Becoming a Postgres committer with Melanie Plageman

If you could work on anything, would you quit your job to pursue it? Postgres committer and major contributor Melanie Plageman joined Claire Giordano on this episode of the Talking Postgres podcast (formerly Path To Citus Con) to share her story about becoming a Postgres committer. Melanie pivoted from IT consulting to open-source development, driven by her fascination with systems engineering and Postgres open source. What’s the secret to getting your patch committed? Feedback is a gift, but how willing are you to embrace it? How important is mentorship—and how important is it to ask for help? Even though crafting clear, concise emails to a technical community might not be easy, Melanie shows how empathy for other Postgres developers can help your work to stand out.Links discussed in this episodePgsql-hackers mailing list: Announcement about new Postgres committersConference: PGConf.dev 2025Blog: Talk, then code by Dave ChenyBlog posts about mentoring by Robert HaasBlog: Mentoring Program Updates by Robert HaasX: Brendan Burn’s tweet about the Kubernetes Chop Wood and Carry Water awardAward: Chop Wood Carry WaterBlog: Who Contributed to PostgreSQL Development in 2023? by Robert HaasAbstract: What's in a Postgres major release? An analysis of contributions in the v17 timeframe for PGConfEU 2024 by Claire GiordanoTalking Postgres Ep18: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with David RowleyWikipedia: PostgreSQL Contributor GiftsCal invite for next Ep 20 of Talking Postgres with Tom Lane to be recorded LIVE on Wed Oct 9, 2024Podcasts & conference videos that Melanie listens to when running that she recommends to Postgres developers:Podcast: Oxide and FriendsPodcast: postgres.fmPodcast: Software Engineering RadioPodcast: Talking Postgres with Claire GiordanoPodcast: Two’s ComplementSE Radio: Ep 432: Brian D Foy on Perl 7Video: Memory & Caches by Matt GodboltVideos: POSETTE 2024 playlistVideo: RailsConf 2014 - All the Little Things by Sandi MetzYouTube: Brandon FoltzYouTube: CMU Database GroupYouTube: Kernel RecipesYouTube: Linux Plumbers ConferenceYouTube: Matt GodboltYouTube: Onur Mutlu LecturesYouTube: pganalyzeYouTube: PostgreSQL Development ConferenceYouTube: SNIAVideoYouTube: Strange Loop ConferenceYouTube: The Linux Foundation