Overview: The CoE has settled on a base rate of $50 an hour for project funding, keeping the review and approval process free from rate negotiations and value calculations.
Problem: Not all projects are created equal, and some will deliver more value than others.
Proposal: Create a retroactive bonus payment that recognizes exceptional work and value.
Details: At any time in a project’s lifecycle, the CoE, members of the community, or the project owner can propose bonus pay for a project or project milestone.
Best-case outcome: The bonus incentivizes developers to deliver work above and beyond the base rate.
Example: Project X
Base rate: $50hr
Max bonus rate: $50hr
Potential rate: $100hr
A specific milestone in Project X delivered exceptional value against the base rate. The project owner requests via proposal:
Approval for a bonus and,
A bonus rate of $15, $20, or $25hr for that period.
The community votes, ultimately sending it to the CoE for review, who approves a $20hr bonus for the work delivered in that period.
In the polls that follow, you will vote on:
Should the CoE approve secondary funding for a project?
What should the max hourly bonus be?
Should the CoE approve secondary funding for a project?
I agree with this and retroactive payments should be a big discretionary tool for the CoE, but I think it should be determined on a project by project basis. I don’t think this has to be a proposal to be approved/rejected.
I know you have a proposal in the pipeline right now with @restrading where @jrb is concerned an approval sets a bad precedent:
“We (the CoE) are sympathetic to your proposal. But back pay unfortunately, wouldn’t be feasible. Hypothetically, if we were to pay $100/hr for something in the future, would we have to go back and pay the difference for everyone who has ever been funded by the CoE? We don’t want to set a precedent for conundrums like that.”
This signals to the community, that a project-by-project review isn’t always possible. My goal with this proposal is to remove that concern on your end and provide a pathway for developers to realize their actual value, regardless of the reason for any imbalance in pay, and keep incentives for quality work high.
I’m also thinking down the road here: Every CoE is going to have its own personality, the group that follows you may be more or less sympathetic to rebalancing and/or bonus pay, and as much as I hate bureaucracy, it makes sense to me to have these structures in place, especially where there is community support for them.
If you want, I can put this on hold in the short term to reduce the load. If the backpay proposal fails on the concerns mentioned above by the CoE lead, I think it (this) needs to go to a vote, especially given the initial support.
If it’s easier for the CoE to process, maybe we can ask “Res”, to restructure the original request as a “retroactive bonus” or “value delivered” adjustment. I think most of us would agree the value of work delivered in that project has exceeded the initial base rate and once we’ve found a path for this to fall into that more comfortable project-by-project review, getting an adjustment should be easy. That will also help others understand better how to proceed when looking for adjustment considerations.
I wish we had some middle ground between the contentious back and forth of rocket chat, and the unwillingness to engage at all in the discussion of a topic.
Happy to engage in the discussion anyway. Mostly, I think this is just setting too many assumptions and restrictions. If we set this proposal of bonus pay into stone, then we will probably need many more rounds of proposals and discussions to change it.
The base rate for most projects so far has been around there, but I don’t know for sure if this is settled or if we should be locking ourselves into that rate.
That’s true, but hopefully the spirit of providing funding for value does not change.
I can actually get behind all of that. I wasn’t thinking about the ripple effect, but I think you’re right, and if the CoE is going to stay nimble and engage in rapid development, it can’t be buried in red tape and regulations.