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

[Warren Kumari <[e-mail]>]

… 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 <[e-mail]> 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 <[e-mail]> *On Behalf Of * Warren Kumari
> *Sent:* Tuesday, October 3, 2023 11:01 AM
> *To:* Martin Duke <[e-mail]>
> *Cc:* [e-mail]; The IESG <[e-mail]>
> *Subject:* Re: How I spend my time as an AD
>
>
>
> … and here is some additional data to try and give a flavor of what I'm
> spending my IETF time on.
>
>
>
> Note that this is only my IETF time, plus "Email - Misc" (because much of
> this is intermixed with IETF stuff).
>
>
>
> #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
>
>
>
> 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….
>
>
>
> W
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 21, 2023 at 11:57 AM, Warren Kumari <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 1:01 PM, Martin Duke <[e-mail]>
> wrote:
>
> Some people in the community are interested in how ADs spend their time.
> Here is a data point.
>
>
>
> … 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."
>
>
>
> W
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>
> ********
>
>
>
> 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,
>
>