Open-source and the imposter syndrome

These days working on Tuist, I realize that I’m unable to stay on top of everything that’s happening on the project. The breadth of the project has grown so much, that I lack a lot of context to provide meaningful feedback on pull requests. On one side it’s good because it means there are some areas of the project with people that are more knowledgeable than me. So I can trust them to make the right decisions and focus on other areas. However, I feel bad because I’m not able to provide the same level of feedback that I used to.

I’m starting to accept that it’s part of the process of growing a project. At some point, you need to trust other people to make decisions. And you need to identify what are your strengths and how you can impact the project the most. In my case, that’s helping shape the vision for the project, and fostering a community of contributors that feel empowered to make decisions. Trying to do coding feels like being a manager and trying to write some code. You certainly can do it, but you’ll be more effective if you focus on the former. Otherwise, you risk being on the critical path of efforts that could be done by others.

I admire technologists like Tom Preston, who were able to build successful companies like GitHub, create and grow successful open-source projects like RedwoodJS, and balance all of that with his family life. I think it must also take a lot of discipline and prioritization to be able to do that. Which I’m still learning to do.