Hi Jon,
> Had my performance review today, and Apple wants me to get a patch
> accepted this quarter, with the promise of more to come after that.
> Luckily, this first patch can be anything (doesn't have to be of use to
> Apple, more to prove that I can get a patch accepted), so I'm open to
> suggestions of smaller stuff that is in demand at the moment.
My sincere congratulations!
From personal experience however delivering any non-trivial patch may
take from several years up to infinity even if the RFC is in agreement
with the community and generally everyone is enthusiastic about the
proposal change. Take "Clarify the behavior of the system when
approaching XID wraparound" [1] as a recent example. It's a fairly
simple change but after 10 months it's only yet to be committed. I
know people who were working on a single patch for 5 years.
Please make sure your employer understands the specifics of working on
open source, especially the fact that no one cares about this
employer's internal deadlines, and also that this is reflected in your
team metrics. There are also many other things to be mindful of. I
would recommend making sure that your team owns only one product (i.e.
PostgreSQL Upstream), no extensions, no forks etc. Make sure the team
charter reflects this, otherwise other products will always be a
priority.
Regarding your deliverables for this quarter. If the size of the patch
is not critical, I would suggest focusing on simple refactorings and
also code reviews. Especially code reviews. Practice shows that it's
realistic for one person to deliver somewhere between 10 to 20 patches
per quarter this way. Then compare the number you got to the average
amount of patches one person (except for the Core Team) typically
contributes. Your goal is to be above the median. If on top of that
you are able, lets say, to make internal technical talks about
PostgreSQL internals and/or speak at conferences and/or ... this will
look great on your PFD and your manager will be extremely happy with
your performance.
I know this may sound like gaming the metrics or something but this is
exactly how large companies work.
I honestly wish you all the best at your new job and will be happy to
share my findings regarding building the processes around OSS
development. Please don't hesitate reaching out to me off-list.
[1]: https://commitfest.postgresql.org/45/4128/
--
Best regards,
Aleksander Alekseev