Interested in volunteering?

[Preskton]

Howdy, folks -

We are always open for new volunteers. As operators of Hachyderm, our production service manages about 50k users/11k monthly active users -- a good-sized Mastodon instance. There's plenty of work to do for any and all levels of skill, all the way from people dipping their toes in Linux to seasoned industry veterans.

The stack

Key components of our tech stack include:

• Mastodon
• Arch Linux and Debian
• systemd
• Ansible
• postgresql
• ElasticSearch
• Nginx
• Terraform / OpenTofu
• git and git-based development workflows
• Multi-cloud networking via Tailscale
• Deployment pipelines that enshrine safety to yield speed and agility
• General cloud engineering and SRE patterns & practices
• Experience with any cloud provider, in particular: Linode, Hetzner, DigitalOcean

(Notice we didn't say Kubernetes -- we don't currently use it, nor plan to!)

The commitment

We ask that volunteers commit to an average of 2-3 hours a week over the course of a six month term. Activities can include backlog preparation, documentation authoring, designing systems, building automation, and general systems administration. As our volunteer team grows, we will also help folks earlier in their career pair with more senior engineers to build mentoring relationships.

If you're interested

If you're interested in volunteering on Hachyderm's Infrastructure team, please join the Nivenly Discord and find Esk. Send a DM with:

• A short intro to you
• Your pronouns and preferred name (this can also be an alias - we don't require a legal name)
• Your Github username
• Your background & key skills you want to contribute
• Why you're interested in volunteering
• Your timezone
• Your availability and commitment

and we'll have a convo about what's we're up to and what starting as a volunteer looks like.

We accept volunteers of all levels and backgrounds. If we're using tech, languages, and architectures you're not familiar with -- that's OK! We can learn together! 💜

Before you join

You'll have a conversation with a member of our infrastructure team focused on the questions listed above. Our goal is to identify where you want to contribute, what you want to learn, and why you want to help out.

All infrastructure members MUST agree to abide by the Nivenly Covenant and the Hachyderm Rules when contributing and interacting with other team members. You must also adhere to these rules when posting on social media and acting as a representative/associated with Hachyderm or Nivenly.

After you're in

Once we mutually agree on adding you to the team, you'll be added to:

• our Nivenly Discord infrastructure channel, where you can connect with other Hachyderm infra team members
• Hachyderm Github team and infrastructure repo
• some supporting infrastructure providers (like Linode)

As a new team members, you'll join as a Newcomer, below.

Leveling up

We have four sets of "levels":

• 🌱 Newcomers - This is for folks who have just joined the team and are getting their bearings. You'll have access to our repository, dev systems (hachyderm.wtf), and our observability stack. While in this set, the goal is to get familiar with Hachyderm's infrastructure without having to worry about directly affecting prod. The vast majority of the work you'll do will focus on getting familiar with our automation, pipeline, and metrics/alerts/dashboards. After 4-6 weeks (usually adjusted for holidays/busy periods), folks make their way to the next step.
• 🪴 Active Members - This is for team members who have consistently demonstrated a commitment to contributing to Hachyderm during their initial onboarding period. At this point, you'll have direct access to prod systems (the things that power hachyderm.io).
• 🌳 Distinguished Members - This is for team members who have completed a six month commitment and, on average, stayed active throughout. This does not mean you are contributing every day, or even every week. We recognize that your life is important, and sometimes things come up -- let's just have a conversation. Distinguished members will have access to additional critical administrative functions that generally aren't needed on a daily basis.
• 🌸 Alumni - In recognition of any contributor, regardless of above level achieved, who has helped Hachyderm in the past. You'll maintain access to the infra channel, dev, and observability tools (subject to cost and licensing constraints). We welcome any and all alumni to rejoin the active ranks at any point in the future.

While these levels are described in terms of time-in-role, it does not dictate decision-making nor should members in earlier tiers automatically defer to those in higher tiers. Longer-time Hachyderm team members will advocate for, help coach, and signal boost the ideas of newer team members to foster a community of inclusiveness, mutual aid, and safety. We believe open discussion, respectful discourse, and data help drive good decisions.