Volunteering
How to start
You can contribute by following these steps:
- Pick a feature ๐กIdeas and Features if you want to work on a large, full-stack part of the product. A feature requires product thinking and multiple expertises - UX, Frontend, Backend, DB, ML. Its a ๐Team effort
- In large companies features are maintained by product managers
- Alternatively, pick a task from โ๏ธTasks if you want to work on internal, infrastructural task or a feature improvement. Tasks are more specialized.
- In large companies tasks are managed by a team in JIRA. We donโt use JIRA currently. We tried github issues but those add extra friction.
- Ask for more information in discord to get attention and document more information for the feature as part of โฐ๏ธFeature grooming
- We use Discord (specialized #layer-* channels for discussion to resolve blockers) and Notion to link results, knowledge and documentation.
- Think ahead how your contribution will look like. We use different software ๐ธInternal tools & cloud services to host results
Why to volunteer
Volunteering means you work for free, because youโre motivated by other things:
- Believing in ๐ณCompany Mission, trying to help the ๐ย bees
- Learning something new in the area that you are not yet familiar with
(ex. IoT if you are a web developer)
- Having more freedom of trying oneself in different compared to an established enterprise where entry barrier is so high
(ex. trying to be an engineer if you are a PM)
- Sharpening your skills in engineering with a new tech
- Gaining open-source proof of experience you can use at applying to other jobs & positions
(ex. creating CAD model)
- Teaching others if you are experienced in one area
(ex. ML to backend engineers)
Lower expectations, lower entry barrier
As we are in volunteer mode, its expected that people are contributing with different levels of their activity
. So if you collaborate with others, do not expect much. People may suddenly disappear due to personal reasons (family, work, study etc). Its natural. โบAdapt to change
Contributions
Because of this, short and atomic contributions as artifacts are important both to the community as to the contributor. Contribution ๐ฏGather value into the product for the customer.
Contribution is:
- a github commit
- a file, image, cad model etc. shared with us
- contribution must have a permissive license for us to reuse the work
- documenting or clarifying a feature in Notion
- recording a youtube video how thing is working
Thus asking for information is not a contribution ;)
See examples of contributions
A github pull-request to an existing repository or a new repository that we can fork is one way to show your results. Examples - backend services, CAD models
A penpot draft for UX (ask for invite to get access)
Annotations for training Machine Learning models in clarifai.com
(ask for invite to get access)
Communication
If Discord is not enough, we also try to have weekly meetings over google meet. Its free form, but we try to record meetings into ๐บAll-hands meeting recordings and stream it to twitch.
Be ๐งธHumbly kind.
Acknowledgement
If you are a contributor, we try to highlight this.
- you get a ๐ก yellow name if you contributed some code to common namespace
- you are seen in github repository if you are a contributor
- your name remains in Notion tasks if you contributed to it
If you stick around for a long while and do the hard work today, you get a promise to get compensated in the future based on ๐ฆEquity & fundraising program plan, as it is in company interest to keep the talent