/
Patch Notes [2023.1] - Dev Exec reshuffling

Patch Notes [2023.1] - Dev Exec reshuffling

Owned by Hanyuan Li (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Jun 27, 2023
5 min read

TL;DR: For the rest of 2023, the Development exec (@Angella Pham (Unlicensed), @Hanyuan Li (Unlicensed), @Jared Lohtaja (Unlicensed), @Max Xue (Unlicensed), @Winnie Zhang (Unlicensed)) are working separately from the rest of the exec in our own exec body, taking care of CSESoc Development. This is to ensure that Development runs smoothly and with more structure for 2023.

However, for 2023, there will not be any big changes to how Development is being run, except for more autonomy and small changes in exec roles.

Because we’re working on our own, we’re taking this opportunity to shuffle up some roles to give ourselves a little more structure and hopefully make your experience better

We are also thinking of separating in some capacity for 2024, because CSESoc has gotten too big as “one unit” to manage from an exec perspective.

Any suggestions/thoughts any time, send through

Overview

CSESoc is a very big society. As a result, for 2023, the Dev execs are now their own separate exec body, serving the needs of a more autonomous CSESoc Development

For the rest of 2023, the Dev execs are shuffling their roles around to make our workload more evenly spread (a more even spread in the number of teams each Dev exec is overseeing, clearer roles and responsibilities). We are introducing some more “formal” exec roles (as a change from most of us being vice-presidents) so we can make Development run more smoothly and support you better

These roles (and the way they’re combined as of right now) are for 2023 only - the roles we’ve allocated ourselves are temporary because we believe that hiring another executive halfway through the year would not be very effective. Future years may need more execs to manage Development, as for now, we will see how the workload is and provide insights in handovers/potentially change our exec body later.

You will notice that there are no presidents (or co-presidents) in Development for 2023 - this is because we’ve all (pretty much) been operating as “co-presidents” for the past 6 months (i.e. pushing out initiatives, representing Dev), so we are all taking on these duties. Therefore, you can imagine that, for the rest of 2023, all of us are “co-president”, as well as the concrete roles we’ve assigned ourselves.

Role breakdown

THIS IS NOT A CONSTITUTION. This is only a brief overview of what our roles are for clarity, and to help you in knowing who to contact for what. Furthermore, we don’t want to be too rigid, and we want to evenly spread our workload as much as we can - the following are main “points of contact” for most concerns people might have, but feel free to approach any of us for a chat, we won’t bite

Also, there are some finer details we have to iron out regarding our exec responsibilities (both for now and for 2024 onwards), so some things in this doc may change over time.

Treasurer/Arc Delegate: @Winnie Zhang (Unlicensed)

This role is responsible for:

  • Keeping track of all funds within Development and how they’re allocated to teams/initiatives

  • Co-ordinating with the CSESoc Treasurer to ensure Development gets adequate funding for its needs

  • Keeping track of all room bookings within Development

  • Co-ordinating with the CSESoc Arc Delegate and Vice-President (Externals) to ensure that rooms are booked and event conflicts with CSESoc are minimised

Secretary: @Hanyuan Li (Unlicensed)

This role is responsible for:

  • Running all Development executive meetings, including meeting minutes and scheduling

  • Overlooking the Development Confluence, Jira, Google Drive and any other services containing information regarding CSESoc Development

    • Ensuring Development operations are smooth and organised

  • Assisting CSESoc Development with general administrative tasks

For 2023, the secretary will not be handling Atlassian/Google/GitHub permissions for Development - this responsibility is under the CTO.

(i.e. don’t ask me if you forget your password lol I will be referring you to Jared - Hanyuan)

GEDI Officer: @Winnie Zhang (Unlicensed)

The GEDI Officer is not the only point of contact you have - if you feel comfortable reaching out to someone else, you can definitely do so!

And keep in mind that grievances don’t have to be huge or dramatically formal, and reaching out to us doesn’t mean your issue has to be dealt in a formal way - talk to us about anything!

This role is responsible for:

  • Being a point of contact for resolving grievances, both formal and informal, in a fair and impartial manner

    • If they are not able to participate fairly and impartially, passing this responsibility to other members of the executive

  • Helping the CSESoc Grievance Officer with their duties regarding CSESoc Development

  • Ensuring Development events, both internal and external, are equitable, diverse and inclusive

Chief Technology Officer: @Jared Lohtaja (Unlicensed)

This role is responsible for:

  • Maintaining the technical infrastructure for CSESoc Development

  • Coordinating the architectural design of software projects within CSESoc Development

For 2023, this role would also include:

  • Managing permissions for Bitwarden (passwords) and Google Workspace

  • Improving Project visibility with SEO

Vice President

For 2024 onwards, this role could be its own executive role, and the teams could be split in other ways - we have decided to combine it with our existing roles for reasons outlined in the overview.

This role is responsible for:

  • Overseeing the teams they are directly responsible for

  • Being a point of contact for initiatives involving teams they are overseeing

  • Being a point of contact for subcom and directors if they need support besides the Grievance Officer

The teams within Development have been divided up into their corresponding vice-presidents as follows:

  • @Hanyuan Li (Unlicensed) Chaos, Discord Bot, Website

  • @Angella Pham (Unlicensed) Circles, CSElectives, Notangles

  • @Max Xue (Unlicensed) Freerooms, Jobsboard, Structs

  • @Jared Lohtaja (Unlicensed) UI/UX

  • @Angella Pham (Unlicensed) Content, Culture

  • @Max Xue (Unlicensed) Education, Training Program

CSESoc Dev’s future (2024 onwards)

In Term 1, we tried to integrate CSESoc Dev with the rest of CSESoc, to mixed results. While we found that people from both groups got to know each other better (which was our goal), it also came with a lot of problems due to the society’s size at every level:

  • Some Dev execs didn’t have enough time to worry about concerns with the rest of CSESoc, and vice-versa with the other non-dev execs to CSESoc Development, which gave execs extra stress (caring about the whole society) with no extra support.

  • There were 60(!) directors altogether, which made things like director roadtrips/bondings difficult to organise.

  • Whole-society bondings were impossible, since there were about 300 people total.

  • The two groups of Internals/Externals and Dev had little overlap besides exec-organised bonding events - furthermore, because Projects was traditionally fairly isolated from the rest of CSESoc, it would be a giant effort to integrate both groups, overshadowing any new initiatives that the exec wanted to run.

In order to help out future executive bodies, we (both dev and main execs) want to separate the two groups more distinctly for 2024 onwards - the Dev execs shuffling themselves around into new roles is also a nice first step towards that.

As of now, we don’t know whether that means formalising CSESoc internally as “two societies in one” and making it clear, with two separate exec bodies, or separating off into a new society (or somewhere in between), but we’re open to suggestions and thoughts Once we have more concrete plans/ideas we’ll propose it to Dev (and open it to opinions/review/feedback!), so stay tuned

Related content