As a sidenote, I changed the professional role bullet into a new subheader. When using a bullet in markdown I could not add line breaks between the paragraphs and keep the indenting so it looked odd. Open to suggestions on how to better format the roles in this document!

I think the role should generally be given to engineers with other roles close to the engineering being at the discretion of the staff. I'd take out specific job types.

I think the role should generally be given to engineers with other roles close to the engineering being at the discretion of the staff. I'd take out specific job types.

Can you clarify that a bit or give an example? I think I got a little confused by your wording 🙂

Do you mean that the role should be given to "engineers who are closely related to engineering but not in engineering" or did you mean the role should be given to "engineers" primarily and that the "other roles close to engineering are at the discretion of the staff"?

did you mean the role should be given to "engineers" primarily and that the "other roles close to engineering are at the discretion of the staff"?

This one. I don't think we should say that if someone is a designer, that they are excluded by default. We should default to an engineer being a professional in our community, while others being up to discretion.

Really, even if someone is an engineer it is still to discretion and not guaranteed, but i'd stay away from saying a specific job title is excluded.

did you mean the role should be given to "engineers" primarily and that the "other roles close to engineering are at the discretion of the staff"?

This one. I don't think we should say that if someone is a designer, that they are excluded by default. We should default to an engineer being a professional in our community, while others being up to discretion.

Really, even if someone is an engineer it is still to discretion and not guaranteed, but i'd stay away from saying a specific job title is excluded.

Thanks for clarifying! 🙂

Your suggestion was my first thought on approaching this as well. However in issue #209 it seemed there were more staff members in favor of Leo's proposal on the specific job titles and exclusions. Hopefully we can get some more staff to join this discussion and chime in on this one!

I liked the suggestion to clarify jobs that we would exclude, but it did not sit as well with me reading it here. Especially because we could already have people with the professional role that job title. So I wonder if we could just list the jobs that we intend to give this role to and leave the rest up to our discretion?

Thinking this through made me have another idea. What do you think about changing it so that they have to have to be active in our community for 3 months (so that we can see what kind of advice/help they give) before giving out this role? We could also change it from sending a quick Modmail to having the user fill out a Dyno form with a link to their linkedin, answer questions like why they want to are part of our community, how they would answer some common advice questions, etc. Maybe this is overkill, but I wonder if this would help weed out people that wouldn't be a good fit.

Thinking this through made me have another idea. What do you think about changing it so that they have to have to be active in our community for 3 months (so that we can see what kind of advice/help they give) before giving out this role? We could also change it from sending a quick Modmail to having the user fill out a Dyno form with a link to their linkedin, answer questions like why they want to are part of our community, how they would answer some common advice questions, etc. Maybe this is overkill, but I wonder if this would help weed out people that wouldn't be a good fit.

Thanks @rlmoser99! Love the idea of using the Dyno form here. Not only would that help improve the verification process but it would also allow staff to see and have history of the incoming requests and easier way to discuss an application together. Right now there is no good way to keep track of this once the Modmail message disappears.

I also think 3 months would be a good baseline for being in the community before getting the role.

Another question to add might be what their experience is using The Odin Project curriculum and projects.

I liked the suggestion to clarify jobs that we would exclude, but it did not sit as well with me reading it here. Especially because we could already have people with the professional role that job title. So I wonder if we could just list the jobs that we intend to give this role to and leave the rest up to our discretion?

I agree with removing the bit about the job titles that are excluded.

Here are two new ideas on the first paragraph playing with both this suggestion and the suggestion from @kashura above:

1:

This role may be available but not limited to professionally employed software engineers and other roles directly impacted by The Odin Project curriculum. This role is up to the discretion of The Odin Project staff and admittance is not guaranteed.

2:

This role may be available but not limited to professionally employed software engineers and other roles directly impacted by The Odin Project curriculum. Some other examples include web developers, QA engineers or those with a professional history of developing who are still employed as developer managers and/or project managers. This role is up to the discretion of The Odin Project staff and admittance is not guaranteed.

Suggestion to change #roles entry

Whatever wording we decide on, it should be the shorter and to-the-point version of the more elaborate one in the file. It should have these components:

• Who the role is for (SWE + other roles connected with the curriculum)
• That it is given at our discretion
• Any other requirements, if the 3 month requirement goes through it might be as vague as "users that have proven to have an active and beneficial presence on our server" or something along these lines.
• If I understand everything correctly, I'd go with slightly modified proposal 1. wording from @dm-murphy's previous message given that it satisfies outlined components and is short. Something like:
  Users that are professionally employed software engineers or are employed in roles directly impacted by The Odin Project curriculum. This role is up to the discretion of The Odin Project staff. Read more here: [link to the discord_roles.md file on TOP-meta]"

Suggestion to change #faq entry

Reasonable to me. Makes it so we only have to edit this one file if we want to change anything related to obtaining professional role.

Suggestion to pin a reminder in #professionals

Again, makes sense.

Other musings

Opening up the definition of the professional role will clarify some of the decisions we've already made when it comes to giving it but if we decide on further requirements like the 3 month good activity requirement we somewhat retroactively "promote" those users with professional role who have not been as active as this requirement. Not sure if this is an issue at all but we have to keep this in mind if we're going to raise the bar higher. I think a more ephemeral requirement of just "being an active part of discord community" would work best to signal that we want to bestow the role and thus staff recognition while not tying us to any specific timeline.