Open source volunteering is a great way to gain work experience and make a name for yourself in certain tech circles. But having time and money to do work for free is an indisputable privilege. That’s why, while the tech industry as a whole is about 23 percent women, open source is at about four percent. And that’s just one of at least ten important ways to measure diversity, equity and inclusion.
In this episode of The New Stack Makers podcast, we sit down with Christina Hupy, GitLab’s senior education program manager, and Nuritzi Sanchez, GitLab’s senior open source program manager to discuss the ups and downs of inclusion in the open source world, how you can best leverage the career opportunities of open source, and most importantly, how open source communities can open themselves up more to better foster those opportunities. We discuss this all, not only within the context of traditional enterprise settings, but at universities and in prisons.
The New Stack Makers · 2020 GitLab Commit – The Opportunity of Open Source to Create Opportunities for Others
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Much of both Hupy and Sanchez’s time is spent with the broader community of GitLab users. And it’s part of their job to bring external feedback inside the company. So they may be more prepared than most to answer the essential question: What does a better open source community look like?
Sanchez harkens open source sustainability, not only of the project but its people. This involves making sure people are able to contribute to open source while still paying the bills. It’s also about protecting contributors from burnout.
A core value at Gitlab is iterating on the smallest viable change. This carries over to the way they bring more people on board as they try to lower the barrier to entry in open source. This includes welcoming contributions beyond engineering that leverage diverse skillsets.
Hupy adds that it’s important to leverage open source to increase diversity in the tech talent pipeline. This includes lowering the barrier to contribute, particularly not requiring a four-year degree, which often doesn’t even reflect industry needs.
#culture #devops #open source #podcast #sponsored #the new stack makers
