[S14 Proposal - Amended ] DAO Operations S14 Budget Request

[bobjiang]

As user support coordinator and Gitcoin steward, I support the S14 budget request from DAO OPS workstream.

DAO OPS ws provides basic and fundamental services to the whole DAO like onboarding, accounting, devops, tooling, hiring etc.

Great jobs!

[Pop]

As an essential part of Gitcoin DAO evolution, it’s key to have operations running smoothly and the people working on many of the flows needed in a DAO is paramount. Fully in support of this as there are many areas we need to continue improving on

[linda]

Thanks for all of the DAO operations work that is being done. I’m supportive of this proposal.

[Fishbiscuit]

Thanks for working on this critical aspect of the DAO! I’m starting to see some of this work pop up in my calendar (training sessions etc). Looking forward to working with the team to help streamline our ops.

As a note, I like the format for this budget, and with a view to S15, it gives my a bit more sense of how each pieces fit together to help the larger goal so thank you for this added clarity

[David_Dyor]

This budget proposal was an education about what happens deep in the dao operations and I appreciate the great detail that was used. Very well written y’all. And fully supported ofc!

[kyle]

I have been compiling my Voter’s guide and I want to offer some of my questions and observations ahead of posting the voter guide. I do intend to update my voter guide as we discuss here, but hopefully we can keep the DAO Ops relevant convo in this thread.

tl;dr on my current sentiment:

DAO Ops - Requesting a reduction (from 115K to 110K GTC), DAO Ops is in a precarious situation having taken on multiple funding obligations for the entire DAO. CSDO ratified DAO Ops should fund career growth and mentorship opps for core contributors, continue to offer best practices and support Accounting, Community Governance, etc. People Ops is also handling onboarding, hiring and “how to DAO” from a legal perspective at the request of CSDO. I fear DAO Ops may be centralizing too many entry points of the DAO and eroding autonomy of workstreams, but WSs seem to prefer this approach for now (this is no fault of DAO Ops merely pointing out they are no longer their own masters, but instead at the behest of CSDO). One criticism, a Community Lead hire does not feel necessary right now, and the growth in People Ops team size (which includes me as well!) is fairly large, but that is largely due to the obligations they have been asked to take on.

As a member of DAO Ops it is hard to abstract my personal opinion from the work they are doing so I want to largely reframe from talking about the validity of the post. The sentiment I am carrying through to every workstream is - how might you be able to reduce your spend for S14 and S15 to really focus on accelerating our protocol development and advancement. Are there places we can press pause that are not necessary?

I would love some thoughts from the DAO Ops team on - how might we cut this budget down? Are there areas that can be slowed. To reiterate, this request and feedback is going out to all workstreams.

[lefterisjp]

Hey Jodi thank you for the proposal. This is a really important workstream.

Questions about the budget. Is my understanding correct that the budget of $989,000 is to fund the salaries of 17 people (core contributors section) for 5 (3 + 2 reserves) months?

That would amount to a monthly salary of $11,635.29 per person which is in my opinion way too high.

As I have written in other proposals too we are in a bear market that may get a lot worse before it gets better and we have to make sure that the DAO can survive and deliver on its goals. To that end I think we need to tighten the belt and I believe that can be achieved with a monthly salary of $7,500 which would then bring the total budget to $637,500 or 115,280 GTC based on the spot price of $5.53 you gave.

Note that this is still higher than what many Berlin companies (including rotki atm) pay.

[DisruptionJoe]

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO

Community Experience

I’d like to see more about the connection to the customer (other workstreams). For example, instead of “Deploy updated intake form based on WS feedback” it might help to define an outcome rather than an output. Example: “Workstreams feel that GitcoinDAO is successfully onboarding new contributors in a way that is impactful to them”

This would imply that you are doing more than simply putting up a form and hoping it works. If my viewpoint on this workstream was negative, I would say “they want $67k/season to put up a typeform???” Now, I know that is not the intention here, but there are serious concerns around defining outcomes and setting metrics for success. The binary deliverables here are nice for giving us an idea of what direction you are moving (which I think is the correct direction). What they don’t give is any real accountability.

Early on in the workstream life it is difficult to set good metrics, but I would like to see

• Clear Round over Round metrics for improvement. How do I know if this stream is improving over time?
• Sourcing of each outcome goal to a current tension. Which workstream(s) are suffering this problem?
• Accountability attached to a person or persons. Who will be responsible for getting what done? If it isn’t an individual and the thing doesn’t get done, does the whole workstream get held responsible?

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO

• Create a treasury dashboard for broader transparency on budget impact and treasury health in close collaboration by the end of S14.

Didn’t MMM already create this?

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO

• Create metrics and monitoring that helps us to maintain a 90% up time.

Does this mean we want our services to be available 9/10 times we log on? Where does this 90% number come from? What is the current uptime?

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO

• Ensure 75% of DAO contributors who contribute more than 20 hours a week have had a peer review.

It would be great if this was a service offered to workstreams rather than work assigned to workstreams which we didn’t budget for.

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO

• Update or create 30 Gitcoin Support Knowledge Base entries by mid S14.

This is one place where I will go Kyle on the subject! We have one single source of truth for everything Gitcoin and it is F&%$#D. With almost a million $$$s requested, can’t we hire a copywriter do a thorough review and rewrite? Isn’t this a priority?

In conclusion

Overall, I am supportive of this proposal. I cannot say better than you what it takes to get your objectives done. I don’t agree with @lefterisjp assessment precisely, but I would like to see some transparency on what/why people are being paid what they are.

[bobjiang]

Hi @lefterisjp

Thanks a lot for your feedback about the budget.

I could have some explanation here, take support team as an example, besides me (Bob) as full-time ($7k/m) and Joshua (support knowledge base lead, $4k/m) as half-time, other budgets will be paid to the support contributors (aka. support team members) who are paid $100-$300/week based on support efforts.

And the support team members are not counted in core contributors.

[Jodi_GitcoinDAO]

@kyle we appreciate this feedback.

@kyle

DAO Ops - Requesting a reduction (from 115K to 110K GTC) ,

@kyle

how might you be able to reduce your spend for S14 and S15 to really focus on accelerating our protocol development and advancement. Are there places we can press pause that are not necessary?

In reviewing our budget we think we can save GTC in the following areas:

• Accounting (Remove 100% of Reserves) - 1,255 GTC / $6,000

  • If needed, we can utilize the 60-days of reserves and remove this line from the budget.

• People Ops (reduce Professional Development budget 50%) - 4,184 GTC / $20,000

  • With notice to CSDO, we could slow the rollout of this program in S14 and S15.

These changes would equal a total savings of 5,439 GTC in S14 (based on today’s price of $4.78).

Either way, we are taking your feedback into consideration and will wait for more stewards to weigh in on whether a reduction is necessary at this point. The DAO’s cost savings this season would mostly limit opportunities for coaching & professional development, which hampers our ability to rapidly evolve the DAO. If all of these funds are not used this quarter, they can be rolled over to the next quarter.

[Jodi_GitcoinDAO]

@lefterisjp

Questions about the budget. Is my understanding correct that the budget of $989,000 is to fund the salaries of 17 people (core contributors section) for 5 (3 + 2 reserves) months?

Hey @lefterisjp, appreciate the question and stewardship over this season’s budgets. To answer your first question: yes, our request (like all workstream requests) includes 60-days reserves, which complies with this CSDO proposal ratified in April. These reserves are designed, in part, to provide contributors assurance that their workstreams have some runway when market conditions turn bearish. However, the total budget of $989K includes a whole lot more than just core contributors’ salaries (more below).

@lefterisjp

That would amount to a monthly salary of $11,635.29 per person which is in my opinion way too high.

I will gently push back on your view of contributor salaries for a couple reasons:

1. Our budget includes a number of initiatives that benefit the DAO as a whole (not just DAO Ops), including a professional development program and 4 PT user support contributors (see @bobjiang’s note in the comments above).

2. We currently have a total of 7 FT contributors, including 2 contributors moving from Holdings this season. A more accurate reflection of salaries would be $7,749.43 per month per contributor, the sum of those salaries ($271,230) divided by 5 months (3+2 months reserves), divided by the number of FT contributors. Arguably, the budget would be much larger per month if our PT contributors moved to FT.

3. Our budget includes several key hires that will serve the DAO, including a new User Support Lead and Treasury Management Lead.

@lefterisjp

we are in a bear market that may get a lot worse before it gets better and we have to make sure that the DAO can survive and deliver on its goals.

But to respond to your valid point here, we are taking another look at our budget to understand where we can save and will also discuss with other workstreams if they are considering reductions in their budgets.

[lefterisjp]

Thank you both @Jodi_GitcoinDAO and @bobjiang for the comments and the extra details. It would be beneficial to have a full breakdown of costs with expected monthly salary in $ of each contributor and then all extra expenses forecasted. Then we would be able to judge the budget much more effectively. Same goes for all other workstreams ofc.

[krrisis]

@lefterisjp

It would be beneficial to have a full breakdown of costs with expected monthly salary in $ of each contributor and then all extra expenses forecasted.

Hey Lefteris, thx for your critical feedback, really appreciated, and you are right. That’s why we linked it from the start, but I know there’s a lot of info - you can find that detailed breakdown here:

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO

Our budget spreadsheet can be found here .

[Jodi_GitcoinDAO]

@DisruptionJoe

I’d like to see more about the connection to the customer (other workstreams). For example, instead of “Deploy updated intake form based on WS feedback” it might help to define an outcome rather than an output.

Hey, @DisruptionJoe, your feedback reflects the tension we contended with when drafting the commitments we made this quarter. Heading into S14, DAO Ops has many initiatives we feel responsible for delivering to the DAO, but not as many established metrics to go along with them. I’m also interested in seeing more metrics-based accountabilities as we develop as a team.

To get into some of you specific points, I would offer the following directional responses:

@DisruptionJoe

Clear Round over Round metrics for improvement. How do I know if this stream is improving over time?

• A number of our S13 OKRs did roll into S14 with explanation of outcomes provided in the S13 Recap of the budget narrative. An example of this is the User Support S13 OKR around timely payments. We had mixed results in S13 due in part to the accountability being out of step with the team’s current capabilities. In S14, that specific OKR was modified from User questions are responded to within 24 hours" to “User questions via tickets and email are responded to within 24 hours during the work week”. But this connection should have been clearer, and we will make that true in future budget requests.

@DisruptionJoe

Sourcing of each outcome goal to a current tension. Which workstream(s) are suffering this problem?

• Similarly, making explicit the current tensions we are solving for workstreams is something we can make clearer, but we don’t make these decisions in a vacuum. Instead, we prioritize our work based on discussions with contributors, CSDO, and Stewards. As an example, one of the S14 People Ops OKRs reflects the need to draft and seek the consent for a parental leave policy. We’re making this a priority because this is a priority of DAO contributors.

@DisruptionJoe

Accountability attached to a person or persons. Who will be responsible for getting what done? If it isn’t an individual and the thing doesn’t get done, does the whole workstream get held responsible?

• Attaching accountabilities to specific team members are recommendations we will evaluate as we move into S14. For now, the outcome owners in DAO Ops are the initiative leads (Christine - Accounting, Kris - Community Experience, Loie - People Ops, Puncar - DAO Tooling/DevOps, Simona - Community Governance, Kris until lead is hired - User Support). Getting better at measuring success is definitely a good call, and we hope to tap in some of the data analytics you are planning to set up (and expressing what we’re currently not able to measure well).

@DisruptionJoe

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO

• Create a treasury dashboard for broader transparency on budget impact and treasury health in close collaboration by the end of S14.

Didn’t MMM already create this?

No, Community Governance and MMM worked out a steward report card and updates to the newsletter in S13. The treasury dashboard is a separate initiative. You actually created some quick graphs, which were great for this season, and would be nice if this could be part of DAO-wide treasury management moving forward.

@DisruptionJoe

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO

• Create metrics and monitoring that helps us to maintain a 90% up time.

Does this mean we want our services to be available 9/10 times we log on? Where does this 90% number come from? What is the current uptime?

I refer back to your earlier point here, we cannot adequately measure uptime at the moment for all the data, because we are missing some input here. We’ll be working with the devops/dao tooling team team to better map out what we can & cannot measure at the moment and improve here. cc: @puncar

@DisruptionJoe

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO

• Ensure 75% of DAO contributors who contribute more than 20 hours a week have had a peer review.

It would be great if this was a service offered to workstreams rather than work assigned to workstreams which we didn’t budget for.

This is another example of another S13 OKR that has been adapted for S14, and one that People Ops is responsible for facilitating, not workstreams. So to be clear, there will be no budget requirements here for you, just some time required to actually participate in the process.

@DisruptionJoe

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO

• Update or create 30 Gitcoin Support Knowledge Base entries by mid S14.

This is one place where I will go Kyle on the subject! We have one single source of truth for everything Gitcoin and it is F&%$#D. With almost a million $$$s requested, can’t we hire a copywriter do a thorough review and rewrite? Isn’t this a priority?

It is most definitely a priority and our knowledge base contributor has made enormous progress on this subject, a lot has already been rewritten and daily improvements are being made, we can definitely organize a more detailed debrief on the progress that has been made so far. Are there specific topics you can point out where you feel it is still F&%$#D?

At the heart of your feedback is a desire to see DAO Ops clearly community how its OKRs support the other structured workstreams, which is fair, and appreciate the feedback.

[DisruptionJoe]

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO

Similarly, making explicit the current tensions we are solving for workstreams is something we can make clearer, but we don’t make these decisions in a vacuum. Instead, we prioritize our work based on discussions with contributors, CSDO, and Stewards. As an example, one of the S14 People Ops OKRs reflects the need to draft and seek the consent for a parental leave policy. We’re making this a priority because this is a priority of DAO contributors.

Great response. Thank you for the clarity.

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO

This is another example of another S13 OKR that has been adapted for S14, and one that People Ops is responsible for facilitating, not workstreams. So to be clear, there will be no budget requirements here for you, just some time required to actually participate in the process.

I appreciate the response to our feedback!

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO

Are there specific topics you can point out where you feel it is still F&%$#D?

Not without going through it and taking notes. I looked at it a week ago and saw that the first 5-10 pages i looked through weren’t updated or current info. I didn’t take notes though.

I wouldn’t want someone fairly new with this responsibility to feel that this is a dig at them. I simply would like to see this expedited.

Thank you for your response.

[Pop]

Let’s make sure we are always mindful about not doxxing or risk putting people in a vulnerable position re traceability. Some recent events have brought this in prime focus for me in terms of being so publicly visible.

[lefterisjp]

Sure there is no reason to put names to positions. But without seeing how much is being spent on what position I personally can’t judge a budget.

[Pop]

Ofc - just stating so people are aware since some roles are specifically held by one individual vs a group.

[annika]

@Jodi_GitcoinDAO & @krrisis, thanks for your leadership here. Jumping in to provide my two cents as I go through all the proposals.

My overarching feedback in going through the S13 Recap & S14 objectives is similar to what @DisruptionJoe had shared - I would also love to see more of a customer focus in these objectives.

For example, people outside DAO Ops don’t necessarily care that “payments within this workstream happens within 21 days”, but we really care about the Accounting support you are providing across the DAO as a whole.

In addition, there are several domains largely marked as ‘On Track’ that, from my perspective as a WS-lead-customer & DAO contributor, I would not categorize as such. I think the domains themselves are roughly the right ones for DAO Ops to be focused on, but I think each domain’s specific objectives for success could be better pre-socialized & defined collaboratively with customers - and their success measured retroactively with customers, too.

All that said - I am tremendously excited about the work DAO Ops did in S13, and view the two big wins to be the advancement of CSDO / strategy work therein, and the Foundation setup, both of which are absolutely crucial to the advancement of the DAO.

I am supportive of this proposal for S14 and will be voting yes. While I could be nit-picky and suggest a couple areas for reduction, I believe this budget to be pretty reasonable and would focus more on refining the customer focus & involvement than on penny-pinching, given how foundational this work is to all of us across every workstream.

Thank you for your work!

[krrisis]

Hope you saw my answer here. Some worries in the workstreams whether or not this detailed breakdown is enough for you, because we indeed do not want to go further than indicating how much everyone is making, which is already a whole lot of detail and easy to tie to people.
Privacy wise this is already a few steps too far according to some.

[S14 Proposal - Amended ] DAO Operations S14 Budget Request

Hey Lefteris, thx for your critical feedback, really appreciated, and you are right. That’s why we linked it from the start, but I know there’s a lot of info - you can find that detailed breakdown here:

Would love to hear if this level of detail suffices or if there’s anything else you are missing.