@ravonn I wanted to post this comment as a rebuttal to some of the points you made here and just point out my stance on the matter. Please do not take this as a personal attack or anything against you personally. We're all friends here :)
First point I'd like to address is that you brought up the marketing expenses. This is quite interesting to me, since it seems we have a bit of a disconnect here between marketing and developer pay. @vortac is paid monthly (or every few months) for marketing expenses as outlined in the marketing proposal which passed late last year. I'd like to remind everyone of the money we currently spend on marketing:
$6-7 a day on Google Ads, $20 a month on Netsoft, and $1500 annual for BOINCstats and Free-DC. (I confirmed these numbers with vortac today)
Let's simplify this as a monthly cost of $340 USD in GRC per month for marketing (6.5*30 + 20 + 1500/12). This is equal to about $11.33 USD daily.
Since you used the number of $0.0044/GRC in your post, I'll apply it to marketing costs as well (note that this will only apply for this month as the price is variable...).
$340 USD is equivalent to 77,273 GRC monthly or 2,576 GRC daily.
Now I would like to ask this. Under your proposed rate of 1000 GRC per hour of development work, this means that we are effectively paying 77.3 man hours of work on marketing each month. Invoices for the month of December 2018 show our developers billed for a total of 46.25 hours. Assuming this remains unchanged in the future, that means we would be spending 67% more on marketing monthly than on development. I ask simply, does this make sense for us?
Additionally there is another point I'd like to address. We can still keep the Foundation funds from running dry without resorting to such drastic measures as cutting dev pay by 92%. I proposed last month that instead of $60 an hour we could lower compensation to $30 an hour, even going so far as to say I'd welcome $20 or $15 an hour. These would effectively cut our cost to the Foundation by 50%, 60%, and 75% respectively. We must remember that our goal here is to not just attract new developers, but also retain the current amazing team we have. Can we really sustain full development when we are paying people almost half the minimum wage (in my country at least)?
Finally, a personal note. I want to clearly state: I do not think we should be paying $60 an hour. I have cut my own hours considerably the last several months (you can check my invoices to verify this) and charge half rate for certain tasks I do not find "worthy" of full rate, such as regression testing and client builds/distribution for testnet. I would firmly support a compensation rate of $30, $20, or even $15 an hour for our developers. However, a rate of 1000 GRC/hour, while tempting from a Foundation perspective, is frankly a disservice to our quality developers who deserve much more than $4.40 an hour. Thank you for reading and I welcome further discussion on this topic.
I don't mind separating developer expenses (skills we can bring to the table) and things we are unable to provide ourselves or prices we do not control. That was one point I thought of but couldn't fit anywhere; we should provide what we can and buy what we need. The UI redesign falls into this category as we do not have a UI designer in our community, at least not an active one (I'd love if we had one on Slack), so it had to be purchased.
Also, remember that it was only 46.25 hours in December because all of us, including you, hide hours. In reality it was more likely closer to 200h, an abnormally active month perhaps.
This might very well be a better route to take which is why I included a 60->30 option in the internal poll. When we make the network poll we should include it there as well, maybe along with the other USD options.
With the current development team I am positive we could. With a new team, most likely not. Most of the people working now did so long before the compensation kicked into gear, though I agree that they deserve appreciation for their time. I know the USD->GRC switch is like ripping the pacifier from a baby but we need to find a balance between banking and expenses. My drastic changes or your sensible proposal :)
I agree with Barton that 1000grc/h is too low but I also think marketing is almost as important as development. I'm sure there's a way to make a middleground? I'm in favor of anything between 15$/h and 25$/h personally.