I think it’s nice that you are dreaming big

Beneath the humour lies a good question - how do you become part of a core team?

Well, we could take a look at what might have happened previously, and if we look at the latest addition to the team, @michalmuskala, we can see…

• He worked very hard on Ecto, Elixir, Jason and more, and has been sending PRs to Elixir and Erlang/OTP related projects since, I think, 2015.
• He has often shown he is a very knowledgeable and talented developer not just by his commits, but his comments in discussions we’ve had.
• He has been extremely helpful to members of the community, including on this very forum.
• Whenever he has appeared in talks, interviews, or even his posts here, he’s alway been an exemplary member of the community; warm and welcoming, kind and considerate, accomplished and knowledgable.
• He’s generally a very approachable and likeable person

There are probably lots more reasons, but I think the underlying one is that you are someone who is a huge asset to the team, and that the core team thinks it would be crazy not to have you join them (that’s how I took your “whether they like it or not!” comment btw )

With regards to what the easiest method might be - I’m sure I’ve heard elsewhere (think DHH blogged or mentioned it) that one of the easiest ways to get on to a core team is via writing documentation. Don’t be fooled by it being the ‘easiest’ though, it is an extremely important role, because without good documentation the community cannot grow.

Hopefully others can comment further or correct me if they feel I am wrong.

Like others, I do not care for this mental approach.

To become a core team member you should spend years becoming a top notch developer in general. On top of that you should submit top notch PRs to core and other well known libraries, especially if you can find elegant solutions to the more difficult features. You should engage positively with the larger Elixir community. And then you should wait until someone asks you to join the core team.

I worked with a team that had a developer before me basically “phone in” his entire job. He would take on small isolated features eagerly, but what they didn’t know was that he was paying dev tutor sites to essentially build the entire feature for him through social hacking (most companies would never have agreed if they understood what they were doing). He worked for three whole years before getting canned went he was sent to CA to work on an event on site and had NO clue what he was doing.