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706 sats \ 5 replies \ @elvismercury 8 Feb freebie \ parent \ on: What are you working on this week? builders
Really love this idea.
Could you say more (or point me towards where you've already discussed it) how you're setting up for the trial? It sounds like you're curating a special repo? Did you have specific tasks in mind for them, or did they propose things that would take about a month and you accepted, or what?
Also would be curious what in your mind is different from a trial period vs full-time. In the limit case, isn't full-time just indefinite trials? Or does something change in how you expect to interact with the person?
Would be a great extended series of posts, also.
Could you say more (or point me towards where you've already discussed it) how you're setting up for the trial?
Imagine the laziest scheme one could use for such a thing and that's what I've done. :)
We settle on an hourly rate, they work as much as they want on whatever they want, then send me their hours every week and I pay them. If they prove uneconomical in the first few weeks, we stop their contract, otherwise it continues until roughly a month has passed.
Did you have specific tasks in mind for them, or did they propose things that would take about a month and you accepted, or what?
On some level I'm evaluating how comfortable they are with extreme autonomy (among other things), because that's how we roll, so it's up to them to figure out what's worth working on and what they will work on. They can meet with any of us whenever they want to ask questions or get clarity on our priorities and things. We have a slack channel for all of them and they have triage permissions on repo.
It's all kind of thrown together in my usual minimally viable way.
It sounds like you're curating a special repo?
It's just the normal repo. They are working on the real deal from the jump.
I've been putting effort into tagging issues with difficulty levels and giving pointers on what tackling the issue will entail so they can pick the right porridge bowl if they don't want to make up their own.
Also would be curious what in your mind is different from a trial period vs full-time. In the limit case, isn't full-time just indefinite trials? Or does something change in how you expect to interact with the person?
It's a lot like a romantic fling, being a couple, and being married. Each implies a different commitment level and a set of expectations given the commitment level.
A FOSS contribution is like a romantic fling, a contract is like being a couple, and full-time employment is a marriage (it can end but it's ugly). I don't want to make someone full-time unless we're reasonably sure we're ride or die together (within reason).
The Trial as it currently is like a polyamorous couple. It's kind of confusing and it's not clear if the folks in your polycule are allies or enemies. The Forever Trial will hopefully incentivize an ongoing number of flings, FOSS contributions, instead and we'll be back in the familiar territory of fuck, marry, kill but with lots more fucking.
(I'll write up the rules of The Forever Trial soon. It involves some of the components of The Trial but I don't want to confuse anyone in the current experiment by publicizing the future one.)
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Thanks for the nice response.
I've been putting effort into tagging issues with difficulty levels and giving pointers on what tackling the issue will entail so they can pick the right porridge bowl if they don't want to make up their own.
This is tangentially related, maybe, but I'm very intrigued, in a systems-builder type of way, in how big undertakings (like your codebase) can be rendered maximally approachable to someone. Put another way: for whatever complicated system you inhabit, how can you lower the bar as much as possible for someone else to contribute to it meaningfully?
This extends to social systems, too. I may have posted about this before, but this example from Irina Krush during the Kasparov vs the world chess extravaganza is kind of my go to for what this means. Here's an excerpt from Michael Nielsen:
Unlike her expert peers, Krush focused considerable time and attention on the World Team’s game forum. Shrugging off flames and personal insults, she worked to extract the best ideas and analysis from the forum, as well as building up a network of strong chess-playing correspondents, including some of the grandmasters now offering advice.
Simultaneously, Krush built a publicly accessible analysis tree, showing possible moves and countermoves, and containing the best arguments and refutations for different lines of play, both from the game forum, and from her correspondence with others, including the GM school. This analysis tree enabled the World Team to focus its attention much more effectively, and served as a reference point for discussion, for further analysis, and for voting.
As the game went on, Krush’s role on the World Team gradually became more and more pivotal, despite the fact that according to their relative rankings, Kasparov would ordinarily have beaten Krush easily, unless he made a major blunder.
(Some similar examples come to mind from Audrey Tang, though I don't have any ready to hand. Similar energy in her activism, though.)
I'm obsessed with this idea in the btc ecosystem, which is why I'm such a snarky bitch sometimes. What would the Irina Krush / Audrey Tang of btc look like? If you're holding a billion dollar bag, is there a relatively low-cost but super high-leverage Irina Krush-style person who could fills all those invisible cracks and bridge the bridgeless gaps? It's fun to think about. I've written about it before but am too lazy to unearth any of it.
Anyhoo, your setup for the trial made me think of it. I bet the work you're doing now will add a ton of value outside of the value it adds in helping you hire someone. Innovating as per usual.
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This is tangentially related, maybe, but I'm very intrigued, in a systems-builder type of way, in how big undertakings (like your codebase) can be rendered maximally approachable to someone.
We have a lot of work to do on this front.
It reminds me of @Michelson_Morley sharing his favorite contribution guide before he left us forever.
The Forever Trial will really only solve a piece of the approach - helping people pick what to work on and motivating them to do it and do it well. It's still too hard to get started contributing to SN. Most of our trial members suffered for a few days just getting setup.
Innovating as per usual.
It seems all this requires is energetically solving the problems created by one's own shortcomings. Krush is an excellent example. I wish I understood this earlier.
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fuck, marry, kill but with lots more fucking.
Haha. 1st base, 2nd base, 3rd base - like it. It’s always bugged me with how much companies invest in the hiring process vs the actual work. Finding fake ways to simulate it early with coding challenges and the like. But this loose structure sounds way better.
Good to know you’re not overthinking it and incorporating the open and pow aspects of bitcoin/FOSS into recruitment.
Could probably write a book about it, if successful. The name reminds me of “The Knowledge” used for London taxi cabs. Except pretty much the opposite.
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We'll see! Economically it only needs to produce a single hire to make sense because recruiters will charge nearly as much as The Trial could cost us, but in addition to a hire we get 5 man-months of work (in the ideal case).
“The Knowledge” sounds so romantic. Effort like that became old fashioned fast. If we want to see what AI will do to certain workers, you probably couldn't find better examples than what computers did to memory-workers or arithmetic-workers.