About me: oli-obk

The plan

• a bit about research
• a bit about open source
• drawing parallels
• the future

Research

1. Have idea
2. Find Prof who likes idea
3. Do PhD
4. Finish PhD
5. Profit!?!

Not so fast

teaching
exams
grading
random PR campaigns for funding
find funding for yourself
mentor young PhDs
watch out for rival profs' proxy warring
write papers for your prof
figure out what you were working on a month ago
actually work on your topic

Anyone heard of burnout?

Spoiler: Not in academia

[redacted]

Anyway…

Not everyone finishes their thesis

Drop out rate (Germany)

Never trust data you didn't falsify yourself

Summary

Research has lots of exploitation

… among other problems

Open Source

Quick Reminder

survivorship bias

1. Have idea
2. implement
3. open PR
4. get review
5. address review
6. merge

Not so fast

• reviewing costs time
• 8h work per day
• 6h effective per day [1]
• why is my PR not getting reviewed?

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/04/microsoft-japan-four-day-work-week-productivity

Solution:

Become a reviewer

You guessed it

Not. So. Fast!

People come …

… and go

Parallels

Let's fix it

Resources

• Reduce compile-time/test-time
• Speed up CI
• Personal hardware

Time

• Minimize your tests
• Bisect regressions
• Accept maintainer priorities
• Deadlines are a lie
• Real vacations or sabbaticals

Money

• Sponsor your maintainers
• Hire your maintainers
• Pay people to become maintainers

Progress in Rust

• ~10 FTE on Compiler hired
• Library maintainers hired
• Paid on-call crates.io team
• WIP: ssh dev-desktop.rust-lang.org
• Sponsoring developers…

Sponsoring

Personal note

2016-2020: PhD + Rust

• Working 10+ hours/day
• Working weekends

Feburary: Working at aws

• BigCo trainings
• Work on rustc full time
• Weekends 🎉

April: Parental leave

July: Part time

Summary

• Pay devs
• Respect devs' time
• Simplify devs' lives
• Rust Foundation!!!