Posting this here for more eyeballs. Rob's answer to the 60$ questions:
This program definitely drove new development to GRC, I estimate the rate to be approx. 50% more than we would have had in hours if we
did not compensate devs. The biggest impact it had was continuing compensation to the devs that stepped in to maintain the
codebase right at the time when I became too busy, meaning the support was very valuable.
Regarding the other metrics Frank0051 asked about, I think they are valuable questions. I'm going to make an effort to answer those for the
sake of the benefit of the program in general.
Sinisa_Puzar: Are rewards paid in $?
We base the pay rate in USD, and pay in GRC, using the midpoint exchange rate of GRC on the day of payroll.
James C Owens:
Have you ever downloaded any material from Tim the Ripper Owens when he filled in for Rob H - Maybe the Glorious Burden
(I was thinking we could have a sing-off when the price hits $1 per GRC!)?
On a serious note I agree with the assessment and wanted to stress
that crypto-developers have an average yearly contractor wage much higher than general devs.
In Dallas, we're talking $250K per year as an employee,
that would be more like $150 per hour as a contractor.
@AN0N -
The above is why I think $60 is moderate to low, but should be high enough to attract quality permanent developers to GRC without constant turnover.
Dont underestimate training requirements for Marco and iFoggz, it would take Marco 6 months to train a new dev to debug GRC.
One point I wanted to stress to everyone is the $60 rate increase was partially due to the assessment that these developers have not been charging
us for R&D, overhead, forum posts, or a massive amount of debugging. Its very common to have to wait for the chain to sync, read the logs,
research an issue and waste half of your night on something that is not even billed for - I know we could ask the devs to bill more hours but they are
simply too honest - they wont bill us for wasted time. (Ive tried suggesting that). Please be cognizent of that as it is a major component.
The foundation wallet was moved to keep it off site in a cold wallet hence the reason it does not stake much.
The payroll funds do come from the foundation balance, not from my wallet.
My wallet is not big enough to pay all the payroll from interest alone, LOL.
And regarding working full time for GRC - I still have a lot of irons in the fire.@Xaminmo - Thank you for the kind words and positive outlook but I wanted to set the record straight on a few nuances:
is for one, requiring the devs to use it for timesheets, and two: receiving more than $5k per month in billings. I realize that $60 is a professional rate
and more accountability is required, and Im not against providing that accountability if I see a certain threshhold per month exceeded ($5k).@ALIM3NT - Payment Systems: I have a custom made program that is capable of generating PDFs, and more professional invoices, and sql reports, but I think the prerequisite to this
Let's set a cap here to put everyone at ease:
No more than 160 hours per dev per month with a cap of 12 developers max per month. We currently receive about 30 hours per month per dev with 5 devs.@ALL - General Cap:
I did not think 60 would come about personally. I spent huge amounts of time doing R&D and also debugging. I remember spending days debugging to track down bugs that are essentially well hidden. Even cascading bugs can be quite the nuisence (fixing one for another to pop up).
There are some days i spend more time trying to figure out issues then i do get to spend with my children. Im a single fulltime father at that of two. Ive come to realise my 3 passions and joys in life. Family, my kids and Gridcoin. I was here before the billing was voted for and it honestly felt good to be recongized and compensated for some of the things i do.
I personally dont bill for everything and under bill most times. We could spend days in developement chatting about problems and potential plans for solutions to issues as no one solution is neccessarily the right fitting solution and that of which is not billed for.
I thank rob for his kind words and taking the time to reach out and answer the communities questions.
As gridcoin evolves and grows we have experienced all sorts of issues including growing pains. Hell tonight its 220am and im finally going to bed after hours of tracking down some elusive bugs or rare problems that have caused issues (not billed).
We strive to bring the wallet into the future. stability and and the health of the network being our goal while providing the best experience for current and new users. It has been no cake walk so far but one day it will be.
Thank you those who have taken the time to comment on the forum and asking questions.
I am happy to see more help from the community as it takes some of the load off core developers. It is nice to see some new people take on the smaller issues that have been back burnered for the more pressing issues. Its been really nice to see testers stepping up to plate and testing while abiding by the rules for testing. They too will have things on there plates from time to time. I thank @barton26 for taking the time to step up and cordinate the testing as it allows us core devlopers to focus on tasks at hand.
Im not concerned about foundation funds running dry. With interest alone it helps cover some of the costs of developers. As the wallet gets back into shape, stable and the health of network is good the monthly development costs will decrease over time and occasional staking of interest will cover more then just the cost of developers at some point.
Its 235am and im off to bed; got to be up at 630 to get kids ready and my son to preschool for 9. Ill.be back at her in the morning.
Cheers
-iFoggz
Thanks for investing your time and effort in this project, it's duly appreciated.
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I like Rob's answer, and it corrects some of my errors. I added a little blob in the steemit threads, but you know my bias is being in support of it. I think I understand that your main concern is that there was not a big, public discussion about the rate change.
In the last 4 months and a few hundred hours syncing my own brain on GRC, it seemed a perfectly rational decision. I do not know if Rob, Phil, and the other early whales/founders had side discussions, but I know the dev community earns that pay. (It's not full-time pay, and they under-bill a lot.)
It's just my perspective from a consulting background, and the last 4 months. I have no authority with GRC, and am a very long way off from being able to do work that would be considered for compensation.
I dont think that's necessary at least not the number of devs. And again 160 hours a month is full employment. It's perfectly fine for devs to be paid for work they've done as long as we make sure there's no abuse. I changed my vote back to yes.
Thanks Rob for your POV!
I want to stress it again - I don't think anyone is against paying the Devs. It is the lack of communication of, for example, what you wrote here and the surprise doubling of the rate that I and I think most people find irritating. When the Foundation was created it was decided that the community should decide over the funds, and a surprise poll is not the appropriate way for the biggest financial decision we ever made.
Maybe I myself are overrating that, but to my defense I want to say I have learned accounting and I am for several years the "eye of the basis" for finances in my states Pirate Party - controlling that only money gets paid that was decided on, no errors happening etc. If our treasurer had acted this way, he would have been shitstormed, to put it friendly ;)
Talking about your cap - that is more then 100K a month. Foundation has 11mill GRC. So at this rate it wont even be a year until it is dry. (currently 4500$)
~32 million in foundation
That is what I thought, too. But then somebody posted a 11mill address as the foundations wallet O.o
maybe that is Robs? :D
Change addresses are not linked if it has never staked as a resesrcher.
This is probably it. I think I posted a 22m, but there are other early investor addresses that still have high balances. The explorer only knows two addresses as foundation wallets. I totally forgot about change addresses, which are not really trackable after branching when not staking / CPID / Linked.
100,000 per month = 1,200,000 per year.
11,000,000 / 1,200,000 = over 9 years, or did I miss something?
You missed that GRC != $ ;)
32mill GRC = 2 mill $ at current prices. Would mean 2 years if the cap would be payed.
Setting up Foundation expenses as a percentage of the current funds, as I have proposed in the 2018 Budget thread would keep funds from drying for many years.
That percentage has a big problem: The oszillating price of GRC. And anyway I think you are taking it from the wrong end, waving the dog with the tail.
You put out "money to use", but shouldn't it more "tasks to be done"?
No, not at all.
GRC price volatility is there and we will not run away from it. It concerns Rob's proposal or anybody else.
In fact percentage proposal just puts a hard max cap for money available in a given period, so treasury doesn't run out of funds next year. You can't fill a cup from an empty jug.
Well, it's not different to what we have now; how money would be spent is another topic.
Sounds promising.