SAVITHA RAGHUNATHAN: I do. I was going to something for work, and I came across this changelog. In Kubernetes there's a nice page — once you got to the release page, there would be a long list of changelogs.

One of the things that I fixed was, the person who worked on the feature had changed their GitHub handle, and that wasn't reflected on this page. So that was my first. I got curious and clicked on the links. One of the links was the handle, and that went to a 404. And I was like "Yeah, I'll just fix that. They have done all the hard work. They can get the credit that's due".

It was easy. It wasn't overwhelming for me to pick it up as my first issue. Before that I logged on around Kubernetes for about six to eight months without doing anything because it was just a lot.

CRAIG BOX: One of the other things that you said about your initial contribution is that you had to learn how to use Git. As a very powerful tool, I find Git is a high barrier to entry for even contributing code to a project. When you want to contribute a blog post or documentation or a fix like you did before, I find it almost impossible to think how a new user would come along and do that. What was your process? Do you think that there's anything we can do to make that barrier lower for new contributors?

CRAIG BOX: I find it a shame, to be honest, that people need to use Git for that, by comparison to Wikipedia where you can come along, and even though it might be written in Markdown or something like it, it seems like the barrier is a lot lower. Similar to you, I always have to look up anything more complicated than the five or six Git commands that I use on a day to day basis. Even to do simple things, I basically just go and follow a recipe which I find on the internet.

SAVITHA RAGHUNATHAN: This is how I got introduced to one of the amazing mentors in Kubernetes. Everyone knows him by his handle, Dims. It was my second PR to the Kubernetes website, and I made a mistake. I destroyed the Git history. I could not push my reviews and comments — I addressed them. I couldn't push them back.

My immediate thought was to delete it and recreate, do another pull request. But then I was like, "what happens to others who have already put effort into reviewing them?" I asked for help, and Dims was there.

I would say I just got lucky he was there. And he was like, "OK, let me walk you through". We did troubleshooting through Slack messages. I copied and pasted all the errors. Every single command that he said, I copied and pasted. And then he was like, "OK, run this one. Try this one. And do this one".

Finally, I got it fixed. So you know what I did? I went and I stored the command history somewhere local for the next time when I run into this problem. Luckily, I haven't. But I find the contributors so helpful. They are busy. They have a lot of things to do, but they take moments to stop and help someone who's new.

That is also another part of the reason why I stay — I want to contribute more. It's mainly the community. It's the Kubernetes community. I know you asked me about Git, and I just took the conversation to the Kubernetes community. That's how my brain works.

CRAIG BOX: A lot of people in the community do that and think that's fantastic, obviously, people like Dims who are just floating around on Slack and seem to have endless time. I don't know how they do it.

SAVITHA RAGHUNATHAN: I really want to know the secret for endless time. If I only had 48 hours in a day. I would sleep for 16 hours, and I would use the rest of the time for doing the things that I want.

CRAIG BOX: If I had a chance to sleep up to 48 hours a day, I think it'd be a lot more than 16.

Now, one of the areas that you've been contributing to Kubernetes is in the release team. In 1.18, you were a shadow for the docs role. You led that role in 1.19. And you were a release lead shadow for versions 1,20 and 1.21 before finally leading this release, 1.22, which we will talk about soon.

How did you get involved? And how did you decide which roles to take as you went through that process?

SAVITHA RAGHUNATHAN: That is a topic I love to talk about. This was fresh when I started learning about Kubernetes and using Kubernetes at work. And I got so much help from the community, I got interested in contributing back.

At the first KubeCon that I attended in 2018, in Seattle, they had a speed mentoring session. Now they call it "pod mentoring". I went to the session, and said, "hey, I want to contribute. I don't know where to start". And I got a lot of information on how to get started.

One of the places was SIG Release and the release team. I came back and diligently attended all the SIG Release meetings for four to six months. And in between, I applied to the Kubernetes release team — 1.14 and 1.15. I didn't get through. So I took a little bit of a break, and I focused on doing some documentation work. Then I applied for 1.18.

Since I was already working on some kinds of — not like full fledged "documentation" documentation, I still don't write. I eventually want to write something really nice and full fledged documentation like other awesome folks.

CRAIG BOX: You'll need a lot more than 48 hours in your day to do that.

SAVITHA RAGHUNATHAN: laughing That's how I applied for the docs role, because I know a little bit about the website. I've done a few pull requests and commits. That's how I got started. I applied for that one role, and I got selected for the 1.18 team. That's how my journey just took off.

And the next release, I was leading the documentation team. And as everyone knows, the pandemic hit. It was one of the longest releases. I could lean back on the community. I would just wait for the release team meetings.

It was my way of coping with the pandemic. It took my mind off. It was actually more than a release team, they were people. They were all people first, and we took care of each other. So it felt good.

And then, I became a release lead shadow for 1.20 and 1.21 because I wanted to know more. I wanted to learn more. I wasn't ready. I still don't feel ready, but I have led 1.22. So if I could do it, anyone could do it.

CRAIG BOX: How much of this work is day job?

SAVITHA RAGHUNATHAN: I am lucky to be blessed with an awesome team. I do most of my work after work, but there have been times where I have to take meetings and attend to immediate urgent stuff. During the time of exception requests and stuff like that, I take a little bit of time from my work.

My team has been wonderful: they support me in all possible ways, and the management as well. Other than the meetings, I don't do much of the work during the day job. It just takes my focus and attention away too much, and I end up having to spend a lot of time sitting in front of the computer, which I don't like.

Before the pandemic I had a good work life balance. I'd just go to work at 7:00, 7:30, and I'd be back by 4 o'clock. I never touched my laptop ever again. I left all work behind when I came home. So right now, I'm still learning how to get through.

I try to limit the amount of open source work that I do during work time. The release lead shadow and the release lead job — they require a lot of time, effort. So on average, I'd be spending two to three hours post work time on the release activities.

CRAIG BOX: Before the pandemic, everyone was worried that if we let people work from home, they wouldn't work enough. I think the opposite has actually happened, is that now we're worried that if we let people work from home, they will just get on the computer in the morning and you'll have to pry it out of their hands at midnight.

SAVITHA RAGHUNATHAN: Yeah, I think the productivity has increased at least twofold, I would say, for everyone, once they started working from home.

CRAIG BOX: But at the expense of work-life balance, though, because as you say, when you're sitting in the same chair in front of, perhaps, the same computer doing your MathWorks work and then your open source work, they kind of can blur into one perhaps?

SAVITHA RAGHUNATHAN: That is a challenge. I face it every day. But so many others are also facing it. I implemented a few little tricks to help me. When I used to come back home from work, the first thing I would do is remove my watch. That was an indication that OK, I'm done.

That's the thing that I still do. I just remove my watch, and I just keep it right where my workstation is. And I just close the door so that I never look back. Even going past the room, I don't get a glimpse of my work office. I start implementing tiny little things like that to avoid burnout.

I think I'm still facing a little bit of burnout. I don't know if I have fully recovered from it. I constantly feel like I need a vacation. And I could just take a vacation for like a month or two. If it's possible, I will just do it.

CRAIG BOX: I do hope that travel opens up for everyone as an opportunity because I know that, for a lot of people, it's not so much they've been working from home but they've been living at work. The idea of taking vacation effectively means, well, I've been stuck in the same place, if I've been under a lockdown. It's hard to justify that. It will be good as things improve worldwide for us to be able to start focusing more on mental health and perhaps getting away from the "everything room," as I sometimes call it.

SAVITHA RAGHUNATHAN: I'm totally looking forward to it. I hope that travel opens up and I could go home and I could meet my siblings and my aunt and my parents.

CRAIG BOX: Catch a cricket match?

SAVITHA RAGHUNATHAN: Yeah. Probably yes, if I have company and if there is anything interesting happening around the time. I don't mind going back to the Chepauk Stadium and catching a match or two.