HIP-13[Phase-1] Adopt a management onboarding procedure

DAO
#1

This proposal is inspired by the applications that the DAO received to the product manager position. Two of the applicant, @paulaberman and @HBesso31, applied to the position with one (@paulaberman- Sofia Cossar) or several (@HBesso31 - Ryan Cwynar/Cami Arias/Anna Kaic) required team members.

This introduces a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem since the DAO is currently only authorized to hire employees individually (through the HIP-2) procedure but the applicants will only agree to be hired if they can have their team along.

In order to solve this problem, I propose that we adopt the following procedure.

  • A new thread is created for management onboarding
  • A deadline for new applications is set between 1 and 64 weeks through a snapshot poll.
  • Applicant put forward their team/budget/financing plan for at least one year of operation.
  • At the application deadline, an additional week is accorded for discussion.
  • We vote to determine our order of preference for the applicants.
  • The preferred applicant will propose a final team/budget/financing plan within a week.
  • We make a formal accept/reject vote
  • On rejection, the next runner-up application is given a chance to present their plan on the same terms.

This proposal would introduce an exception to HIP-2 (hiring as part of management onboarding) and HIP-3 (hire 1 PM and 1 developer) would need to be repealed (I think).

4 Likes
[Hiring] Product Manager
[Hiring] Product Manager
#2

I really appreciate this proposal @Mads. I Hope @clesaege can read it and consider it. Having deadlines and a defined procedure allows the proposed people to prepare better for transitions.

#3

I think applications are way better handled on a rolling basis:

  • If there are some good applications, we don’t wait.
  • If there aren’t any good applications, we don’t end up hiring the “less worse” (which would lead to low level team or a lot of firing).

I think we shouldn’t encourage this. This looks way more like outsourcing than having a DAO hire workers. This is likely to create some sorts of “clans” within POH and give way too much power to some “team leaders”. It also shows poor motivation for people only wanting to come with their team as it either mean “I’m only interested working there if I can work with my friends” or “I’m only interested working there if I can take some power from the DAO (recruiting) to myself”.

From my experience at Kleros, recruiting is the hardest and important thing for a project. Finding good people can take time (from a few weeks to a year) and it’s better to wait compared to sub-optimal hires.
Currently we didn’t have much applications answering the offers. Instead of lowering the standards, I think giving more publicity to it would have a better impact.

[Hiring] Product Manager
#4

Why I like deadlines: For me, it is not fair to applicants that they cannot know when they will have a decision - especially not when it requires full time and heart and soul. I believe we are likely to lose good applicants that have to get on with their lives.

Why I like allowing team applications: If they know each other and have worked together, they know each other’s strengths and they can compensate for each others’ weaknesses. Yes, they might suggest bringing in a whole “clan”, but everyone is free to vote for someone else with a slimmer proposal.

Since we have already made these arguments in the hiring thread and not convinced each other, I think we just have to see how a vote pans out (will leave a few more days for discussion). But if you have any suggestions that would make this process more palatable to you then let me know - for instance, how would you decide when it is time to make a decision?

#5

When a candidate is good enough, he can be accepted very quickly without deadlines while deadline would increase the waiting time. Deadlines are only appropriate when recruiting a large number of candidates (think public servants procedures) as due to the law of large numbers, we statistically end up with a more or less similar number of good candidates.
On individual positions it is the opposite. There isn’t enough applicants to have the randomness smoothed and we can sometimes find people in a few weeks while other times it takes a whole year.
At Kleros I never regretted taking more time to hire people. I think the DAO should do the same, as those are hard to fill positions and it’s better to take time than to fill them with suboptimal candidates.

[Hiring] Product Manager
#6

But how do you then concretely suggest that we collectively decide to stop the application process?

#7

Deadlines can be not binding. If no good candidate appears, then a second round is promoted. Having a deadline allows the people to post their candidacy while making arrangements in their life.

#8

Well someone goes through the procedure and a proposal is made.

Such suggested deadlines would be fine.

1 Like
[Hiring] Product Manager
#9

I like that idea of the non-deadline deadline. We can for instance ask, “Are we ready to evaluate current candidates?”, “No - ask me again in 1/2/4/8/16/32/64 weeks”.

1 Like