Thank you @jdcook you raise a number of very good points and we need to explore this issue further.
In my mind Index Coop Full-Time Contributor === Employee at a top-tier VC backed Start-up
When you look at the backgrounds, resumes, and work experiences of the individuals who are competitive to be retained in a full-time capacity by Index Coop - it is clear that these individuals are world-class and could work anywhere. We need to start thinking of our full-time contributors in this light and begin to compensate them accordingly.
Not only are our contributors world class talent but they have a level of deep institutional knowledge that can only be gained from direct experience working in the DAO. For example:
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@jdcook is likely one of the top people in the world right now working on Ethereum analytics.
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@Matthew_Graham is pioneering treasury management in ways that almost no other protocol is even thinking about.
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@overanalyser has developed and executed extremely complex L1 and L2 LM campaigns at a massive scale
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@0x_Dev has built an absolutely powerhouse design team from the ground up, capable of executing extremely complex projects
We simply cannot go out and hire these people. They need to be developed from within. This is a totally new kind of work and it takes significant amounts of time to develop the ability to execute effectively in this environment. I personally would not support on-boarding anyone to a full-time position if they do not already have a track record of meaningful contribution to our community over a time period of multiple months.
I believe that within crypto a bias still exists that posits community members as a lesser level of talent than what is attracted and retained by leading tech companies or start-ups. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only are the contributors at IC every bit as talented as FAANG employees - they have courage to make the massive leap of faith to contribute to a form or organization that is still extremely nascent. These are exactly the people we need.
Our community needs to do away with the idea that one day we will start hiring more capable people from outside our organization. We are rapidly growing the talent we need internally, and starting to build the infrastructure to develop home-grown talent in the areas we most need it. ( I want to point out @ncitron - whose Solidity skills continue to grow at an incredible pace).
One of my biggest realizations over the past 8 months is that traditional hiring structure exists mostly to provide a false sense of security. When you are hiring people without seeing their work - you need a framework to screen them out. The beauty of the DAO is that we are hiring known quantities. If they were not already doing the work at an extremely high level, they would not even come up for consideration.
A major reason we executed the last fund-raising round was to raise the funds to support more full-time hires and give them compensation packages every bit as competitive as traditional tech companies and start-ups. One of the main reasons IC has been able to attract the level of talent we have over the past 8 months ( and make no mistake the reason for IC’s incredible growth has been our community) is our generous approach to contributor rewards. We have the funds and ability to take this same approach with on-boarding full-time talent.
If Index Coop Full-Time Contributors === Employee at a top-tier VC backed Start-up we need to carefully examine the compensation offered at similar start-ups to early stage employees ( and probably adjust upwards for the extremely high risk of joining a totally novel organization that has essentially never been tried before.) A good starting point would be to have an open discussion with our two closest comparable companies Set Labs and DeFi Pulse and see how they structure compensation for their early stage employees.
In my mind the following things should be absolute no-brainers.
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USDC / USDT living stipend on top of any token grant: I am tremendously grateful to the community for voting to approve my Full-Time Contributor compensation. I firmly believe that if I work hard and give 1000% to the Coop over the next two years, the upside potential of this package is essentially limitless. However, the reality is that $5k a month in tokens is extremely difficult to live off of in a big city and provides very little wiggle room for spending without selling precious Index. Even $3k a month of a stable coin would go a really long way.
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Health Insurance This is a must solve for our community. I do not have a family, but I cannot imagine the stress that this creates for our contributors with families.
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Stipend to attend industry conferences This is an absolute must. Conferences are a valuable forum for networking and building industry contacts. Investments here will pay off ten-fold.
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Support for continued education If we want to develop top-tier industry professionals in our community over the next 5-years we need to invest in our community members. I am currently paying $200 a week for programming tutoring and expect to pay even more for in-depth courses on Solidity over the next 6-months. We are a cutting edge tech company and need to ensure our community members can grow and develop as industry professionals.
One final thing to think about - the skills our community members are currently developing are extremely competitive and hard to replace. I am sure that I am not the only community member who has been contacted by other DAOs or crypto companies. As we continue to grow as a protocol our top-tier talent will become even more in demand. We need to place an absolute premier on retaining home grown talent.
Index Coop will be the single largest crypto asset management platform in the world within three years. We set the industry standard as a DAO and crypto community. This is not some part-time DAO that is just playing around. We are here to win, and we are here to win big. We need to take this approach to talent acquisition and retention. 