Re: [Gendispatch] How I spend my time as an AD

Warren Kumari <warren@kumari.net> Tue, 17 October 2023 00:47 UTC

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From: Warren Kumari <warren@kumari.net>
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Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2023 20:47:51 -0400
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To: Roman Danyliw <rdd@cert.org>
Cc: Martin Duke <martin.h.duke@gmail.com>, gendispatch@ietf.org, The IESG <iesg@ietf.org>
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Subject: Re: [Gendispatch] How I spend my time as an AD
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I'm getting somewhat tired of tracking this, and am not sure if people are
actually using / reviewing the data.

Last week I worked 67h 20m. Of that 35h 22min (or 52.5%) was IETF time.

#Exported data from October 8, 2023 to October 14, 2023
#Exported on October 16, 2023
#Duration formatted as H:mm (e.g. 0:26)
#Times rounded to nearest minute
#Activity,Group,Duration,Percentage
Email - Misc 1:24:00 2%
Document Progression IETF 3:59:00 7%
Email IETF 18:42:00 33%
Meetings IETF 3:13:00 6%
NOC IETF 2:57:00 5%
Technology Deep Dives IETF 0:59:00 2%
Misc - Administrivia 3:41:00 6%
Misc - Misc 0:27:00 1%


W


On Sun, Oct 08, 2023 at 12:23 PM, Warren Kumari <warren@kumari.net> wrote:

> … and, as per usual, Roman's thoroughness and detail makes me look like a
> slacker :-).
>
> Below is my time from last week (Oct 1 - Oct 7th).
> Last week was unusual, as I participated in the ICANN Name Collisions
> Analysis Project (NCAP) workshop in Washington D.C.  Because of this I
> spent much more time on ICANN stuff than usual, and also missed the IESG
> Telechat. Some time was also "wasted" in travels, side meetings, etc.
>
> #Exported data from October 1, 2023 to October 7, 2023
>
> Email / Research- Corp: 2:00:00
> Misc - Email: 10:18:00
> ICANN - Name Collisions:  11:57:00
> ICANN - SSAC:  1:47:00
> IETF - Document Progression:  0:25:00
> IETF - Document Review: 3:50:00
> IETF - Email:  9:35:00
> IETF - IESG Discussions: 2:30:00
> IETF - Misc:  0:10:00
> IETF - NOC:  1:42:00
> Misc - Administrivia 0:11:00
> Misc - Misc 4:16:00
>
> Total working hours: 48:41:00
> IETF time: 28:30:00
> % IETF: 58.54%
>
> Once again, because of the nature of email, I'm counting both "Misc-Email"
> and "IETF-Email" as IETF time (looking at my mail stats, the huge majority
> is from @ietf.org, or directly related to IETF, so I feel justified in
> doing so).
>
> W
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 04, 2023 at 9:09 AM, Roman Danyliw <rdd@cert.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> My narrative version of being AD, https://github.com/rdanyliw/ietf-notes/
>> blob/main/SEC-AD-role-perspective.md, recently sent to SAAG (https://
>> mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/saag/7VtuR41OM08dlZcy57CYj7pnlvg/)
>>
>>
>>
>> Roman
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* iesg <iesg-bounces@ietf.org> *On Behalf Of * Warren Kumari
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, October 3, 2023 11:01 AM
>> *To:* Martin Duke <martin.h.duke@gmail.com>
>> *Cc:* gendispatch@ietf.org; The IESG <iesg@ietf.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: How I spend my time as an AD
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>> … and here is some additional data to try and give a flavor of what I'm
>> spending my IETF time on.
>>
>>
>>
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>> Note that this is only my IETF time, plus "Email - Misc" (because much of
>> this is intermixed with IETF stuff).
>>
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>> #Exported data from September 24, 2023 to September 30, 2023
>>
>>
>>
>> #Duration formatted as Text (e.g. 0h 26m)
>>
>>
>>
>> #Times rounded to nearest minute
>>
>>
>>
>> #Activity,Duration,Percentage
>>
>>
>>
>> Email - Misc,6h 49m
>>
>>
>>
>> IETF: Document Progression,2h 05m
>>
>>
>>
>> IETF: Email ,13h 42m
>>
>>
>>
>> IETF: Meetings,3h 21m,9
>>
>>
>>
>> IETF: Misc,0h 33m
>>
>>
>>
>> IETF: NOC,2h 46m
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> It looks like I spent ~29h 16m on IETF stuff, and the majority (20h 30m)
>> was spent on email.
>>
>>
>>
>> This was out of ~50h worked total, so IETF related stuff took ~76% of my
>> time.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Much of this is squishy time — for example, I was doing IETF: Email while
>> participating in an ICANN Workshop, so I was only partially present in
>> either….
>>
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>> W
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>> On Thu, Sep 21, 2023 at 11:57 AM, Warren Kumari <warren@kumari.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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>>
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 1:01 PM, Martin Duke <martin.h.duke@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Some people in the community are interested in how ADs spend their time.
>> Here is a data point.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>> … and here is some data from me: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/
>> 15vSsL_aD2sMb_SFXmvlXwf781xZ4SfLqT-Mf5YavKqI/edit?usp=sharing
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Note: I only did this for 2 days, shortly after a meeting - this means
>> that it isn't hugely representative of an "average" week, but it hopefully
>> at least give a flavor. One thing that I discovered while collecting this
>> data is just how much overhead it involved (which is why it is only 2 days
>> :-)). I'm somewhat ADHD, and the context switching of "Do something, record
>> something, do something, record something" was crushing. It was also very
>> unclear how I would count almost all of the items.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> As an example, after aggressive filtering I get ~250 emails per day -
>> these are spread across email lists which I'm on because I'm an AD, email
>> lists which I'd read anyway, ICANN mail, corporate mail, etc. If I read an
>> email about a draft in DNSOP, is that AD time? Or is general IETF time? I'd
>> probably read it even if I wasn't DNSOP AD, but I'd also likely pay less
>> attention to some of the less interesting replies…
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Yesterday I mentioned an OpsAWG draft on the NANOG list - https://
>> mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2023-September/223301.html . Do I
>> count that as AD / IESG time? I'll end up progressing the document, but I
>> also happen to believe that this draft is really useful, and I would have
>> reported on it either way, so perhaps it's just general IETF time?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On a personal note, I am fairly disappointed (and somewhat hurt) that
>> instead of just *asking* how I spend my time, a BoF was proposed. To me at
>> least, this felt like "Not only are you doing this wrong, but it is so
>> wrong that your input is not useful or needed. We'll design a timecard for
>> you to fill in, and make sure your TPS report is on my desk by Friday."
>>
>>
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>> W
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>> I am not including the time I spend as a normal IETF participant: writing
>> drafts, participating in WGs I would attend anyway, and attending IETF
>> plenary meetings.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> These percentages are a rough fraction of a 40-hour workweek, averaged
>> over the year. I did a time card for my own information three years ago,
>> long since lost, but this is an estimate based on a little reflection on
>> the tasks I perform.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 8% - Meetings: Telechats, a weekly sync with my co-AD, occasional
>> one-offs for IEEE syncs, BOF reviews, etc
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2% - WG management - finding chairs, occasional 1-on-1s, chartering,
>> errata, BoFs, monitoring mailing lists, etc. Personally, I tend not to wade
>> into WG document threads very much, to keep my perspective clear for the AD
>> review. Others may differ. There was a period I spent about 5% of my time
>> clearing the errata backlog, but that is long past.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> In transport, we do not get many BoFs. I have also been fortunate in
>> having great WG chairs that can handle most problems, so thank you to them.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 3% - AD [document] Evaluation -- With only 5 WGs, I do not have many of
>> these. I take these really seriously and a review usually takes the better
>> part of a day, sometimes more. Other ADs almost certainly spend more time
>> because they have many more documents.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 3% - Standards process management: actively participating in policy work
>> -- IESG statements and such -- is essentially optional. I have gotten
>> interested in certain initiatives. It is certainly possible to spend more
>> or less time on this.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2% - Retreats. These meetings essentially take a full week, but are
>> happening only once per year. You could put this in the "standards process
>> management" bin if you like.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 10% - IESG review - Until about a year ago, this consumed substantially
>> more time for me, as much as 40-50%. For multiple reasons, I've trimmed
>> this down to focus on documents with transport implications (which is not
>> many of them). In the context of any particular review, I've reduced my
>> focus to major problems and any transport issues. For what it's worth, I
>> don't think this scaling back has meaningfully reduced my impact on the
>> IETF.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> For most ADs, a much larger percentage of ballots have issues pertaining
>> to their area of expertise. If I applied the same criteria to being SEC AD,
>> I would probably be spending *at least* 40% of my time on balloting.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *******
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> In summary, I'm spending about 25%-30% of my workweek on AD-specific
>> stuff. When I started, it was over 50%. mostly because I was much more
>> thorough on IESG ballots. An additional chunk of time is spent on being an
>> IETF participant. Although I participate in more policy work than the bare
>> minimum, I would say that this level of commitment is pretty close to a
>> lower bound for competent* execution of the duties because:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> - Transport is small: few WGs, not that many documents, largely
>> irrelevant to most IESG ballots
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> - I am experienced: I've formed an opinion about what matters and have
>> stopped doing stuff that I don't think matters.
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>> ********
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Some closing thoughts:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> No one asked me, but I don't think eliminating AD tasks that take <5% of
>> the week is going to make a difference in recruiting: it's still a matter
>> of asking your manager to be removed from some dayjob tasks. The real money
>> is in (1) eliminating lots of working groups; (2) having way more ADs;
>> and/or (3) fundamentally changing the nature of IESG balloting. All of
>> these have significant drawbacks.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> I will also note that we historically have plenty of AD candidates for
>> some areas (SEC and RTG) and almost none in others (TSV). It is apparent to
>> me that this is not just about workload and there are other factors at
>> play, and the community would benefit from exploring these before taking a
>> sledgehammer to the generic AD job description.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> WG management and AD Evaluation are the most important things I do and
>> should not be abridged.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> If there's one place I regret not spending more time, it's adoption calls
>> in my WGs. There are several instances where I have AD evaluated a document
>> that isn't highly objectionable, but that I don't think is a particularly
>> useful addition to the RFC series.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Martin Duke
>>
>>
>>
>> Transport AD 2020-2024
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> * I have received private feedback that my contribution has been
>> reasonably competent, but others are free to disagree,
>>
>>