本文探讨了开源项目和志愿者组织面临的共同挑战：人才招募和留存问题。作者以自身在童子军组织的志愿者经验为例，指出由于缺乏新的人才加入，以及老志愿者因孩子长大而退出，导致志愿者队伍萎缩。作者认为，解决这个问题的关键在于：提供循序渐进的培训和任务，避免一开始就给志愿者过高的工作量；同时，要尊重老志愿者的经验，并鼓励沟通和合作，而不是一味地推行自己的想法。

👨‍💻 开源项目和志愿者组织面临着共同的挑战：人才招募和留存问题。由于缺乏新的人才加入，以及老志愿者因孩子长大而退出，导致志愿者队伍萎缩。 作者以自身在童子军组织的志愿者经验为例，指出如何解决这个问题： - 提供循序渐进的培训和任务，避免一开始就给志愿者过高的工作量。 - 鼓励沟通和合作，尊重老志愿者的经验，而不是一味地推行自己的想法。

🤝 作者建议，开源项目和志愿者组织应该采用“循序渐进”的策略，即先给志愿者提供一些简单的任务，让他们逐渐熟悉工作流程，并培养他们的兴趣和信心。 - 这样可以避免志愿者因为一开始就面临过高的工作量而感到压力和挫败，从而失去参与的热情。 - 同时，也要尊重老志愿者的经验，并鼓励沟通和合作，而不是一味地推行自己的想法。 - 只有这样才能营造一个和谐的合作氛围，吸引更多的人加入到志愿者队伍中。

💪 作者认为，开源项目和志愿者组织要吸引和留住人才，需要从以下几个方面着手： - 提供清晰的项目目标和愿景，让志愿者明白自己的工作意义。 - 建立完善的沟通机制，及时反馈志愿者的工作成果和意见。 - 提供必要的培训和支持，帮助志愿者提高技能和能力。 - 营造良好的团队氛围，让志愿者感受到尊重和认可。

🤝 作者强调，开源项目和志愿者组织需要尊重老志愿者的经验，并鼓励沟通和合作，而不是一味地推行自己的想法。 - 因为老志愿者往往拥有丰富的经验和知识，他们的经验和建议对于项目的顺利进行至关重要。 - 只有通过沟通和合作，才能找到最佳的解决方案，实现项目目标。

🤝 作者还建议，开源项目和志愿者组织应该建立一个完善的沟通机制，及时反馈志愿者的工作成果和意见。 - 这样可以帮助志愿者了解自己的工作进展，并及时解决工作中遇到的问题。 - 同时，也可以让志愿者感受到尊重和认可，从而提高他们的参与度和积极性。

🤝 作者认为，开源项目和志愿者组织需要提供必要的培训和支持，帮助志愿者提高技能和能力。 - 只有这样才能让志愿者更好地胜任工作，并为项目做出更大的贡献。

🤝 作者强调，开源项目和志愿者组织需要营造良好的团队氛围，让志愿者感受到尊重和认可。 - 只有这样才能吸引更多的人加入到志愿者队伍中，并为项目的发展贡献力量。

🤝 作者总结说，开源项目和志愿者组织需要付出更多努力，才能吸引和留住人才，确保项目的顺利进行。

🤝 作者建议，开源项目和志愿者组织应该采取多种措施，例如提供清晰的项目目标和愿景，建立完善的沟通机制，提供必要的培训和支持，营造良好的团队氛围等等。

🤝 作者认为，只有通过这些措施，才能吸引更多的人加入到志愿者队伍中，并为项目的成功做出贡献。

🤝 作者相信，只要我们共同努力，开源项目和志愿者组织的未来一定会更加美好。

I saw a recent post on LinkedIn from Alex Henthorn-Iwane that gave me pause. He was talking about how nearly 2/3rds of Github projects are maintained by one or two people. He also quoted some statistics around how projects are maintained by volunteers and unpaid members as opposed to more institutional support from people getting paid to do the work. It made me reflect on my own volunteering journey and how the parallels between open source and other organizations aren’t so different after all.

A Hour A Week

Most of my readers know that one of my passion projects outside of Tech Field Day and this humble blog is the involvement of my children in Scouting. I spend a lot of my free time volunteering as a leader and organizer for various groups. I get to touch grass quite often. At least I do when I’m not stuck in meetings or approving paperwork.

One of the things that struck me in Alex’s post was how he talked about the lack of incoming talent to help with projects as older maintainers are aging out. We face a similar problem in scouting. Rather than our volunteers getting too old to do the work we face the issue of the kids aging out. When the kids leave the program through hitting age limits or through growing bored with the program their parents usually go with them. Since those parents are the source of our volunteers we quickly have gaps where our most promising leaders are gone after only a couple of years. Only the most dedicated volunteers stick around after their kids have moved on.

Recruiting people to be a part of the fun, whether a project or an organization, is hard. People have even less time now than they did a few years ago. It could be social media or binge watching TV or doing the work of an extra person or two but finding help is almost impossible. One of the ways that we’ve tried to bridge that gap is to make sure that people that want to help aren’t overwhelmed. We give them little jobs to do to help get them into the flow of things before asking them to do more. That would translate well to open source projects. Give people small tasks or little modules to work on instead of throwing them in other the deep end of the pool with no warning. That’s a quick way to alienate your volunteers. It also keeps them from burning themselves out quickly.

We ease them in by saying “it’s only an hour a week”. Realistically it’s more like two or three hours per week to start. However, if you try to burden people with too much all at once they will run away and never look back. Even if the developers are overwhelmed and need the help they need to understand that shifting the load to other volunteers isn’t a sudden thing. It takes time to slowly move over tasks and evaluate how people are doing before letting them shoulder more of the load.

My Way or the Highway

The other volunteer issue that I run into is the people who are entrenched in what they do. This applies greatly to the people that are the die-hard maintainers of a project. They have their way of doing things and that’s how it’s going to be. Just take a stroll through any Linux kernel mailing list thread and see how those tried-and-true things are encouraged, or in some cases enforced.

I’m all for having structure and a measured approach to how things are done. Where it causes problems for people is when that structure takes precedence over common sense. In my volunteer work I’ve seen a number of old timers who tell me that “this is the way it’s done” or “my way works” when it clearly doesn’t or can lead to other problems. Worse yet, when challenged those people tend to clam up and decide that anyone that disagrees with them should just leave or get with the program. It leads to hard feelings and zero desire to want to help out in the future. The well is poisoned not only for that person but for anyone that knows about the story of how they were rejected or marginalized.

People that are shouldering the load want help. Even if they’re so set in their ways that they can’t conceive of a different way to do it we still need to offer our help. What we need to realize on our side is that their way has worked for them for all this time. We don’t need to come crashing through the front door and trying to upset everything they’ve worked hard to accomplish. Instead, we need to ask questions that help us understand the process and make suggestions where appropriate instead of demands that must be met. My Way or the Highway doesn’t work in either direction. Compromise is the key to accomplishing our mutual goals.

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Tom’s Take

Writing an open source library isn’t like taking a group camping in the woods. However, the process isn’t totally foreign. A group of dedicated people are doing something that is thankless but could end up changing lives. We’re always overworked and we want people to help. We just need them to understand why we do things the way we do them. And if that means pushing back it’s up to us to make sure we don’t scare anyone off that is genuinely interested in helping out. All volunteer work lives and dies based on who is helping us accomplish the end goal. Don’t get hung up on the details when evaluating those that choose to give of their time for you.