Guaranteeing a SEED baseline. How do we move forward?

[HBesso31]

Dear OctoHumans,

Some of you are updated on the state of the things. Some of you not. Skip the Context section if you are updated.

CONTEXT
For several weeks it has been said within newsletters, calls, and conversations that we are missing full-time dedicated people to engage in MetaGame. Most specifically, that we need full-time Senior Front-End Devs, and Technical PMs. Other roles were also requested, such as a Senior UI/UX Designer and both Shillers and Writers.

Clarification must be made. Full-time dedication or commitment does not mean 40 hrs a week. It means putting your heart and mind into making what we collectively agree to happen.

Also, it was said that the fundraising would bring resources additionaly to other needs, to pay for enabling full-time people to stay. And that in fact, succesfully fundraising without having full-time dedicated people will might even be bad.

Clear problem: How can we engage full time/mind/heart high quality and like-minded professionals into MG that require a compensation of above $4,000/month?

Headhunting season opened
So… I took ownership of the Headhunting. Looked for Senior Front-End Devs and Tech PMs that were already engaged in gaming and looking to take a new challenge. Found many, filtered them. Talked to them 1 on 1. Have been supporting the ones that stayed and making sure that they enjoy playing the MG experience.
However, now that we have people actually saying that they are taking the shot of becoming full-time in MG we are reacting with a step-back. Instead of protecting the Hobbyst-environment, let’s think on how to make sure that the incoming peeps can rely on a reward system that is able to compensate them with more than 4K USD/month.

Some arguments
Saying a $USD value a month is extractive.
Most of us, and most of the people entering MG will swap their SEEDs for a currency we can use for paying our bills.
Having a fact-based average of USD monthly rewards allows us to shill about the opportunities we have in MG about “coordinat[ing] with others on building a better world; doing things that create a positive impact, make you happy AND earn you money at the same time.” MG Substack, Landing page v2, 2021.

If we don’t want to make it “extractive” then, that’s another subject, not part of this thread. That’s tokenomics, that’s utility building.

The range of USD you were given is way out of the reality
First. I was given those values. Second, they were put to review and validation to the community in #Feedback. No one argumented against them. Why now?

We cannot have fixed salaries, otherwise we become employees, and that takes the fun out of it.
Gotcha. I hear you. There are many, many ways of guaranting a fair income to someone while enabling us to professionalize and really craft some value to the world.
This is the exact place to discuss, debate, and deliberate on WHAT ways are there to solve this issue and which of these are we going to approach to reach our goals.

I’ll open the floor with one way I know of. It is called the Colleague Letter of Commitments. This is a proven path for everyone to put up front expectations of what value they commit to produce to reach the community’s goals. These have a self-negotiated compensation. Both, the letter of commitment and the reward expectation are presented and discussed with the community. After it has been approved, then everyone knows what we are expecting about this person and what this person is expecting from everyone (connected commitments, rewards).

The above, is the Morning Star way, however it is not to do a copy-paste thing. I believe we need to find our own way by inspiring from the contributions of others.
Maybe a path forward is using self-negotiating a compensation for a defined contribution plan that has been agreed with the community, then posting the deliverables into the #did-a-thing so, they become trackable attestation of what has been promissed. If the person does not meet its expected reward but indeed delivered as promissed, we can in fact make a manual distribution compensation.

If the person earns more than expected then we can discuss if leave it as a bonus or negotiate a re-calculation.

The timing of this problem has been perfect. The Self-Management Institute has started a conversation with us to workshop the problem out. However, I’ll put it in another thread as it is a self-contained proposal, and here is open for discussing WAYS to provide a safe income to everyone dedicating their time/mind/heart.

I’ll stop headhunting atm. I’ll just follow up the people onboarded. Provide them with the support they need to fully engage, and put my time into finding a way forward.

Please, bring your thoughts and experiences with a problem-solving mindset.

Clear problem: How can we engage full time/mind/heart high quality and like-minded professionals into MG that require a compensation of above $4,000/month?

[tenfinney]

@HBesso31

Maybe a path forward is using self-negotiating a compensation for a defined contribution plan that has been agreed with the community, then posting the deliverables into the #did-a-thing so, they become trackable attestation of what has been promissed. If the person does not meet its expected reward but indeed delivered as promissed, we can in fact make a manual distribution compensation.

This is the way. The cherry-on-top is to get all those commitments to be executed through something like SourceCred. Auto-payouts based on quantifiable milestones. Everyone wins.

[alec]

Yes! Thank you for asking the right questions, AND proposing a solution! If we have any hope of professionalizing this community we will have to experiment with solutions like the one you mentioned. I am all for greater accountability and transparency and having one’s compensation at least somewhat tied to some set of deliverables and/or effort.

IMO, without professionalization, we have very little hope of innovating fast enough (at least on the technical side) to build anything truly useful in this space.

It does seem that even slightly increased liquidity could easily provide an active builder $4k/month in income. Just look at the top earners over the past couple of mints.

From a organizational perspective, I think onboarding PMs should take top priority. Without that direction, much of a new, dedicated builder’s efforts are likely to be misplaced.

[HBesso31]

Thanks @alec and @tenfinney for the support. Indeed, we need to take proven organizational coordination knowledge and blend it with our culture, playful approach, and technological systems.

Maybe, greater accountability and transparency can be reached along auto-payouts based on quantifiable milestones by having a similar did-a-thing mechanism but for letter of commitments.

Let’s explore and craft our own solution by participating in this workshop.

Note: I’ve added a diff thread because this conversation is open to discussion. The workshop’s thread is directly a proposal to work with asap.

[tommy]

I will refer back to the battle of using initiatives…

Seems kinda like what would resolve this

[peth]

@HBesso31

Most of us, and most of the people entering MG will swap their SEEDs for a currency we can use for paying our bills.
Having a fact-based average of USD monthly rewards allows us to shill about the opportunities we have in MG about “coordinat[ing] with others on building a better world; doing things that create a positive impact, make you happy AND earn you money at the same time.” MG Substack, Landing page v2, 2021.

Most of the people have not been selling all of their Seeds.
I understand people working full time will need to cash out more of their Seeds to pay their bills, have a safe savings account etc; but if people are fully swapping their Seeds for usd, we have lost.
Not in terms of funding but in terms of belief in the project.
Loops back to the conversations from the call the other day: are bringing on people who are looking for a job or are we building people who are looking for a mission, to be part of a movement & a community.

@HBesso31

The range of USD you were given is way out of the reality
First. I was given those values. Second, they were put to review and validation to the community in #Feedback. No one argumented against them. Why now?

While those numbers may be true for highest impact full time contributor, I think part of the reason is the uncertainty around the market & the fundraise. In the past month, Seeds went from $35 to $20.
The practice we had so far: although knowing people may be able to earn up to $10k, we generally haven’t been telling people they can earn more than say $5k when joining.

@HBesso31

We cannot have fixed salaries, otherwise we become employees, and that takes the fun out of it.
Gotcha. I hear you. There are many, many ways of guaranting a fair income to someone while enabling us to professionalize and really craft some value to the world.
This is the exact place to discuss, debate, and deliberate on WHAT ways are there to solve this issue and which of these are we going to approach to reach our goals.

I’m not sure we’re in a position to guarantee anyone anything.
You get paid based on how much value you create, sourcecred, state of the project, state of the market etc.
There is no longer the tithing by the company taking all the value between what you negotiated & what you actually created.
That’s the upside. The downside is the uncertainty.
A job gives you a stability because it limits your downside but it also caps your upside.
I see it kind of as insurance.
Being a free agent, the upside is not capped but there’s nothing shielding you from uncertainty of the world. There is no pretense of stability.

@HBesso31

Maybe a path forward is using self-negotiating a compensation for a defined contribution plan that has been agreed with the community, then posting the deliverables into the #did-a-thing so, they become trackable attestation of what has been promissed. If the person does not meet its expected reward but indeed delivered as promissed, we can in fact make a manual distribution compensation.

I love the idea of people defining their contribution plan but I don’t like the part about “self-negotiating compensation” & setting an agreement before they even start contributing.
To me, this whole idea that we can precisely determine the impact & quality of someone’s work before work even commenced is antithetical to what we’re trying to do with sourcecred.
It also introduces bureaucracy, who is & how to negotiate whether someone’s proposal is realistic, especially if they haven’t even joined yet. To keep an eye & renegotiate after seeing what someone delivered etc.

They come here, willing to take a risk by joining MetaGame.
Not because we try to guarantee their expectations will be met, but because they are really vibing with the idea of MetaGame, like the project & are willing to risk at least a little bit of their time.
Not even a leap of faith, they can start dipping their toe in MetaGame, maybe contribute just a little the first month to see if their expectations are being met.

Instead of “negotiating salary”, I think people should “set expectations”.
Then join, take a little risk & see if MetaGame can meet your expectations.

If we’re getting people that are completely risk-averse, we are getting the wrong people imo. Its too early for people who play it safe & don’t like chaos.

@tommy

I will refer back to the battle of using initiatives…

Seems kinda like what would resolve this

Yes but also simply having people share their action plans & adding weight to the guild/raid report channels. Or even just having more active XP Fairies to add octos to didating & give more props.
Both of which would happen at a fraction of the effort required for initiatives.
I will refer back to this unresolved vote
Maybe if we had at least 1 active XP Fairy, this discussion would have already been pushed forward & resolved. Adding initiatives also kind of requires XP Fairies, so I don’t see how “simply start adding initiatives” solves the problem, which to me seems to be more so general apathy of people towards it.
Let’s schedule this shit.

[peth]

Also brings up the question on where do we draw the line for this “negotiation of salary”?
Is it just for championing roles & deputies? Is it for senior devs?
Is it for people who underestimate themselves?
For everyone?

Kind of starts defeating the purpose of having sourcecred in the first place…

[HBesso31]

@peth

Most of the people have not been selling all of their Seeds.
I understand people working full time will need to cash out more of their Seeds to pay their bills, have a safe savings account etc; but if people are fully swapping their Seeds for usd, we have lost.
Not in terms of funding but in terms of belief in the project.
Loops back to the conversations from the call the other day: are bringing on people who are looking for a job or are we building people who are looking for a mission, to be part of a movement & a community.

I will talk about my own experience.
I am here with a mission, in MetaGame, and in life. I believe that MetaGame as a collective has the potential to create great value for society. Specifically, in facilitating the adoption of human coordination technologies through a playful approach. I wouldn’t be investing my time in this community otherwise. However, I sell most of the SEEDs I get to pay my bills. Why? Because the current only utility that the token provides is paying mission-driven individuals to build MetaGame.

Is it a bad utility? No way Jose! Can we have more ways of utility? Sure!! But this is not the thread for that.

The important question is not about what ppl do with their SEED, but What do we do with the time of everyone here that have taken the learning curve and the risks to be here and not somewhere else?
That’s the question you have addressed in the Champion’s Ring and that everyone in the community has made to themselves.

Quoting:
"- what are we trying to achieve mid-term (because long term vision & short term roadmaps aren’t in alignment)

• exactly what is whose responsibility, to what degree & what are the incentives"

If a person comes to MG, does not come only for the money, comes because there’s something else that attracted them, you name it: products in development, game-perspective, friends, way of working, maturity of the DAO, value-alignment, dreams, …

We need to set clear responsibilities and expectations for each responsibility in the form of deadlines, deliverables, quality, etc. Exactly why we need to optimize our ways of creating and rewarding value. Exactly why we need the workshop proposed above.

MetaGame is about making problem-solving fun. First, we need to identify the optimal ways of achieving something and then, add the narratives, the ambiance, the competition, the rewards, etc that makes optimal problem-solving a fun thing. Let’s do it!

@peth

I’m not sure we’re in a position to guarantee anyone anything.
You get paid based on how much value you create, sourcecred, state of the project, state of the market etc.

We can only guarantee what is in our control. Everything else is a risk for everyone, and knowing that each one decides to take the step or not.

Regarding the things that are within our control. We can start by defining things that we can guarantee by programming them. Let’s say, a minimum of SEEDs that a person with a certain rank would get for N XP contributed to X, Y, and Z Raids. These Raids can be collectively agreed as valuable to our goals, and thus with a higher weight in SourceCred. These Raids could have a tagged pool of SEEDs for them.

Another separate way is having XP-Fairies that provide Octos to those contributions that are related to these collectively agreed important Raids. People would put their expected deliverables in their plans. XP-Fairies would know them and could have a calc to know how many Octos they need to provide to the ppl contributing to these deliverables so they guarantee a minimum of SEEDs.

Another is that if a person gets less at the end of the month, we can open a discussion and solve the problem manually through a vote.

These are just examples that I, without much knowledge/experience in SourceCred can propose. If they are not entirely accurate, they might provide an initial path to program our game.

@peth

I love the idea of people defining their contribution plan but I don’t like the part about “self-negotiating compensation” & setting an agreement before they even start contributing.
To me, this whole idea that we can precisely determine the impact & quality of someone’s work before work even commenced is antithetical to what we’re trying to do with sourcecred.

MetaSys is a great outcome that MetaGame has achieved. SourceCred and the way of recognizing value through the community are awesome. Let’s combine it with the knowledge of self-management. We won’t know how to proceed until we actually experiment further.

Please check and register for the Workshop and let’s level up together!

[peth]

@HBesso31

However, I sell most of the SEEDs I get to pay my bills. Why? Because the current only utility that the token provides is paying mission-driven individuals to build MetaGame.

It depends on how much you receive vs how much you need to live & save, whether you have other income streams etc.
But to me personally, people selling all of their Seeds is a clear signal of a lack of belief in the success of MetaGame (unless they’re only getting enough to eat & don’t have other sources of income).
Besides that, people selling all of their Seeds are also incentivized to think short term, how to get as many Seeds to sell for as little effort as possible. Do quick tasks & report as often without thinking about the impact of work or whether it makes sense long term.
There is no skin in the game for them to think long term.
These are the people that will be the first to jump ship to another project if something were to happen to Seeds & leave the rest of us long term thinkers & builders holding the bag.

@HBesso31

Regarding the things that are within our control. We can start by defining things that we can guarantee by programming them. Let’s say, a minimum of SEEDs that a person with a certain rank would get for N XP contributed to X, Y, and Z Raids. These Raids can be collectively agreed as valuable to our goals, and thus with a higher weight in SourceCred. These Raids could have a tagged pool of SEEDs for them.

Maybe possible to do but not sure it needs to be that complicated. Don’t think we have proper Sourcecred technicians to really implement.

@HBesso31

Another separate way is having XP-Fairies that provide Octos to those contributions that are related to these collectively agreed important Raids. People would put their expected deliverables in their plans. XP-Fairies would know them and could have a calc to know how many Octos they need to provide to the ppl contributing to these deliverables so they guarantee a minimum of SEEDs.

Another is that if a person gets less at the end of the month, we can open a discussion and solve the problem manually through a vote.

These are just examples that I, without much knowledge/experience in SourceCred can propose. If they are not entirely accurate, they might provide an initial path to program our game.

I think this makes more sense & is way easier to achieve.

[Disciple-TYMED]

idk why i did not see this before

[tommy]

Seems like this conversation sort of keeps dancing around.
Lately there has been talk using Coordinape and also maybe having a base guild monthly seed allotment to distribute within guild as voted on.
Seems like a full circle to the ideas of initiatives in SourceCred that we never used quite well. But it’s, I think, a step in a good direction.
@tenfinney @Misanth

Conversation is here

Use a two-tiered Coordinape to allay some of the dissatisfaction with SourceCred

Coordinape is a system akin to SourceCred for the determination of value added to an organization. Whereas SourceCred uses data analysis, Coordinape is essentially entirely subjective. Users are given quantities of a GIV token in a quantity decided by an administrator. They then gift those token to the members of their team, and, once the epoch is complete a value-laden token is distributed in proportion to the GIV distribution. The method of allocation which intrigued @Misanth & myself on the …