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The Rust project has a burnout problem

jyn.dev

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Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem

#41

Post by jynelson »

mjw1007 wrote: post #38
markphip wrote: post #3

This is a good description of what life is like working on almost any significant open source project. The only thing not included was the comments from overly entitled users that saps whatever morale and energy you have left. Probably best he did not include that though as that is what all discussion would be about. I am not sure what to do about the burnout problem. The way he described it is very on point though.…

I think, from observation, that the Rust project has worse burnout problems than most other similarly-sized open source projects. I'm not sure whether it's more to do with the way the project is organised, the state of the codebase, or the sort of person that's attracted to working on Rust in the first place.

i have some thoughts on it here: https://tech.lgbt/@jyn/111771280764615511. i'm planning to make this the subject of my next blog post.

Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem

#42

Post by Waterluvian »

markphip wrote: post #36
Waterluvian wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not sure what to do about the burnout problem. Pacing and self-regulation. It’s a marathon not a sprint. Set an hours-per-week budget. Beyond that things just don’t get done. That’s okay. If the community needs faster pace, they can consider supplying hours or dollars to fund more developers to work full-time.

I should have clarified, I meant I am not sure what an OSS Project can do about it. I think this ultimately has to be managed by the OSS contributor.

Ah yes. I wonder if an OSS project should set forth a time budget in some way? Hard to “enforce” though. And goes counter to wanting contributors to feel free to contribute on their terms.

Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem

#43

Post by chillingeffect »

twen_ty wrote: post #29

This is why I think that C++ will be around in the next 50 years but Rust? I can't tell.

C is/was fueled by positive energy: "Let's be (relatively) portable and improve on Assembly."

Rust seems to have vengeful victory at its heart: "Let's sock it to those reckless, ignorant C programmers."

Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem

#44

Post by sph »

markphip wrote: post #3

This is a good description of what life is like working on almost any significant open source project. The only thing not included was the comments from overly entitled users that saps whatever morale and energy you have left. Probably best he did not include that though as that is what all discussion would be about. I am not sure what to do about the burnout problem. The way he described it is very on point though.…

> This is a good description of what life is like working on almost any significant open source project.

Open contributions project.

An open source project does not necessarily have to accept random contributions, issues or hatemail from the general public. [1] They just need to make the source available with a permissive licence, period.

I believe that Linux with its idiosyncrasies in its communication model (mailing list vs the ease of Github, strong dictator running the show) works as a great filter from entitled users, and that's an underrated feature in open source. See also sqlite.

---

1: Yet hell will freeze over before Github lets maintainers turn off the PR tab which would lessen this problem a bit.

Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem

#45

Post by nyokodo »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #17
cjs_ac wrote: post #4

> the best way to help the project is to keep contributing for it for years. to do that, you have to avoid burning out, which means you have to treat yourself well. When I was a schoolteacher, the way I expressed this is that you have to do the job in such a way today that you're capable of doing it again tomorrow. This did not go down well and I am no longer a teacher.

Personally, I don't think it is natural to sit in the same role for more than a few years. And that's not just the primary tasks of the job -- the same people, the same administration, the same bureaucracy. I do feel that virtually no jobs will allow you to grow as a person and enjoy life. Here, by "job" I mean the traditional kind at a corporation or medium-sized organization. After seven years of working in such or…

> I personally feel that no amount of money is worth spending the best part of your youth doing mostly meaningless things

It depends on why you’re doing it. Supporting a family, and contributing money and spare time to your community, are very meaningful. I’m building for in order to do my real job which is being a parent and citizen.

Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem

#46

Post by jynelson »

markphip wrote: post #25
markphip wrote: post #3

This is a good description of what life is like working on almost any significant open source project. The only thing not included was the comments from overly entitled users that saps whatever morale and energy you have left. Probably best he did not include that though as that is what all discussion would be about. I am not sure what to do about the burnout problem. The way he described it is very on point though.…

Following up on my previous comment, I managed to never become fully burned out, but it required changes to myself, not the project. I had to become less emotionally invested in the project, realize I could not solve everything and step back a bit and do some other things. I guess it would be great if the project were reinforcing these ideas to its contributors to prevent burnout, but that also does not seem realisti…

this is a wonderful comment, thank you for writing it i am trying to model these behaviors; this post was primarily intended for other people working in the project. i feel pretty strongly that this is a cultural issue moreso than an individual one. i have seen too many of my friends burn out to say it was all their fault individually.

Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem

#47

Post by chubot »

gtirloni wrote: post #7

> new contributors make PRs. they make silly simple mistakes due to lack of experience; you point them out and they get fixed. this can be fun, for a time. what it’s teaching you is that you personally are responsible for catching mistakes. Every team I've worked with that was feeling exhausted about code contributions actually needed to focus on better documenting guidelines but most importantly, improve CI. Catchin…

This is true, but then the corrollary is that new PRs need to come with this higher, rigorous level of test coverage.

And then that becomes a bit of a barrier to contribution -- it's a tradeoff

I often write an entirely new test harnesses for a feature, e.g. for https://www.oilshell.org, particularly using other implementations as "oracles". All of these run in the CI - https://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/quality.html

The good thing is that it definitely helps me accept PRs faster. Current contributors are good at this kind of exhaustive testing, but many PRs aren't

Even so, I do find myself simply adding test coverage from time-to-time -- that's an important job of a maintainer

Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem

#48

Post by dml2135 »

rkangel wrote: post #10

Do other people react as strongly as I did to the lack of capitalisation at the start of sentences? The post is generally "well" written with good grammar and punctuation so I find it strange - it feels like a style choice. But the style choice just instinctively makes part of my brain feel like it's written by a child.

Ha, that’s funny, I didn’t even notice.

Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem

#49

Post by PoignardAzur »

I've recently been contracted to do some open-source work in the Rust ecosystem, and this article feels like a warning from my future self to me. I'll make sure to heed it.

> “it won’t get done if i don’t do it” and “i need to review everything or stuff will slip through” is exactly the mindset of my own burnout from rust.

I've already caught myself getting into this mindset a few times.

For one particular issue, I got a bit mad because it felt like I was the only one trying to move a critical issue forward, and other people were treating it as a distant priority. In that case, what helped was moving away from the issue for a few days, and seeing other people pick up speed and make progress on it in the meantime. Having supportive colleagues is super helpful.

I don't know how much this will be a problem in the coming year. I'm hoping we can strike a healthy balance.

Re: The Rust project has a burnout problem

#50

Post by jwmoz »

rkangel wrote: post #10

Do other people react as strongly as I did to the lack of capitalisation at the start of sentences? The post is generally "well" written with good grammar and punctuation so I find it strange - it feels like a style choice. But the style choice just instinctively makes part of my brain feel like it's written by a child.

Doesn't matter.
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