Kubernetes Kubernetes Contributor Summit - NA (San Diego) 2019, 26 Nov 2019

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From YouTube: Contributor Summit NA 2019: Resolving Conflict on GitHub

Description

In this talk Paul Oliver and Brian Douglas will talk about the intricacies of communication, the challenges of doing so over GitHub, and how to deal with conflict that arises through communication. We'll provide an overview of the good and bad types of conflict, best practices for projects, tips for collaboration, and then have some time for open discussion.

Event link: https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/events/kubernetes-contributor-summit-north-america-2019/
Session link: https://sched.co/Wdhk

A

Good afternoon, everyone. uh,, we hope contributor day, is going well for all of you.

A

You had several choices for your three 30 session and we know it's towards the.

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End of the day., so we really appreciate you spending the next 30 minutes with brian and I.

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We have about 30, slides and, if all goes well,, we hope to have about five or 10 minutes. At the end, we can open up to q and.

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A it's a small enough group that we can form up in a circle afterwards and just.

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Take questions. we can put the mic down and uh, um, just kind of chat. um,.

A

To skip the end of it though,, there is no squash and merge button for conflict.

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You'll have to work through it.. If you came to this topic, hoping for a one button solution,, we can't help you.

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But if you are here looking for more tools to help in the future,, we hope we won't disappoint you.. So without further ado,.

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We'll tell you a little more about ourselves. github little more.

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I'll github and hopefully give you a good reason to pay attention. again,.

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Kind of towards the end of the day, understands once you actually had a late night last night too, at the contributor.

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Summit, a party.

A

So [inaudible].

B

Hello, I'm brian b douggie on github,, um,, [inaudible] and other places.

B

Uh,, mainly twitter and uh,, I'm happy to be here..

B

I actually started my career and actually open source thanks to a lot of open.

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Source guides and material for me to get started with my first, uh,.

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Project around code., um,, fun fact,.

B

My introduction to kubernetes was at my last job, uh,, which was at [inaudible],.

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Uh,, where they use communities pretty heavily for their build bots and machines.

B

Um, so it was,, they saved a ton of money, and I bought a ton of time, uh,.

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And a ton of work, uh,, just implementing that and there's a popular blog posts out there about that. If you want to find that and that will find communities.

B

and I'm also a self proclaimed beyonce advocate. uh,, I will go with that right now,. But if you want to come find me later,.

B

I'm more than happy to talk about beyonce., so paul.

A

And my name is paul, uh, for anyone watching this online later,, I'm the one on the right. uh,.

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I have a passion for helping developers deliver products on the cutting edge of.

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Technology. when I started my career, that was 3d. uh,.

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Game engines were the one place where folks were standing on the shoulders of giants and there was less building everything from scratch and more collaboration.. So I spent a lot of time in that space. Helping developers deliver on their.

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Dreams. today, software is more nuanced and complicated than ever.

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Open source is huge with most companies having a product, that's built on more.

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Than 50% open source, technology, uh, development pipelines in environments that folks wouldn't have jumped up five.

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Years, ago, not just exist but run at huge scales, and everyone is standing on the shoulders.

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Of giants., it's a great time to build software. however,.

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Now you need to be more collaborative and communicative than ever..

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You previously had to be, uh, with this additional communication, and collaboration comes more chances for.

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Conflict. we both work at github,, github,.

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Uses, github to build, github and organizes everything done by the employees of github on, get up,.

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Uh, from software releases to analytics to marketing to organize,.

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Get up universe,, which was just last week.. Most of our communication, is get up.

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We also have access to email, slack and uh, video calls.

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But a lot of our communication is on github and it's written. uh,.

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We have offices around the world and our small team has just four people on.

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Three continents., the only two members of our team on github, are actually on the site that work on.

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The same continent are here with you, today. uh,, so there's additional conflict and concern and challenges that we have from.

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Being kind of distributed., I'm sure all of you working on kubernetes, understand and have similar challenges.

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Working on such a widely distributed, product. uh, because of our use of github,.

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We both deal with and cause conflict on, github every day.

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So when your team and your company are this distributed, motor,.

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Most of your communication needs to be written..

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You need to be prepared to summarize something and have the first response in an.

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Issue be,, I don't understand. um,, although I'm sure you don't have that problem.

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Okay. need to remember that folks receiving your written words. Don't have all the background. You have. you know,. You have to walk a careful line. Every day.

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Do you summarize everything and risk losing folks that have to read in 15 pages.

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Of background information?, you know, for example, of why you've made a change or why you're giving a talk at kubecon or why.

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Kubecon is held in san diego or any one of a dozen other topics, right? it's,.

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Do you give people all the background, or do you place a really short summary and.

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Hope, folks, that have questions chime in or do you call extra meetings to discuss?

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Things? you know, um,, when you say tldr,, it's really lots of trust. Required.

A

Not too long, didn't read: right. you're, trusting each other to make the right decision and share the right information. and that when folks speak up saying,, I don't understand- or I don't know what's going on, that. You know, there's a space there for questions and comments and to slow down.

B

So enough, talking about us and github.

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and now, let's talk about you, find folks in the room,, the contributors.

B

So there's some assumptions that we made in preparing this talk..

B

One big assumption is that you're all human. am I right in that assumption?.

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I'm going to hold up a mirror just to check. I'll walk around later. yeah.

B

So those assumptions come with the mother.. Things were all built on a a hundred thousand year old year old hardware,.

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Which is our brain. and we also, there's another assumption that you guys are all,?

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Are you folks are all working on kubernetes as um, contributors.

B

I'm also the english, uh,. You have a good competency in english. um,.

B

That assumption was made because all of these slides are in english. uh,.

B

So that's a,, a slight assumption. uh,.

B

You also, hopefully have the same goals as the rest of the members in the room as.

B

Well. so you're looking to grow or contribute to a project and push that forward.

B

So some good standards and things that could be made,.

B

It's actually, as adopted as the cmc f, uh, code of conduct. um,.

B

Yeah,, so it's a really good baseline of how to interact with actual,.

B

Uh, the project itself. um,. It actually provides a framework of best practice for his communications and.

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Around how the project is supposed to be expected to be managed. um,.

B

I honestly think this is a good thing.. This is a good barrier of entry to have a code of conduct. uh,.

B

Some projects do this. Actually most projects and open source,, the larger ones actually used us and I think it's a good recommendation and I.

B

Realized that kubernetes is an ecosystem and a community. um,.

B

So the other projects that follow suit within the kubernetes ecosystem have a.

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Good standard default.

B

There's one other thing that we want to mention: too, is that, uh,.

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The amyglada hijacking, um,, if you are familiar with this,.

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I'll explain it really quickly,, but there is a wiki can wikipedia this,.

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It shows up., it's like the first result. uh,, but it really sums up to the part of our brain, uh,, which you can call it the lizard brain..

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It's actually a part of your brain, that's the size of an almond. and these are,.

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This part of your brain actually handles all your emotional responses.

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So if you think of,, if you were in the jungle and you're swinging through trees and you went to grab.

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A vine,, like your brain, tells you that that's a vine on a snake.

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Another part of this,, another example of this is like our reactions to comments.

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So if you see a comment on twitter and it's triggering, like your response, is this amygdala.

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So the next time that happens, keep that in mind. uh, but in summary,.

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Like essentially, it's there for you to process information.

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It gives you that fight or flight mentality..

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It also tells you if you should be afraid or not.

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And a lot of times what happens that we could be disproportionally afraid based.

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On certain comments that we see or read. um,, so some things that you can't really understand like through tone,.

B

But at the end of the day, we're all trying to achieve a goal.

B

So we have a contribution or we're trying to leverage, um,.

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These projects are just this project,, which is kubernetes.

B

Like we're all trying to move something towards a goal.

B

like, we might have a contribution which is based on the fact that we need this.

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Contribution cause, we have to get this done for work.

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or we have a project or another library that works with communities, and these.

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Actually, move something along. and at the end of this,,.

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Everybody's got a goal, and everybody's got something that we need to succeed. On.

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And where the conflict happens is when we all have different goals,.

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Sometimes those don't actually align.. So what the big project,.

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The expectation is that you will have some conflict.

B

So how do you feel about conflict? when I say the word conflict?.

B

That is that a good word or is that bad word? rachel. anna., but it's a good thing., raise your hand if it's a bad thing.

B

So mostly the bad. we've got some,, I don't know,, which is also a very fair response..

B

So there are two types of conflict which I've shown you.. This is good..

B

Conflict is bad conflict., um,, but bad foot conflict, easy cause. You can kind of understand or even notice when.

B

That happens., I think the biggest problem is when good conflict becomes bad.

B

So identifying as things that communication that could start off,.

B

Hey I have this thing I want to commit, or I want to contribute in this sort of.

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Way and it comes,, it turns out that this is not the way the project is going, and then we have to.

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Make the decision, as contributors or maintainers, that this is not where we want.

B

This to go., so how do you respond to that?.

B

So sometimes handling good contact conflict that turns into bad means,.

B

I'm sorry., it means giving up on a few things at one thing is speed., so we might not be able to ship as fast or we not, might not be be able to hit our milestone when we need to., when we were focusing on trying to solve these conflicts.

B

So good conflict becoming bad.

B

So identify clearly, this comes out,. What does identifying when that's happening,.

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Identifying those trigger points, uh, understanding that within the contributor embiid, it might be good.

B

identify like self standards and how to communicate within the project.

B

And then this thing where the project's going and direction.- and I know this is probably not news for everybody in the room,.

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But maybe some people,- this is news for like, uh, kubernetes has a clear guidelines that they have ways to interact with issues.

B

And labels and prs. um,, but sometimes maybe in our day to day jobs or other projects within the space,.

B

We might want also think about some of these things as well.

B

So, let's find out the root of conflict with paul.

A

Okay. so brian talked about, um, folks, working on kubernetes,.

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How you all agreed to a standard code of conduct,, your brain and how you behave when you get emotionally hijacked,, how your lizard brain reacts,, how it processes information faster than your rational, brain.

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I would talked about how everybody feels about conflict, and we also talked about.

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How, when good conflict turns into bad conflict.

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now, let's talk a bit about what causes bad conflict.

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There are four common types of conflict. however,.

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Any given piece of conflict rarely falls into just one of these categories.

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There is what conflict or task conflict.

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It's a disagreement over intended goals or tasks for project.

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There is how conflict or process conflict,, which is disagreement over how to carry out a process or task.

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There is who conflict or status conflict,, which is a disagreement over who gets credit or who is in charge and there's.

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Relationship conflict,, which is your classic clash of personalities.

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Some folks just don't work well, together.

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If we unpack how these four common types of conflicts occur, underneath,.

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We tend to find conflict caused by different perspectives and opinions,.

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Lack of respect or general friction., very rarely is there conflict when a similar group of likeminded individuals who.

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All communicate in the same way get together and talk,.

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Especially if this group takes time to make sure everyone feels their opinions are heard and respected., that group tends to never find conflict. however,.

A

As you start to add an additional barriers, such as culture and language,,.

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Suddenly, you start to see a lot more conflict pop up., as folks no longer can communicate as clearly and communication lost common.

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Goals or lost common background is lost.

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added. Friction in any process can lead to conflict or, if there's some toxic.

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Conflict already in there, a friction can amplify it..

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We'll talk more about friction on the next slide.

A

So friction is the amount of time it takes to go from,. I want to, to,. I have,.

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This can be really complicated on a project like kubernetes since the, I want to maybe driven personally, maybe by a job or employer,.

A

Maybe trying to help a friend, maybe by just trying to get work. Done. um,.

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There are a lot of different things going on in this very, very complicated, very,, very important., uh,, open source project., so friction can come into this in more ways than your standard, workplace or.

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Standard open source, project. um,, it's amplified by folks, emotional state,.

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How the view of others,, how empowered they feel. uh, and lots of your,.

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Our volunteers and don't feel or may not have as much free time as you would.

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Like., um, and again, any friction can lead to conflict.

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If we look back to the two one way, slide, a sign slide, brian was showing us.

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So, in addition to friction causing conflict, there additional times when conflict is caused more often than not.

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So when it's conflict cause um, late at night,,.

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Right before lunch or meals are times when conflict tends to be greater.

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This could be because folks are rushing to get things done..

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It could be cause for other reasons.. This could come back to your lizard brain., I'm not,, I'm not a scientist.. I don't know. um,, but studies have shown these,.

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Um, over large distances tends to be an area where greater conflict is caused.

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Possibly due to shorter communication,, possibly due to written communication.

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Um, and again,, these are extra challenges for projects like yours, where you've got a.

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Distributed folks, I just really grew up,.

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I know that there are people on almost every continent working on kubernetes.

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Um, unclear communication also tends to leads to greater conflict.

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I know I personally tend to find a phrase quote,.

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Where are we with? This? Can cause conflict more often than a other forms of.

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Community or other phrases., so you're on github, right?.

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A lot of the interactions you doing are, are written..

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So what challenges are employed by writing? Only,, you know,.

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If you are communicating mostly through writing,, then there are definitely challenges. There. it's hard to uh,.

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Appear empathetic. Through writing.- you know,, you can't put your hands on someone's shoulder,. You can't see how they're feeling, you can't see how they're reacting. you know,.

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You can't show empathy and you can't see how, uh,.

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What you're doing impacts them. uh, your tone and your voice,? You know,.

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Your tone of voice are so hard to communicate. uh,.

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What is the request versus? What does it? Command can be very unclear., um,.

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You know, authority versus requests when written can be not just unclear,.

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But uh, can cause status. Conflicts on github.

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asking someone to do something versus commanding can be hard to articulate in.

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Writing.: uh, don't use sarcasm., it will be completely lost.

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This slide is actually taken from githubs onboarding material.

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We think that the,. This is so important that we could tell our new hires this.

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Uh, just really important to make sure that when you're, you know, writing and communicating on github,, you be in aware of your empathy,.

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Your tone,, your voice, command versus requests and you know, don't use sarcasm.

A

So now some tips and tricks to avoid conflict. yeah.

B

So these tips and tricks are going to be at the project level., so again,.

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Kubernetes is a,, it's a project., so there's these things, that, uh,.

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That we've seen in this project, as well as other projects that we can recommend.

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So providing a sick community is actually has, uh,.

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Some great standards that I mentioned, before. uh, and one is like setting a success criteria right off the bat.

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So having a contributing md is a very good standard to have.

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So everybody knows pretty much the open source world that that exists and they.

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Can go there first to check with how to operate.?

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I also mentioned before code of conduct. um, we're mentioning it again and again,, but it's also very important to have it..

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So if you started the project, um,, you want to make sure that that exists.

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So that way, people know what the expectations are with are expected from.

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Community members. um, come up.. Other things is set a communication standard.

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So at the communication, standards, open up an issue before the pr like that should be set up within your context of.

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Your communication or your contributing md, uh, document expectations too, as well. like. What's the expectation, um,.

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Way to report a bug or reports and reproducible issues.

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Like there should be a standard for that., so that way you don't have a bunch of stuff coming from all over the place.

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And the finally rewarding good behavior is another really good thing that not a.

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Lot of projects do very well. um,, so it's something that,, something else that we should also always try to think about. uh,.

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If something good happens,. How do we reward that behavior that we bring them onto the project right away or.

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Do we give them a free pair of socks that are leftover from the conference?.

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Who knows? but,, uh, honestly, uh,, just thinking about, is also a good first step.

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This also might seem weird to, uh,. The idea of adding friction.

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Paul does mentioned this,, but friction can be a good thing as well. um,.

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Things like rate limiting conversations and interactions. uh,.

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So if you had a rsc process or you have an issue that gets really, really hairy,.

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Uh,, based on the direction of where the project should be, adding an, uh,.

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A taper or a cutoff time or a time,, the closest issue, um,.

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Could be a very valuable way to constructively get feedback for the.

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Conversation. um,, I also,. If things get really heated,.

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Forced at cooldown period. so go ahead., don't be afraid to actually close our lock issues. if they do get too heated,.

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Uh, take the conversation. Elsewhere, maybe take it amongst maintainers until they can come to the agreement amongst.

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The maintainers or the subgroup group of this project as well. um,.

B

Friction doesn't have to be all,, we always have to be bad. um,.

B

A common use of friction is whenever you have a first time, contributor, uh,.

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There is a label that gets attached to that first time. Contributor.

B

a lot of projects and a lot of bots will actually respond of like a hello,.

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Welcome to the project, here's a contributing md.

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or if you open up a pr without an issue,, sometimes she'll get some good friction to say, hey, sign the cla. or hey,.

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Please go back and read the contributing and be or label our sar add,.

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Add a tag issue to this as well.. So that's all good examples of good friction.

B

And then collaborations, another thing as well, a spend spent effort, making a nice environment for the community to collaborate.

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In., so I say: live by lazy consensus.

B

Let folks actually raise their hand if they want to be involved,.

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Have provide that opportunity for them. find time to meet face to face.

B

I know a lot of the projects do this, where they have a standing meeting or standing slack or a standing, irc chat that happens on a weekly basis where.

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People can come bring their issues and get that realtime mentoring or feedback.

B

Also be flexible to time zones. as paul mentioned,, we have,.

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We're a team of four, but we're on three continents,. So we have to be flexible design zones and make sure that everybody has a voice.

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And that we're not a american centric team or sf based team.

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I'm an sf, so sometimes I might be the majority based on who's awake. um,.

B

So again, make sure everybody feels heard and has an opportunity to, to do. That.

B

Uh,, I would also recommend: go in the meetings, go around asking people's for their topics are for their goals,.

B

For their building,, what they're looking to get out of this., if you find that someone's, not speaking up enough, fred,,.

B

Make a friendly gesture to like ask them questions,: ask them their responses to something, uh, to make sure they also get their feedback. uh,.

B

Sometimes silence could be another one of, there are triggers for, uh,.

B

If we feel emotional about a topic but don't want to lash out,.

B

We could also go silent., so maybe even take that person aside and get their feedback in another channel.

B

So always be conscious around that..

B

So that way we want to build a diverse, open source, community.

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So we want to make sure that everybody has an opportunity..

B

So english is not their first language and you don't want to speak up because.

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You're not really sharing how to craft. Your sentences. always be conscious of also that too, and providing those other channels for.

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That. and finally prevent confusion,.

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Which is also another thing, as I mentioned, english being a second language for some people like the way if we provide,.

B

If we go sarcasm first,, so we have too much jokes on our, read me a,.

B

It might go over the heads of certain people,, like not, everybody, can understand your background and your culture or where you.

B

Come from. um, cause, even in the united states, like we have different levels of humor and.

B

Comedy that might not translate from east, east coast to west coast as well.

B

So I would also, I would just mention maximize on productivity, uh,.

B

Finding that channel that you can communicate with them. uh,, don't be afraid to also hide and delete comments..

B

It's another thing. I mentioned too. uh,, but also set that standard, be transparent. If that's going to happen, be transferred around. If things are hidden,, are, are deleted,.

B

Github does a really good job of if things do get deleted or edited,.

B

We do know debt in the comment or on an issue as well., so you can know,.

B

You can actually see to reverse the history of what's changed. Previously.

B

So I will sort of mentioned that these are all very good hub, centric tube, but.

B

Examples., but these also work in other channels..

B

So if have other means of communication,, if other tools of collaborating with the team or the group, a police, think about.

B

These and take those other places.

A

So brian just spoke about things you can set up for your team or project to and.

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Confusion and conflict. here's some things that you can do individually.

A

So, uh,, one of the things we do at get up and I would highly recommend- is to create a human user guide. you know,, let folks know what hours you work,.

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Uh, and what hours you expect to work. um, include your time zone and your preferred method of contact. you know,.

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This is a template. We use and you could take, could, uh,.

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This is a template. We use to make it easier to collaborate with us.

A

Let people know what our triggers are,, let people know what drives us,.

A

Not what our quirks are. uh,, how to easily win us over in an argument.

A

How to easily lose us in an argument., you know,, what kind of, um,.

A

What kind of integration we respond? To,, whether we're data-driven or not., and basically creating a markdown file in your team, repo saying like,, here,.

A

Here's how I like to work. here's, how I like to be interrupted., here's how I like to be addressed.. You know, little things to make yourself more approachable., and this can go a long way in preventing future conflicts.

A

Don't be afraid to personally ask for a pause. don't be afraid to just listen.

A

So slow things down or take a time out., it's okay to step away from situation.

A

Um,, if you're about to cause conflict or if someone else's causing conflict and you.

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Know,, you know that there's nothing you can do but exacerbated right, now,.

A

Please, you know, ask for a pause. um, having some prepared snippets can go a long way to prevent future conflict.

A

I personally like this one. wow., there sure is a lot to unpack here.

A

I'm going to need a day or two to get up to speed and can weigh in then right.

A

Sets the expectation, lets the other person feel heard..

A

It says I'm gonna come back to it,, but gives me time. gives everybody time to cool down.

A

So those are kind of the two best ways we have to prevent: conflict. uh,.

A

Sort of wrap, up. we're all different and all have our own unique challenges.

A

You will likely encounter a lot of different things as you work in and on open.

A

Source. keep an eye out for folks with disabilities, folks, with a variety of upbringings,, both in terms of education and location..

A

It's possible the conflict, you think you see as simply someone just struggling.

A

To communicate with you., I hope you don't,, but you could also encounter some truly unpleasant things in the form of ageism, sexism and racism.. Clear success criteria go both ways..

A

If folks violate your code of conduct, uh,, they should be treated as that as outlined in the code of conduct., and you don't need to tolerate that. uh,.

A

We hope that the tips and tricks we gave you here will help you, uh,.

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Address future conflict. and, uh,.

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We now have about five minutes for conversation.

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If anyone has any questions or want to,, let's talk about anything.

A

All right. well, thank you for [inaudible] spending time with brian, and I and we hope you learned something.