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Proposal: Core Team Salaries (April)

Ryan Taylor

Well-known member
Foundation Member
This is cross-posted at https://www.dashcentral.org/p/core-salaries-201704

This proposal funds the Dash Core Team - including all developers, administrative, and support staff - at market rates excluding benefits. There will be a separate proposal for a proposed expansion of the team, and I'll provide additional context for how these differing proposals intersect and our rationale for these two proposals (instead of the department-level proposals from previous months).

Back in January, the core team proposed - and the network approved - a proposal to fund an HR firm to assess our HR processes and help us transition to a sustainable organization. The highest priority items in the scope of work were role definitions, and determining the market rate for those positions, along with a plan to transition to market rates for our full-time employees as funds became available. You can see the proposal here: https://www.dash.org/forum/threads/proposal-admin-hr-consult.12870/

One of the primary reasons for making a transition to market rates was to enable those working for the project to continue to do so continuously, and also to enable us to attract and retain new talent to continue scaling our operations. We simply could not continue bringing on new resources at market rates without first addressing the significant gap to fair pay for existing team members - the team that helped get us where we are today.

Because of the rapid increase in Dash's price, we feel confident that we can already move to full market rates for our full-time contributors. There is no reason to continue paying below market rates. This will allow us to move forward with our expansion plans for additional developers and several new functions.

Fernando has led the project with August Talent Ventures (the HR firm). They have provided us with initial salary recommendations for all full-time staff. There is further refinement yet to take place directly with each manager to finalize salaries, but the funding requested should approximate the final values closely.

Note that at this time, we are not funding any benefits. Typical benefits and their costs vary widely by country, so it will take a couple of additional months to determine what benefits are appropriate, and the best means to acquire those benefits on behalf of network employees. The team expansion proposal will contain a proposed Director of HR, who would be tasked with assessing options for providing benefits, either directly, or more likely through a third-party.

Why one comprehensive proposal for the existing team?

For the April budget cycle, the most important questions we're posing to the network are effectively "Should market rate pay be established?" and "If so, should the team be expanded?". In the past, we broke out funding proposals for each team (DashCore Developers, Evo Developers, etc), but that structure would have done a poor job of isolating the above two questions.

Core team salary proposals have been highly supported by the network. In fact, in last month's budget, the least-supported of these proposals received 989 "yes" votes to only 20 "no" votes. Continuing to break out individual budgets is time-consuming, costs additional resources (proposal costs), and seems to add little value given the current level of support for these expenses. If in the future more than 10% of the votes cast for core team salary are "no", I can solicit feedback on what the network would like separately voted upon, and attempt to provide the requested additional granularity in future budget cycles.

What specific roles are supported by this proposal?

14 full-time roles:
- Director of Business Development (Daniel)
- Director of Finance (Ryan)
- Evolution Team Lead (Andy)
- Evolution Backend Development Lead (Jon)
- DashCore Developers (Timothy, Chaeplin, UdjinM6)
- Evolution Developers (Vitaly, Nathan, prtfw, Alex)
- Head of Infrastructure (moocowmoo)
- QA, Automation, Testing Lead (Holger)
- Marketing & International Outreach Lead (Philipp)

18 part-time roles:
- 2 part-time project managers (Robert, Balu)
- Network operations (Jeff)
- China managers (Alexy, Raico)
- On-staff translators (Junior, Leonidas, daf, Silvio)
- Business development associate (Matt)
- Administrative / Legal (Fernando)
- Writer / Editor (David)
- Testing / Deployment (Alexandre)
- DashCore Developer (crowning)
- Evolution Developers (0xfff, acidburn, Thomazs, Chuck)

What is the total cost?

Based on the preliminary assessment by ATV, the ongoing run-rate for the salaries for all 32 roles is $123,842 / month. However, because of the savings already set aside for core-team salaries, and the rapid price appreciation experienced over the last two months, we will be relying on savings for a significant portion of the April expense.

What if the price of Dash drops in the future?

Should the price of Dash drop and the core team could no longer fund its other expenses while reserving 20% of the budget for the community, we would reduce our requested funding and effectively take a pay cut to stay within budget. Such a scenario would require a substantial decline in Dash's value.

If you have any additional questions, please post them in the Dash Forum and tag @babygiraffe in your message to ensure I see your post.

Requested funding is as follows for the April 5th budget cycle:
Total: 397.06 Dash

Note: Should any funding remain, we will apply it toward future core team salary expenses.

Manually vote YES on this proposal:
dash-cli gobject vote-many 30d40eefb8126b69713f3683ddc7af6c32c26afd212b03abd8fe1e83dcc8d2ab funding yes
OR from the qt console:
gobject vote-many 30d40eefb8126b69713f3683ddc7af6c32c26afd212b03abd8fe1e83dcc8d2ab funding yes

Manually vote NO on this proposal:
dash-cli gobject vote-many 30d40eefb8126b69713f3683ddc7af6c32c26afd212b03abd8fe1e83dcc8d2ab funding no
OR from the qt console:
gobject vote-many 30d40eefb8126b69713f3683ddc7af6c32c26afd212b03abd8fe1e83dcc8d2ab funding no
 
Does Evan still working on the project? Why his name isn't in the salary list?

Yes he is. As he explained in the last quarterly team call a few days ago, he is less involved in the day to day development and more focused on the big decisions (link below, in the Q&A, starts around min 55). Thanks to the growth of the team, he has been able to hand the management to others so he can put all his energy in what he does best.

Having said that, Evan has never taken a salary from Dash. When the team started to get a small payment per person around a bit more than a year ago, he donated his to other team members.

 
Yes he is. As he explained in the last quarterly team call a few days ago, he is less involved in the day to day development and more focused on the big decisions (link below, in the Q&A, starts around min 55). Thanks to the growth of the team, he has been able to hand the management to others so he can put all his energy in what he does best.

Having said that, Evan has never taken a salary from Dash. When the team started to get a small payment per person around a bit more than a year ago, he donated his to other team members.


Excellent! Thank you and all the team members who are working hard to make Dash become real digital cash.
 
Does Evan still working on the project? Why his name isn't in the salary list?
& @solo7861

@fernando was mostly accurate in that Evan has not taken salary in a very long time. However, I wanted to make one minor correction. Based on records that pre-date my involvement in the financials, they show that Evan actually took a salary for the first four budget cycles. He discontinued his salary right at the beginning of 2016.
 
& @solo7861

@fernando was mostly accurate in that Evan has not taken salary in a very long time. However, I wanted to make one minor correction. Based on records that pre-date my involvement in the financials, they show that Evan actually took a salary for the first four budget cycles. He discontinued his salary right at the beginning of 2016.
Ooopps, I thought he had donated those too! I stand corrected! :)
 
Note that at this time, we are not funding any benefits. Typical benefits and their costs vary widely by country, so it will take a couple of additional months to determine what benefits are appropriate, and the best means to acquire those benefits on behalf of network employees. The team expansion proposal will contain a proposed Director of HR, who would be tasked with assessing options for providing benefits, either directly, or more likely through a third-party.
Why benefits? Isn't the whole purpose of benefits to circunvent labor and/or tax legislation? Just give the team more money instead!
 
@fernando @babygiraffe I'm not sure if he donated those funds per se, but there was one month (December 2015?) where the budget wasn't finalized and nothing/nobody got paid from superblocks. That month, @eduffield paid the Core Team's 1176 DASH out of his own pocket.
This is also a common misperception. Evan was simply not disciplined about distributing the core team payments in a timely fashion. In this case, he'd simply neglected to distribute the November budget. The distributions were as follows:
September 2015 budget - distributed September 21st
October 2015 budget - distributed October 21st
November 2015 budget - distributed December 8th
 
Why benefits? Isn't the whole purpose of benefits to circunvent labor and/or tax legislation? Just give the team more money instead!
Generally, benefits can be acquired for less money as a group than many individual purchases. This is particularly true for worker's compensation and health insurance. It is simply a more efficient means of providing benefits vs. paying people more and expecting them to buy their own.
 
This is also a common misperception. Evan was simply not disciplined about distributing the core team payments in a timely fashion. In this case, he'd simply neglected to distribute the November budget. The distributions were as follows:
September 2015 budget - distributed September 21st
October 2015 budget - distributed October 21st
November 2015 budget - distributed December 8th
Well, I have to disagree. @David is actually right here - December 2015 budget was not finalized and coins were not produced. You can easily check it here https://chainz.cryptoid.info/dash/#@inflation (choose "All time" and you'll see that corresponding spike is missing)
 
Should the price of Dash drop and the core team could no longer fund its other expenses while reserving 20% of the budget for the community, we would reduce our requested funding and effectively take a pay cut to stay within budget. Such a scenario would require a substantial decline in Dash's value.

I'm wondering if we are currently in that scenario or not...
 
Well, I have to disagree. @David is actually right here - December 2015 budget was not finalized and coins were not produced. You can easily check it here https://chainz.cryptoid.info/dash/#@inflation (choose "All time" and you'll see that corresponding spike is missing)
I simply meant that it was a misperception that Evan paid the December core team payments out of his own pocket. The payment made in December was actually a delayed November payment. It was not out of his own pocket. No one is disputing that the December 2015 budgets never finalized / paid.
 
Idea: what if the core team or dao ran a "masternode" sweepstake raffle, once or twice a year. Entry fee 10 dash, Winner gets a masternode, proceeds go to payment of core team salaries. Could be a win-win. Not sure about legality but let me know what you think. This would also give the "little guys" that could never afford it, a chance to acquire a MN, and voting privileges. And the dao would have more left in it to continue to fund more projects without having to worry about monthly salary payouts.
 
Idea: what if the core team or dao ran a "masternode" sweepstake raffle, once or twice a year. Entry fee 10 dash, Winner gets a masternode, proceeds go to payment of core team salaries. Could be a win-win. Not sure about legality but let me know what you think. This would also give the "little guys" that could never afford it, a chance to acquire a MN, and voting privileges. And the dao would have more left in it to continue to fund more projects without having to worry about monthly salary payouts.
The legal implications are huge because gambling is heavily regulated in most places and illegal in some others.
 
Ok, I didn't know it would be gambling, I thought fundraising sweepstakes were different from gambling. No big deal, I'm just trying to think outside the box a bit.
 
I simply meant that it was a misperception that Evan paid the December core team payments out of his own pocket. The payment made in December was actually a delayed November payment. It was not out of his own pocket. No one is disputing that the December 2015 budgets never finalized / paid.

Just double checked my Core Team payment history. I was a contractor for Core Team in September and October 2015 (for which I was paid in both months) and I officially joined Core Team as a "full" member in November 2015. I received no payment in November 2015. I was paid TWICE on December 8, 2015. I was subsequently paid on January 13, 2016, February 11, 2016, and so on.

So even though the December 2015 budget was never finalized, in the four months of November 2015, December 2015, January 2016, and February 2016, we received a total of four payments. Only three budgets were paid out, but four payments were made to Core Team. Evan said in Slack that he was paying Core Team out of his own funds because we shouldn't be penalized due to his error in not finalizing.

Not trying to split hairs here, it's just that I really respect what he did in paying us from his own funds.
 
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