DAO Compensation Sustainability ⏳

[krrisis]

@owocki

I’m strongly supportive of having a smaller group that creates a safe & productive container for this conversation. It should have someone representing people ops (Loie or someone on her team), and someone else who knows the financials of the DAO well (Kyle or Llamas). Such a group would start with listening + then perhaps through building consensus eventually recommend policy back to the DAO.

+1 on this. It should be more than just a group strategy call, it should be a taskforce that looks at all the salaries but starts with an intake meeting.

@loietaylor

a) salary reduction for all
b) new hires brought on at a lower rate, with leveling period across a few months where high salaries are lowered and new hires are raised (to find equality without making an earthquake in ppls lives)
c) take a furlough
d) high context/high salary folks go to 1/2 time

Looking at these options only option b) makes sense to me (I like that one a lot). Although I know it is just a ‘conversation starter’, it is within the domain of people ops to provide some guidance here and I hope some more options can come up to equalize pay first before we eg go for a dao-wide reduction or potentially ask some of most high context (often highest performing) contributors to go to 1/2 time.

I think what Saf describes here is a realistic scenario…

@safder

f there’s a mass exodus beacuse current contributors can no longer afford to work at Gitcoin DAO … how far back would this set current projects, and what would the costs of rehiring/restructuring the DAO be? Just think there’s a lot of nuance that needs to be taken into account when discussing people’s livelihoods

… and we should at all cost avoid a talent bleed of the DAO.
I personally can live with a paycut but at the same time I believe in fair treatment of all.
Measuring of people’s performance is not easy but this discussion shows how important it is to at least establish some standards (urgently) we can adopt dao-wide, and we’ve been talking about this for a long time.

Salaries are pretty random from my view and in a bear market tensions around this will probably only rise. I’ve seen private and public discussions around what some people make and I’ve seen other workstreams being very good at hiding how much some people actually make. There’s a lot of work to be done here and great to see that we’re broaching this topic.

Some final thoughts after reading up on all of the above, looking back at the original Qs:

@owocki

• If I were to start this project all over again, should I have gone the Giveth/Rotki route?

No, coming from Giveth I can be clear about this. We all made the exact same (extremely low) salary, no matter how hard or long you worked or how efficient you were. It really was painful at times, for many. People should always be compensated for what they do. No system is perfect but we should try to find a balance.

@owocki

• Is the DAO in for more hard times if it continues Holdings’ compensation patterns?

Probably yes. All salaries should be revised, this should by the way also include legacy rules with vesting plans from holding employees. This is a very unbalanced situation that should also be addressed while we’re at it.

@owocki

• Should GitcoinDAO pay six-figure salaries to its full time contributors, like the Holdings company did (perhaps unsustainably)?

We should pay the correct market value but take into consideration our own financial situation and adapt where necessary, esp. for people who are overpaid or whose pay has never been evaluated by people ops in terms of what makes sense in the market, performed hours, peer review etc. There’s no dao-wide system in place here at the moment.

@owocki

Is there a DAO-wide compensation policy in the works? Should this policy be consistent in both times of abundance & scarcity ?

We do not have one but afaik it is in the works, this was in people ops’ OKRs last season and it is in there again for this season.

@owocki

• Can the DAO sustain these compensation policies if we are no longer the market leader ?

Let’s start by drafting one, take context into account and go from there.

@owocki

• What is the DAOs compensation model? What are the workstreams compensation models?

Does not exist/is not consistent/unknown.

@owocki

What would have to be true for the DAO to create great software, become a market leader, get to financial sustainability, and pay web2-competitive salaries (the virtuous cycle I personally think the DAO should be aiming)?

Have a clear purpose and intents from which a lot of logic can come to make easier decisions, and a strong people ops team to create policies that makes sense to all workstreams and continually evolve given our own ever-evolving context.