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Add Luke Duncalfe (@.luke) as backend maintainer of GitLab

Luke Duncalfe requested to merge ld-backend-maintainer-gitlab into master

Trainee maintainer issue: #6281 (closed)

Overview

I have been a backend engineer at GitLab for 18 months, and have been a trainee maintainer for 9 months.

My main reasons for wanting to become a maintainer are:

  • I'd like to "give back" to other engineers (and help the backend maintainers with their review load).
  • I care about the stewardship of the GitLab codebase.
  • I enjoy the process of code review and interacting (sometimes meeting) with engineers over their code.
  • Reviewing is a very effective way to increase my knowledge of GitLab and powers as an engineer.

Some stats: I have authored 230+ merge requests, and, during my traintainership, have reviewed ~120 merge requests. My trainee issue lists only 65 merge requests as I have skipped adding merge requests that were reasonably simple or didn't offer enough to discuss with a maintainer about.

The recent few months of feedback from maintainers have been positive, and I've regularly seen merge requests I review be merged with few, if any, changes.

Examples of reviews

Things to improve

  • There have been a couple of times that I have regretted not persisting more with the review process when there were still necessary changes to be made after a bit of back-and-forth with the author. Although I've tried to "review as a maintainer" during the traineeship, it's possible that in these situations I've relied on there being a second pair of eyes to follow, and my goal as a maintainer would be to continue to persist during the review when these situations arise. (The caveat being; to also judge accurately when you may be wrong about something, or when to leave things for a follow-up).
  • Pay special attention to the performance of queries #6281 (comment 434032622) and, in general, always consider the performance implications of changes.
  • To maintain the concentration needed to give a thorough review, and notice when I'm tired and need a break .

@gitlab-org/maintainers/rails-backend please chime in below with your thoughts, and approve this MR if you agree.

Developer checklist

  • Before this MR is merged
    • Mention @gitlab-org/maintainers/rails-backend, if not done (this issue template should do this automatically)
    • Assign this issue to your manager
  • After this MR is merged
    • Request a maintainer from the #backend_maintainers Slack channel to add you as an Owner to gitlab-org/maintainers/rails-backend
    • Consider adding 'backend maintainer' to your Slack notification keywords

Manager checklist

Edited by Matt Nohr

Merge request reports