Psychological Safety in Open Source Projects
We are live at cubec con North America Chicago 2023 this is devops dispatch my name is l San Maria and I am a lead developer Advocate at Dell for the like 0.5 people actually paying attention and my co-host is here. Hi I'm Kat Cosgrove and I am also a lead developer advocate here at Dell for the co-workers standing in the booth excellent and we have a lovely guest with us today oh hi thank you for calling me lovely but my name Natali Vlatka and yeah I'm an open source architect for Cisco specifically in their open source program office very nice very nice there's a lot of Open Source in there I think that's going to be part of our conversation isn't it I mean very likely very likely I do like open source a lot I also love being ogled outside the booth by random people which is taking place right now that's actually a very good friend of mine who is deciding that he's going to photob bomb us every chance he gets every time he walks past this booth and one of us is in it he's pressing his face up against the glass he thinks it's it it tickles in pain he thinks it's very funny yeah he thinks it's funny and Charming we think probably differently yeah I just think it's entertaining yeah that's fair cuz I'm also very very silly so that's how it works but on that note so well not on that note on a different note I guess sure um we would like to talk about Community today an open source and I hear that there was some discussions about psychological safety we going to talk about and everything do we want to how do we want to set the scene well I mean firstly I just want to feel like you know the the the great Vibes in the room after the community awards that were just announced here at cucon you know that felt really good to kind of you know um recognize a lot of the top contributors I want to shout out to my girl Divia Mohan top documentarian my coair for special interest group in uh documentation for communties um but yeah I uh those kinds of awards and like that kind of recognition doesn't come from just like a smooth sailing journey in terms of like Community work right and I think um when we talk about having psychological safety and a lot of the work that we do in community it's usually around when there are like issues and challenges that we need to face and how do we like solve for those things and sometimes people aren't feeling great about speaking up and maybe saying something could not be could be interpreted in a way that's like a dig or or or just like General criticism to like a possible open source coworker that they don't mean in that way but there's an issue we want to solve it and they want to get to the you know the outcome of everyone's working and collaborating like in a in a safe space yeah it can be difficult to figure out how to like break down an issue that was like absolutely a result of a person without making them feel bad toally like we we do have to talk about it we do have to sit here and figure out what went wrong and how do we prevent that in the future and that will require acknowledging that there was a screw up right exactly and especially I mean it's easier when there's Mal intent but it's that's very rarely the case in those exactly um and so how do you uh talk about that in a in a just um in a productive way where it doesn't feel like an attack or it doesn't make someone feel not great um it's hard and I think uh um I do want to um shout out to yourself cat actually uh for um dealing with some of that in the last comms really specifically with the Retro that we held in S release and I think that was um that was handled in a way where you know docs didn't go well last release um in the way that we would have liked um but uh you know uh cat props to you for coming in and saving the day and like stepping in there and then us being able to like talk about hey as a community how do we uh solve for um as humans we have lives outside of Open Source and Things Can Happen things can drop off and the work that we're doing in that specific moment maybe is no longer priority and how to someone come in step in take over and ensure that a release can still happen docs can still get published um and I think that was something that uh I think we handled okay I'm also biased yeah yeah I mean we I don't know that we'll know that we handled it the right way until we uh are faced with that situation again and handle it differently yeah um but yeah how do we make somebody feel safe enough to step back from an open source role Pro actively before something becomes in their real life becomes an issue enough that it impacts or or how do we also help um people feel safe enough to kind of um speak up when they think that work isn't trending in the way that it needs to be like we're going to actually be late with the release or these docs aren't aren't getting published on time or um my Shadows haven't done the work that's needed like how can you feel safe to also speak up about those things and claim that we're in a yellow or red status right now in terms of you know our deliverables that's something that uh that's also really hard it is and it's in in my case it was how do I speak up and say hey my lead yeah has dropped a ball how do we move forward and fix this because I don't know what I'm doing right right yeah I mean I mean I think also it's um uh as a as a as the as the Sig lead that really appreciated that you stepping incat I think that was um something where uh the the bias to action of wanting to actually like fix the problem added more than you knowing what you needed to do um and I think that was something that uh you know we have a lot of documentation outlining what needs to happen a lot of people ready to put um their hands and their time and their fingers on keyboards kind of thing to um uh to make sure that really still happened on time uh but just like someone willing to kind of step in and fill that Gap that was like the the important thing and I think that's a um something in community in general and going back to the awards today that that is clearly like recognition clearly does happen for those kinds of things um and uh also shout out to K again for getting an award for her great work the last release too andri suit yeah surprise I mean as somebody who I run a bunch of different conference or help organize various different things and so I often have leads who they're really excited they want to help and then something happens and right part of it is also being proactive as the lead and saying like hey are you doing okay do you need help and if they say no and I know better it's kind of a no really do you need help yeah wink wink nudge nudge I will help you and I won't tell anybody that you need any help and it's fine that's a great Point too because I think uh we are it's really easy to say oh your status update is green so I don't have to pay attention to you everything is fine exactly trust but verify exactly exactly right and I think that's and and there's a way to do that where it doesn't feel like micromanaging and overreaching as well right um but also as let's say the um release lead for for that cycle like part of that is your job um but also part of it is you know again there's that trust but there's also hey you know other hopefully other steps that you can kind of look into that maybe shows that the puzzle isn't complete you know status is green but they're not turning up to any meeting something is exactly exactly status is green but Branch sinks aren't happening right right exactly and and you know it's clearly documented that they should be and like there is and there's a paper trail for those because there's a PR right right exactly um and so I think uh we I mean also US in US SE dos and the communties project specifically we do a lot of trusting and probably for the last couple releases have had to do also a bit more verifying because we've had things not going completely great exactly but at the same time it hasn't meant that we say oh we now need to like change the way the whole process runs no we need to like make sure that we can advocate for more feedback bubbling up and recording that so that we can solve these problems for the future and I think that's something that um we felt really Hur in the Sig um you know by the release team bubbling that feedback up so that we can improve it for next time and we were able to put that docs checklist together so that some of that safety can be there in terms of hey we need to uh you know say that this status is like yellow or red this time which means you know we're behind on EX deliverables and I think um we always want to say hey that's okay if you're behind because we're around to help be here and help um Us in docs the release team and and so on and I think we on our side can also do our part by overc communicating that option makes sense makes sense I know go ahead I've been I've been overc communicating with my Shadows this cycle because of that out of out of fear oh yeah you know this is a this is a fear-driven release for me making sure it happens making sure it gets done let's go yeah I I think uh a thing that we could do better is set an expectation with with all sub team leads that it is not normal to be green for the whole cycle right would it's not normal it's good for you to occasionally be yellow or red like we have that system for a reason like having reporting green all the way through a cycle does not make it look like you're doing a better job it doesn't mean that you're like a more reliable contributor it mean doesn't mean that you're more likely to get selected to lead the next cycle it's not good to be the whole time that's weird and it actually doesn't present any learning opportunities for you um I think in the sense that you know is it very clean to say the idea that like you learn from failure and it's not necessarily a failure if you report one week yellow but it's showing you that oh is there something like do I have these kind of skills and this ability to troubleshoot and help out like it's kind of like a an interesting way to kind of prove that your capabilities are like up to the up to the task you know and I think um not to say that people should like purposely try and find a yellow or redort but you shouldn't be weird about it exctly exactly and and no one is sitting there expecting it to be green the whole time in fact quite the opposite and like like you just mentioned if it's green every time that probably is also a signal to myself as lead going are we sure I should just double check yeah for sure I kind of wonder sometimes if we should get rid of the green yellow red though because I think that it's the color has a subconscious connotation that oh I did something wrong right yeah you know so like I don't even know what you would do that would still make it accessible cuz like part of it is the red yellow green is fairly accessible for most people but it also is I think a fairly us thing in terms of like stop lights right is it yeah or is it not like is it is that pretty Universal to most people I think I think so I'm trying to think of a country I've been to that doesn't have red yellow green stop Japan does but I think what the interesting yeah I think the interesting part that you mentioned is like the fact that if something is red the the connotation to communicate or admit or show that that's a cult difference for sure exactly yeah and I think that's something that you know we're a global project in kubernetes that we need to make sure that we're um being accessible for a lot of the different communication modes that like take place um and I think um again the over communication of it's okay um but also being able to kind of it's something that I spoke about with my leads a while ago but do we need to kind of show as an example someone willing to maybe drop the ball to show this is how you would communicate and this is how would troubleshoot and as a community get together and be blameless about it right um I think that's something that uh that's that's kind of hard to to put together as like a in a fake way but at the same time I think it could be really beneficial for a lot of our contributors in countries outside of North America and Europe to show that actually this isn't something that you you'd be chastised for like or or you know fled for or whatever um it's actually something that shows how the community gets together and supports one another yeah I'm I'm not going to be the person to intentionally fail in a release as an example um so that people can see that but you know maybe maybe we should in positions of leadership be a little bit more willing to uh overc communicate when we screw up yeah I love that idea I think that's something that um we are not always willing to do on the leadership side because again that pressure of where the people who are leading the community and we have to be the best example um because those you know issues that have happened where Community leaders have been not so great examples have been so hurtful to the community as well exact um and there's there's really only one extreme or the other I feel like there's very little in between on the community side that it that doesn't help mean that you don't play with f with those uh kinds of situations I mean we could do like an awkward roleplay video that everybody has to watch like as training like the airplane safety videos yeah well sort of except like oh no oh no we have a yellow what do we do what does this mean no no but it would just be really funny U I'm more thinking like the the typical HR videos that you have to watch every year they get really really awkward sometimes they're really embarrassing yeah so do that for yeah so instead of promoting psychological safety we were Pro promoting psychological awkwardness yes exactly I mean hey maybe it would work everybody's just going to have to be worried about it yeah yeah I mean if everyone's weird it could it could actually be really helpful it could work right exactly because I think it would just be a little strange but also at the same time it's a way to give that actual example yeah with an easy way to show it whereas instead of trying to have it one person who's in the know fail by accident might not like they might not have the acting skills I guess to be able to do that well well I think like one way that we could kind of like try and like push some of some of that happening in a in a more organic way like the Retros are a great example where you actually have to like sit there and say okay what went great blah blah blah everyone Pats themselves in the back and the team but what didn't go so great and like actually having people purposely say okay I am going to focus on the not great things but also focus on how do we actually Rectify those how do we find solutions for them within the community with community help and like having that emphasis um and I think you know you never want a retro that is only full of what went wrong um you do need to do like the kind of uh you know the Feelgood sandwich on either side and so on um but having that bi action of wanting to you know uh look at look at those problems that need that need you know community help and support um and being like open to talking about them and asking the rest of the community folks who maybe won't speak up on their own hey do you agree did you see these kinds of same issues we want to hear from you right this is us just asking questions nothing to do with you as a person or your contribution right exactly that makes sense yeah I think also I think like in in special interest groups where especially in docs where we get a lot of new contributors uh in first time to either kubernetes or open source we deal with a lot of folks who are scared to ask questions or um or or are very good at asking questions because they don't read the documentation for example right exact always the two extremes right and I think um we have to just still be okay with answering and directing in a way that is still kind of helpful because we want to actually showing that kind of side of answering those folks's questions actually helps the psychological safety aspect or other questions come up from people who wouldn't normally ask and I think that's something that um as a leader of docs I've had to really get my head around like I do have to answer the same questions over and over because in like three releases times someone will get the courage that they never had before to ask a question of me because they see me answering all this stuff for example um that's something that is sometimes hard to swallow because it's a lot of uh please read please read the documentation that we we put all this effort into writing so that you wouldn't have to ask these questions exactly or maybe you know maybe you want you're asking questions that elaborate on these docs that's great I want those questions yes hell yeah on a public meeting in a public Channel as well no DMS right like let's let's make sure that you know everyone is benefiting from the answers and questions that are taking place yeah but yeah questions it's just um why why well see I actually like answering those questions cu the way that I do it is always a instead of can you please read the documentation it's always a here's the answer and if you forget what my answer was here's the documentation where it was located yeah and it's like okay because it it reminds people that there's documentation but it also validates that they can ask questions right so I don't know maybe it works maybe that's just from teaching kids and you know dealing with incessant eight-year-old questions why why did that blow up why did that work yeah you know volcano it was fun we also try and use I mean uh for those who don't know kubernetes has a slack community and we do a lot of the communication on there and we try and use like as many features like of the Native slack app as possible pinned messages and bookmarks and things like this um as further ways to do a lot of that communication so that even that that async work of answering everyone's questions is like the link to the pinned message and like here it is for future and Etc I actually have uh like a like a notes like like a notes where I just keep like the canned responses that I often have to give and I just add in like hit the person's name instead and like maybe it's a good morning or good evening or whatever it is in their time zone and just like so there is a little bit of personalized part there but it's also I have answer this question 50 million times is the response gives you a little more spoons to be able to handle everything else too I mean it does I I I I'm the kind of person that doesn't find the slack um communication work like that much of a burden I don't mind actually doing it that much uh so I and I have like obviously strategies to deal with a lot of that stuff but I know that for some folks it's just uh it can be a bit overwhelming so I'm happy to pick up the slack yeah yeah I'm practicing for our talk oh God but but yeah I know that that's also going to be something that you know again as a community how much of a deterrent would it be in like a public channel that people keep answering asking the same thing they're not even reading the the the the messages back from like a day ago they're asking the same thing and their responses are the same also some of that also kind of needs to not be so loud maybe maybe not I don't know like I think we have been trying to move around the channels a little bit to try to because I know we split out the org members versus the contributors versus the users because there was a lot of user questions in the general chat and then it was like okay well what about if you were trying to do contri contributions that would be a little bit different yeah and then there's like Sig sub project channels too like there's Sig docs and there's Sig docs blog yes yeah yes which is something that uh you know a lot of folks came in actually someone came in the other day of um in dogs going I have a Blog idea yeah and it's just like that's that's not going to be always obvious that I should ask blog questions in the blog channel um because uh because it doesn't start with the word blog for example or something well also if you've been part of the project for a while you don't know that there have been more channels you just have it already in your channel list you just click it you're like I I know this is the right place to go click yeah and then you find out oh you started a new channel for that okay I will move there sorry and that's another aspect of the psychological safety part where you know you have to let people uh ask questions or do things that are outside of your scope of how things should work in order for those questions to come in and for people to feel comfortable oh don't ask me questions about the blog in the non-blog channel I mean I mean you could say that but it would be mean and also it's it's literally just more time consuming than answering the question exactly and it's it's very easy did a copy and paste a message and say hey I'm just moving you to this appropriate Channel that's talking here etc etc um and I know again the like the slack work people like to kind of be in the channels that they only want to pay attention to and really like coordinate work in a certain way um I can talk wherever be wherever so I I don't I'm I'm the one that's like flexible and I'm happy to work to other people specifications makes sense makes sense so we are just about a time but I heard you mention a talk so you can get a chance to plug the recording of the talk we won't have this live in time to talk about your live one but the recording plug it let's hear it yeah so um I'm I'm actually doing two talks uh but the first one that everyone should definitely uh go and check out is called uh Dungeons and deployments leveling up in kubernetes oh boy oh yeah yeah oh yeah cat and I will be sharing the stage with uh two good friends of ours Seth and Noah and Noah has done an amazing job at horrible horrible jokes that we'll be telling absolutely the best and worst of Dungeons and Dragons let's hear it yeah it'll be great um and it's going to be something where um there's going to be a lot of like movement involved so like sorry in advance to folks watching on the watching the stream after where like cat and I may regularly like walk out of frame yeah yeah just just throw our character sheets in the air and leave yeah definitely a lot of that happening in fact I don't think I'll have a character sheet for half of my session yeah no I might just eat mine love that yeah yeah yeah I love that bork style yeah um and then the other talk I'll be doing is uh with my with my award-winning coach here um that'll be uh that'll be on Thursday that's that's tomorrow um or later for virtual folks um and uh that's going to be a call out for folks um wanting to help out Sig dogs where we need help and we're highlighting um you know spoiler alert netlify if you know you are a JavaScript developer I want to talk to you as in a better one than me I want to talk to you I want I want to talk to you about Hugo and you're going to learn a bit of go and you're going to sit down and work with us with our website need so so much um but yeah just us uh kind of highlighting where we need help with like issue wrangling with netfi and Hugo debugging um and generally just like better documentation work so yeah check it out all right well excellent so my name is Laura my name is cat and I've been Natalie vco and this was devops Dispatch live here at ccon North America Chicago 2023 I think I got all of that in there once everybody say bye bye bye
2024-03-04 21:53
