Earl Miles on burnout in open source software coming from not being able to scale as a contributor to match a growing contributed project

https://twitter.com/merlinofchaos/status/1091063290883526656

Earl Miles ‏

@merlinofchaos 10h10 hours ago Earl Miles Retweeted Titus Brown Earl Miles added: As someone who invested a large chunk of time into OSS maintainership, and was paid to do it, the root cause of burnout from my perspective is not money. Don’t get me wrong, money is a factor, but factors are not root causes.

Titus Brown @ctitusbrown Maybe? I am very much on board with the general point ($$!) but have a few additional thoughts. cc @nayafia esp. https://twitter.com/jacobian/status/1086399572396646402 … Show this thread 1 reply 4 retweets 4 likes Reply 1 Retweet 4 Like 4 Direct message

Earl Miles @merlinofchaos

Speaking personally, the root cause of burnout is scalability. Money doesn’t fix scalability, but it can ameliorate it. What I mean by this is that I truly enjoyed maintaining my OSS project for a time. But I didn’t scale. The needs of the project ended up outpacing my abilities. 2:58 PM - 31 Jan 2019 4 Retweets 3 Likes Kristen PolBojan ŽivanovićNadiaSimon GeorgesJeff Forcier 1 reply 4 retweets 3 likes Reply 1 Retweet 4 Like 3 Direct message Benjamin MelançonTweet text

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Earl Miles ‏

@merlinofchaos 10h10 hours ago More This wasn’t really about money, it was about management. I’m a good developer, and I do ok with people when I put a mind to it, but I’m a terrible manager even when there’s an obvious structure where I actually have authority. 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 Direct message

Earl Miles ‏

@merlinofchaos 10h10 hours ago More In an OSS project, there would certainly be people who would volunteer. Lots of people wanted to scratch their itch. But volunteering and being managed is difficult in OSS on both sides. And when the workload to support the project exceeds one person, it’s the only solution. 1 reply 1 retweet 1 like Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 1 Direct message

Earl Miles ‏

@merlinofchaos 10h10 hours ago More I don’t know if this is really fixable in OSS. I was attracted to it because I could scratch my own itch, and it turned out a LOT of people liked and wanted my solutions, as flawed and imperfect as they were. 1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like Direct message

Earl Miles ‏

@merlinofchaos 10h10 hours ago More Those imperfections grew; people’s reactions to those imperfections took a toll on my excitement for the project. If I had a thicker skin maybe I could have just powered through it, but alas, I do not have a thick skin, as much as I wish I did. 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 Direct message

Earl Miles ‏

@merlinofchaos 10h10 hours ago More And for me, even though the vast majority of the people were understanding and helpful, it was too easy to obsess on those who weren’t understanding, weren’t helpful, and whose conflicting ideas with mine made the product worse; not because their ideas were bad or wrong, but… 1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like 3 Direct message

Earl Miles ‏

@merlinofchaos 10h10 hours ago More …because they did not co-exist well with mine. And when the workload to manage the issue queues increased beyond what I could do, even when I tried to do it full time, my personal happiness suffered. 1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like Direct message

Earl Miles ‏

@merlinofchaos 10h10 hours ago More Frankly, issue queues are full of problems. Many of them hard to fix. Many of them poorly defined. And many of them trivial. They all take time and energy to deal with. Money didn’t give me that. 1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes Reply 1 Retweet Like Direct message

Earl Miles ‏

@merlinofchaos 10h10 hours ago More And volunteers didn’t really have the ability to mitigate this. They couldn’t readily maintain my vision without knowing me really well, and frankly, doing so was not fun. Helping out in the queue at a level that actually made a difference wasn’t possible. 1 reply 1 retweet 0 likes Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like Direct message

Earl Miles ‏

@merlinofchaos 10h10 hours ago More Thus, burn out. And once I moved into a position where I was no longer paid to manage those issues, stepping away was a very easy decision. 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 Direct message

Earl Miles ‏

@merlinofchaos 10h10 hours ago More I wish I had answers on how to fix this problem, but I do know that throwing money at it won’t do it. Umbrella organizations might be able to, but at some point they have to become actual companies with dedicated teams filling all the roles. 1 reply 0 retweets 1 like Reply 1 Retweet Like 1 Direct message

Earl Miles ‏

@merlinofchaos 10h10 hours ago More And once you have that, people who aren’t doing that wonder why they’re contributing all this time and effort unpaid while those teams are getting paid. And if the teams aren’t getting paid, you can’t maintain integrity over time.