@sidvaish97 and @carty thanks for sharing your experiences and putting the spotlight on some specific areas where we can make some changes that can make a real difference in a community member’s experience.
Question One - and I am not intending to be flip - does the community want new developers? While the answer may seem obvious - perhaps the culture is one in which y’all are more productive with a relatively static team, culture, toolset, and design. Scaling the team means the team needs to invest in welcoming and supporting new members both socially and technically, I have noticed that sw teams in industry are often not good at it.
To echo @burke’s short answer, yes, we do want new developers. And we’d like to help those who start contributing through GSoC and GCI opportunities to continue contributing to the community.
We’re lucky to have some wonderful guides that welcome people to the community on our Welcome! Please Introduce Yourself thread and at least try to direct them to the right starting place. That said, we know that there are other things that we can do to not only onboard new members and help them get started, but to help everyone discover where and how they can contribute to the community in a way that is in line with their passions and interests.
And I think you raise an interesting point that sw teams are not always very good at welcoming and supporting new members. Sometimes even our guides need guidance, so I can’t help but think that the time is right for the Developing a Set of Volunteer Guides project. It’s true it’s a proposed Google Season of Docs project - and that doesn’t mean we can’t start it now, especially if there are a couple of people willing to work with me and the Documentation Team on this project.