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 episode

• Pgsql-hackers mailing list: Announcement about new Postgres committers
• Conference: PGConf.dev 2025
• Blog: Talk, then code by Dave Cheny
• Blog posts about mentoring by Robert Haas
• Blog: Mentoring Program Updates by Robert Haas
• X: Brendan Burn’s tweet about the Kubernetes Chop Wood and Carry Water award
• Award: Chop Wood Carry Water
• Blog: Who Contributed to PostgreSQL Development in 2023? by Robert Haas
• Abstract: What's in a Postgres major release? An analysis of contributions in the v17 timeframe for PGConfEU 2024 by Claire Giordano
• Talking Postgres Ep18: How I got started as a developer (& in Postgres) with David Rowley
• Wikipedia: PostgreSQL Contributor Gifts
• Cal invite for next Ep 20 of Talking Postgres with Tom Lane to be recorded LIVE on Wed Oct 9, 2024

Podcasts & conference videos that Melanie listens to when running that she recommends to Postgres developers:

• Podcast: Oxide and Friends
• Podcast: postgres.fm
• Podcast: Software Engineering Radio
• Podcast: Talking Postgres with Claire Giordano
• Podcast: Two’s Complement
• SE Radio: Ep 432: Brian D Foy on Perl 7
• Video: Memory & Caches by Matt Godbolt
• Videos: POSETTE 2024 playlist
• Video: RailsConf 2014 - All the Little Things by Sandi Metz
• YouTube: Brandon Foltz
• YouTube: CMU Database Group
• YouTube: Kernel Recipes
• YouTube: Linux Plumbers Conference
• YouTube: Matt Godbolt
• YouTube: Onur Mutlu Lectures
• YouTube: pganalyze
• YouTube: PostgreSQL Development Conference
• YouTube: SNIAVideo
• YouTube: Strange Loop Conference
• YouTube: The Linux Foundation