Redefining Professional Role on Discord

[dm-murphy]

Title	Author	Date
Redefining Professional Role on Discord	Daniel	July 27 2022

Redefining Professional Role on Discord

Summary

The Odin Project Discord server has a "Professional" role (purple color) that is not matching up with its written description. After discussion in the July Maintainer meeting it was proposed to update the Professional role descriptions across Discord and GitHub.

References

• Professional role description from the discord-roles.md in top-meta on GitHub: "We have members of our community that are here to help others to grow, because they are employed in a software engineering role. We wanted to highlight those individuals so that their experiences in the workplaces helps others make more educated decisions. This role is up to the discretion of the Core team. It does require a verification step, and the admittance is not guaranteed."

• Professional role description from the Discord #roles: "Users who are verified as professional employed software engineers."

• Professional role description from the Discord #faq: "The 'professional' role is limited to those who are verified industry professionals such as software engineers, software developers, web developers, and other associated software development team roles. Please DM @Modmail with your LinkedIn or some other form of proof of full time employment to be granted this role."

• Description of the #professionals channel from the Discord: "A place for professionals to talk about their profession."

Motivation

• Currently the Professional role is being given to community members who do not meet the description requirements listed above.

• Some of these community members are being perceived with certain authority for their role color (purple) and/or are providing incorrect information.

• Because the description implies the Professional role (purple color) equals a professionally employed and verified software engineer, fellow learners in the community might get the wrong idea from certain members who are not software engineers but speaking on the subject with perceived authority.

• It has been proposed to rewrite and expand the written requirements beyond software engineers and be more inclusive to other technical software roles and celebrate the positive influence that Odin Project has on multiple career trajectories. This would also help learners understand that those with the purple Professional role are not all software engineers.

• Additionally, trying to gatekeep or remove the Professional role from non-software engineers on the server would take up valuable time from the Staff and possibly hurt relations within the community

Suggested implementation

• Hold an async discussion within this issue with the entire staff (Core, Maintainers and Moderators) on the Professional role

• Rewrite the written descriptions of the Professional role across GitHub and Discord to ensure we prevent misunderstandings about the role in the community

• Rewrite a better process for the verification process, including how staff evaluates the application and any requirements for whether someone has officially started in the role yet or is waiting for their start date

Drawbacks

• Coming up with a consensus view on what the Professional role requirements should be and phrasing

• Taking time to draft up the new descriptions, get feedback and vote on a final copy

• Verifying community members for the role itself takes time and may require consensus voting from Core (per original description of the role)

Alternatives

• Alternately, we could remove the purple color from the Professional role on the Discord server while maintaining the #professionals channel. This would solve the perceived authority problem of the purple color but allow professionals to still have a channel for conversations. This might make verification decisions easier on the staff.

• Or we could remove both the color and the channel altogether

Additional

• Initial discussion thread from staff-discussions channel on Discord

Next Steps

• This issue will be shared with the entire Odin staff on Discord

• After receiving input from staff for 1 week the issue author (Daniel) will follow through on the suggested implementation with the help of any additional staff who volunteers OR will seek an alternative implementation

[kashura]

Imho, we should probably consider simply removing the color. That will eliminate the perception of some status.
Rewriting what the role is for probably still worth a shot, but mostly to clarify if it's anyone on the engineering team or only actual engineers. Do Product people qualify? Do designers?

[Mclilzee]

If I would suggest a change, I would say give it to those who has finished the course, or they got a job midway through the course. This way their advice and take would align right with TOP teachings and the curriculum.

Could be (finished the course / mid way through the course and got a job) or (finished the course or got a job. halfway through the course)

[dm-murphy]

Imho, we should probably consider simply removing the color. That will eliminate the perception of some status. Rewriting what the role is for probably still worth a shot, but mostly to clarify if it's anyone on the engineering team or only actual engineers. Do Product people qualify? Do designers?

@kashura Thanks for the input James! I do think removing the color would prevent a lot of problems.

I think trying to define the job positions is the toughest part. At the maintainer meeting we discussed coming up with a description that would be a bit more generic in wording rather than limited to specific titles. This would allow for staff to make a decision at their discretion. But I think there would still need to be some guidelines around that.

Let me know if you have thoughts on Mclilzee's suggestion too as whole other way to approach this!

If I would suggest a change, I would say give it to those who has finished the course, or they got a job midway through the course. This way their advice and take would align right with TOP teachings and the curriculum.

Could be (finished the course / mid way through the course and got a job) or (finished the course or got a job. halfway through the course)

@Mclilzee I really like this idea and thanks for bringing this up!

The way we currently use the Discord roles, our learners who have finished or worked through a lot of the course have no specific role or recognition. Yet they would be the members most knowledgeable on how our curriculum works. It does seem odd that we are giving a Professional role to someone who joins the server but has never worked through the Odin curriculum, but we leave out a longtime member who has done the curriculum and isn't professionally employed as a software engineer. This could be an issue when well-intentioned professionals give advice that pulls our learners beyond the scope of a lesson or project.

Instead of just looking at this as a "Professional" role, I would be very open to ideas on how this could transform into a different concept that could help community members and give recognition to learners.

[ChargrilledChook]

If I would suggest a change, I would say give it to those who has finished the course, or they got a job midway through the course. This way their advice and take would align right with TOP teachings and the curriculum.

Could be (finished the course / mid way through the course and got a job) or (finished the course or got a job. halfway through the course)

Not opposed to this, but we originally did have an alumni role that was introduced alongside the professional role and then later removed. I'd want to know the history behind that decision before reviving it again

[leosoaivan]

Some quick thoughts:

• Keep the color/role and room.
• Refine requirements to:
  • Include developers, QA engineers, or those with a professional history of developing AND still employed as developer managers and/or project managers.
  • Exclude designers and product managers, i.e. folks with roles that are not directly impacted by TOP's curriculum.
• Leverage moderators to rein in any folks with the role that are improperly guiding learners, especially in ways that don't align with TOP's curriculum.

[ChargrilledChook]

Some quick thoughts:

* Keep the color/role and room.

* Refine requirements to:
  
  * Include developers, QA engineers, or those with a professional history of developing AND still employed as developer managers and/or project managers.
  * Exclude designers and product managers, i.e. folks with roles that are not directly impacted by TOP's curriculum.

I broadly agree with @leosoaivan. I'm not opposed to changes or tweaks, but I think it's important to not over correct because of the edge cases.

* Leverage moderators to rein in any folks with the role that are improperly guiding learners, especially in ways that don't align with TOP's curriculum.

I think this is a good idea, but they would need support from maintainers / more experienced people. Many people on the mod team are still reasonably early in the curriculum, and some have expressed that they're unsure how to tell if people are giving bad advice or not.

[rlmoser99]

I agree with leosoaivan. I also wonder if it would be beneficial to write up a post about our concerns for people with this role and put it in the professional's channel and pin the post. (like how we have sometimes have to remind club-40 of things).

This post could be about how we expect advice to be given to align with our curriculum because we have thoughtfully considered what learners should know at specific projects. If they have not done our curriculum, they should get more familiar with it before offering advice because we are not a general programming help community. Maybe even a reminder that we are open source, and as they get familiar with our curriculum, they can propose changes as an issue or in #suggestions-bugs.

We could also make sure to send them the wording from the post when new people join, so that we make sure to properly communicate our expectations for this role.

[dm-murphy]

Not opposed to this, but we originally did have an alumni role that was introduced alongside the professional role and then later removed. I'd want to know the history behind that decision before reviving it again

@ChargrilledChook Thanks for bringing that up Dylan! I'm not familiar with that role or the decisions with why it was created and then removed. If anyone has insights and could chime in that would be helpful!

• Keep the color/role and room.

• Refine requirements to:

  • Include developers, QA engineers, or those with a professional history of developing AND still employed as developer managers and/or project managers.
  • Exclude designers and product managers, i.e. folks with roles that are not directly impacted by TOP's curriculum.

• Leverage moderators to rein in any folks with the role that are improperly guiding learners, especially in ways that don't align with TOP's curriculum.

@leosoaivan Thanks for sharing these thoughts Leo! And for making a suggestion on the position wordings. "Roles that are not directly impacted by TOP's curriculum" sounds like a great way to view that line.

I also agree with Dylan that this would be a challenging task for the moderation team to handle, especially those early in the curriculum. Would love to hear more insights from the moderators on this one!

I agree with leosoaivan. I also wonder if it would be beneficial to write up a post about our concerns for people with this role and put it in the professional's channel and pin the post. (like how we have sometimes have to remind club-40 of things).

This post could be about how we expect advice to be given to align with our curriculum because we have thoughtfully considered what learners should know at specific projects. If they have not done our curriculum, they should get more familiar with it before offering advice because we are not a general programming help community. Maybe even a reminder that we are open source, and as they get familiar with our curriculum, they can propose changes as an issue or in #suggestions-bugs.

We could also make sure to send them the wording from the post when new people join, so that we make sure to properly communicate our expectations for this role.

@rlmoser99 Really great suggestion Rachel! I think that would help a lot as a pin in the channel and something that gets shared with people new to the role. Could reshare it to the whole channel every time someone joins as a general reminder to everyone with the role. Perhaps we could even have an automated ping when someone gets access to the channel that includes that reminder about the pin post (like in club-40).