Anecdotal story, broad contentious topic (maybe tangential to some ongoing conversations), and some suggestions:
While I put over 80 hours into the gitbbok in June (arguably 1/4 of which was getting myself up to speed on using gitbook) this was before the POCWG was established. As such, this was marked ‘other’ on my rewards sheet, and for all of my ‘other’ efforts I received $250. For arguments sake let’s say that was all allocable to the Community Handbook, and let’s say that only 75% of the time spent was truly productive . . .
So, $250/60 hours = $4.17/hr for that effort (making some conservative assumptions). The IC standard for non-tech FT contributors is $8k/mo w/ a 30hr/wk expectation, translating into roughly $64/hr.
Factors to consider:
- While POCWG is now funded, @Pepperoni_Joe has already stated in the first meeting that there isn’t much money
- Despite The Handbook being a ‘community’ resource, all WGs benefit
- There is an appeals process for rewards that are not perceived to be in-line with community benefit, however both Treasury and several WG leads have stated that this type of work is not going to be compensated.
I subsequently contributed along with @BigSky7 to this article. I linked to the Handbook and not only did the author reference it, but provided a screenshot and link to it in the article. I would posit that the community finds these things significantly more valuable than Treasury.
I don’t plan to go back to the well knowing that the result will be more unincentivized time spent trying to navigate a broken reward system, but I encourage this community to think about the following questions:
- Why, as a contributor run DAO, is the general feeling that rewards are not consistent with effort?
- Are we OK with a few salary people controlling the purse strings when speculative efforts are standard?
- Are we OK with the challenge-process being run/decided by the same people that make the initial decisions regarding rewards? (aka, how is this really challenging the process?)
- Given the tone of WG leads and Treasury being that only WGs can provide rewards, should we make a clear statement (in new joiner calls, forums, handbook, discord) that WG unapproved speculative work will likely not be rewarded? (aka, get approval before working on anything)
- Should we allocate a budget for community resources outside of the WG structure?
I think all of this is to say that I believe there is a disconnect in how work products are valued by the community at large, and those trusted to lead and compensate the speculative contributors to this DAO. I also think that salary contributors have an expectation that speculative Owls be active in unincentivized ways. I have some basic standalone suggestions:
- Add columns for time and expected reward to the contribution sheets (doesn’t solve the problem, but knowing that contributors expected XX overall and got YY on a monthly basis is useful)
- Allocate funding to specific resources and adjust as necessary over time (e.g. XX INDEX per month to keep the gitbook updated); divvy up by participants (value the resource, not the contributor)
- Generally squash the idea that WG leads should have domain over rewards (other than their funded mandates)
- Provide transparency to the reward process: If rewarding contribution is being pushed to WGLs, what is the role of Treasury? Why isn’t there clear written guidance on how things will be rewarded? (the process is a dark forest, and contributors don’t feel like they have input or understanding)
All in all, if we want people to contribute at a high level we need a clearly visible path from result to reward; if we want a strong DAO we need to incentivize those things that fall outside of a WGs mandate but benefit the whole community, and not just with applause and thanks.
***To be clear I’m not looking for another bite at the apple on my rewards here; advancement of this topic is the desired outcome. I also think that Treasury contributors a good job of trying to be fair - I’m taking issue with the concepts and process, not any individuals.
