sessions, yes, but that's hard to summarize as something that could be given to a manager or further up the chain to summarize the work being done. Folks hate filling them out, but an annual or at least some kind of report that summarizes the work being done can be a huge boon. The K8s annual reports have helped multiple leads "justify" their time working on the project. I think some things can be done to make this easier for folks to complete, so it's a bit less like pulling teeth, but they do genuinely help.