Decentralized job application - PNK token holders to decide

Proposal
#1

Decentralized job application - PNK token holders to decide

The GitHub repo is the single source of truth, from there propagated to the Kleros forum.

The past two years with Kleros have been one hell of a ride. I’m hoping to start working with Kleros officially.

  • I was thinking about applying for a job for a long time.
  • I was waiting for the right timing (around the 2nd round token sale).
  • I spoke with Federico and Stuart suggesting some improvements to the escrow.kleros.io.
  • I had a chance to spend some time face-to-face in the UK and discuss in more detail.

An unforgettable week in the UK that included reunion with old friends, several talks and the first decentralized justice conference in history!

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Why starting with escrow?

I have reported 20+ issues:

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I believe escrow is so revolutionary, it can onboard to crypto next million users.

“Chinese importers in Russia are buying up to $30 million a day of tether (USDT) from Moscow’s over-the-counter trading desks.”

Escrow payments provide enough incentive to switch to crypto:

  • Fast
  • Cheap
  • Borderless
  • Censorship resistant

Just like like flying to Mars, multiple breakthroughs are making it possible:

  • Reuse rockets
  • Assemble ship on the orbit
  • Send cargo first
  • Manufacture fuel on Mars

Part-time contracting salary

For the first couple of months I’ll keep my existing job. This is for a number of reasons:

  • immigration (BREXIT)
  • credit affordability (investing in real-estate)
  • try before you buy, do not marry on the first date

Let’s see what is reasonable: https://angel.co/company/kleros/jobs

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  • 2016-2017 I was earning £500 + VAT per day. £600 was $800 that equals $100 per hour.
  • Currently on £76k salary that equals to $100k year.
  • According to the payscale I’m in the 90 percentile of software engineerinig salaries in London.
  • Checking transparency report - 180m allocated for team members.
  • I fully support salary transparency, just like the Buffer spreadsheet.

Here is what I suggest for the start:

  • $50 per hour (half of my old rate)
  • 10 hours per week

Compensated in stock options (vested PNK) to ensure aligned incentives:

  • 0.5% (see also this issue)
  • 4 years vesting
  • 6 months cliff
  • the vesting period starting Wednesday 22nd January 2020 (date of the initial call)
  • during the part-time period, the vesting is at 50% speed

(that incentivizes me to join full-time sooner, how soon is “soon” check this issue)

Going full-time: Chief Integration Officer

Overarching mission to ensure healthy ecosystem:

  • Adoption
  • Usability
  • User-experience

Simple logic, I think everyone can resonate with it:

  • More cases
  • More earnings for jurors
  • More demand for the token
  • Higher prices means solid crypto-economy, cost of 51% attack goes up

Hacking-experience:

  • Deploy your own PNK
  • Deploy your own court hierarchy
  • Assign PNK to test accounts
  • Stake PNK in relevant courts
  • Forward time in one click to simulate various outcomes of the jurors vote
  • If you know how to use MetaMask and run git clone, npm install and npm start then you should be good to go

Human-experience:

  • Beyond pure rational mathematical crypto economics game theory
  • Education about the Kleros protocol

Internal motivation

Had some encounters with legacy legal system:

  • 2017 messy divorce
  • 4 different court threads (divorce, children, money, non-molestation)
  • 10 hearings
  • 2 years write off

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Random stuff, various accomplishments

  1. TechCrunch hackathon in Shenzhen: https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/08/hackathon-shenzhen-techcrunch-2018/

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  1. Proof of Humanity: https://proofofhumanity.xyz - created Gitcoin grant and purchased the domain till 2028

  2. System Change: https://genesis.re/book - Amazon does not let you “FREE” but you can publish to Google and price match

  3. Is letter from Mt. Gox sufficient to claim OG status?

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  1. Been participating in The DAO and managed to withdraw all my tokens before the hack.

  2. Have one of the longest vanity Bitcoin address 1GEnesisReVCQG641yERVQgStUvqH6S9U2

  3. Almost 10k repuation, top 4% on Stack Overflow: https://stackoverflow.com/users/775359/mars-robertson

  4. Been to United Nations conference: https://genesis.re/360/cop24

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  5. Won the Kleros hackathon: Self Commitment In Todo App

  6. Helped initiate the https://astralship.org

Google Doc (existing work)

I think about the balance, best of both worlds:

  • Phase 1: User research first so we know exactly what we are doing
  • Phase 2: Then developing the functionalities

Can we make this Google Doc public?

This is because it will be PNK holders who would vote whether to hire me.

I would like them to know the existing results of my work - it will help them make better, more informed decisions.

Additional reason - I would like to ask people about their experience (using escrow).

During the initial research realized that privacy of the escrow is very important and in the first weeks of my work I would like to focus on that.

Vote “NO”

  • Nothing personal.
  • Do what is in your best interest as a token holder. Doing anything else would be irrational.
  • I’d probably reduce my stack of PNK to 0.5m and let the other guys do the work with the full confidence there are others better than me.
  • Surely I’d reduce my activity on the Telegram, Forum, Slack and other channels to reclaim my time and focus on other money making activities.
  • In fact, I’ll reduce my Telegram trolling one way or another. You’ll still be able to find me in Github commits, technical discussions on Slack and in-depth post on the Forum.
  • I will vote to hire me with my own stack because I know it’s in my own best interest as a person, as well as the PNK holder.
  • DYOR
  • Even if the outcome of the vote is “NO” I’m hoping to earn some PNK via storytelling bounty.

Applicable law

  • I’m originally from Europe.
  • I have established my first limited company in the UK in 2011.
  • I have opened a company in E-Estonia in 2017.
  • Kleros Cooperative is a French entity.
  • Any dispute to be resolved by the Kleros court, employment arbitration category (to be created).

Discussion

  • I encourage discussion and feedback.
  • I encourage the existing core team to comment and vote with their PNK, in fact I want to make it the highest attendance vote ever.
  • https://governance.kleros.io/ - so far the votes attracted up to 4%… I’d really to see 10% turnout, that would be amazing, with new token holders (2nd round of sale) I believe it is possible!

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Meta-meta-meta-marketing

  • Forum post with decentralized job application job offer is marketing.
  • Google Doc asking for your input is marketing.
  • Asking to vote with your PNK is marketing (it shows that DAOs can make decisions, thrive, operate fast).

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PS. Here are the instructions how to build your own icosahedron.

1 Like
V2 - Decentralized job application - PNK token holders to decide
V2 - Decentralized job application - PNK token holders to decide
Storytelling bounty - distribution of the rewards - Kleros meta-dogfooding
#2

Opened two issues in that Github repo:

Everything in the spirit of trust and transparency.

#3

0.5% is 5M PNK right? It’s like you mentioned in the github issue, it’s hard for me to judge how much this is in respect to the existing team members without a cap table.

Other than that I can see no reason to vote no for you application. I think you would be a great asset to the team :slight_smile: .

#4

Created a few more issues addressing various concerns and proposing adding additional content.

Here is the link to the cap table request: https://github.com/marsrobertson/decentralized-job-application/issues/11

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#5

So, overall, I also see your application as a great opportunity for Kleros considering your continued and qualitative involvement in the project as a community member. :smiley:

But as it is a decentralized application, I would like to challenge a few points to get some precision:

  • If I am understanding correctly, during the part-time job period, you are proposing to be the product owner of the escrow app:
    One key to that position, in my opinion, is to get constant feedback from clients (let’s say real potential users), how do you propose to do this (I am not speaking of the technical part to make testing available)?
  • What is the rationale behind the vesting period beginning before you actually get the job?
  • Why would you get 0.5% PNK (the exact amount that this represents has to be provided, in my opinion, to assess what it actually worth) during the part-time period?
    That period should be viewed as a “probation” one (for both you and the Kleros team) and thus would imply a proportionally “salary” (maybe it is me not understanding your proposition on this aspect).
#6

Meta-meta-meta marketing: https://github.com/marsrobertson/decentralized-job-application#meta-meta-meta-marketing - I’m actually hoping to get some press (and engagement) with this job application.

Everything will be transparent and open-source, the process will be inclusive, similar to here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xxwUcmVwo0xS2rfVt8QJF571hjtvWCPa3e9B98IUXOU/edit#heading=h.uxg791etckvd

I was always thinking about actual user research and offering some PNK to the domain experts, similar to here: More usability and UX testing - would you be interested in improving Kleros?

Check the existing Google Doc: https://github.com/marsrobertson/decentralized-job-application#google-doc-existing-work

I have done a fair bit of work immediately after the initial call.

Then questions, discussions, proposals, scope of work, milestones… Realized we could spend infinity discussing work rather than doing work so suggested hourly rate. But a week later “no hourly rate” so we are back to defining milestones - I agree with these milestones, I think they are brilliant but “need more time to think” :woman_shrugging:

(meta-meta-meta marketing no longer possible, DAOs are unable to make decisions fast, now only at meta-meta level)

I’m literally addressing various concerns in the Github issues: https://github.com/marsrobertson/decentralized-job-application/issues

(that work could be spent on Kleros)

I will explain my motivation and rationale. Then we can figure out how to put it in the contract:

  • start working soon, low barrier of entry, easy to hire me, to have “foot in the door”
  • show massive, massive, massive value across all areas (beyond trolling on Telegram)
  • long term inventive structure
  • I hope to become full-time, currently only part-time possible
  • if I do a bad job now, I will not reach the vesting cliff
  • if I do a great job and Cooperative decides to hire me, then some time will be already vested

I’m also addressing concerns about unpredictability - you know me by know, crazy stuff but within reason. Read some books about how you need to differentiate yourself in the competitive labor marketplace. Maybe I should read a book on how to become an obedient corporate employee?

(I play these games too, I wear clothes to work)

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More usability and UX testing - would you be interested in improving Kleros?
#7

Updated GitHub repo, as mentioned in the opening of this thread, the GitHub repo is the single source of truth that is propagated to the forum.

Wrapping up (7 Mar 2020)

Benefits of not being employed

  • As someone who is not employed by Kleros I have more freedom to pursue other projects.
  • I can totally legally officially talk about psychedelic science.
  • In many jurisdictions it remains illegal. My personal interests could harm reputation of Kleros.

There are some regrets thought

  • Not addressing the most important issue, after the fact I’ve learnt it’s was about my salary expectations?
  • Month “hanging on” and draining energy
  • The proposal did not make it the voting stage, that would be making history

Suggested 100k PNK payment for the completed work

Address: dearMoon.eth :arrow_right: 0x85a363699c6864248a6ffca66e4a1a5ccf9f5567

My ETH address isn’t private anymore: https://twitter.com/marsxrobertson

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Arrival 1: 20 hours, $50 per hour, PNK was at 0.01 at the time when the work was done

Arrival 2: bounties pay much more, I suggested meta-dogfooding bounty, but instead we got a contentious spreadsheet that paid 100k for 3 tweets:

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(Decentralized Job Application is not billable time)

(endless negotiation on Slack were negative value, some discount from 100k PNK possible, negotiable, agreeable)

Moving on

I’m keen to work with Kleros in the future at the rate that reflects my value in the labour marketplace.

I’ll continue to extract “free money” from various bounties.

(the intention was to skip bounties and focus on meaningful work)

Note that it is almost never “free money”, there is always some work involved but at a much higher hourly rate than work suggested in the Decentralised Job Application.

#8

To me it seems like you’re trying to leverage personal familiarity/connections with the team and project into some form of nepotism to bend their arm into creating a job for you, seemingly at a higher pay than anyone else on the team.

I think you should go through the pre-established routes, ie. job openings and guild applications, like everyone else does. If they notice a need for the opening you describe, you should be petitioning for them to create the opening, and then you should also be applying through the normal route.

#9

applying through the normal route.

Not invented here.

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How can you define real, how can you define normal?

#10

I confirm receipt of 15k PNK for the job .

I still believe adoption of Ethereum, blockchain, new models of governance and incentives are one of the best chances for humanity to survive.

Ethereum still didn’t figure out the killer app… Now I know - prgorammable money - ability to track the international trade with real-time IoT sensors, weather data, insurance, derivatives… Would you you like to be paid 100% a week from now or maybe 99% in this moment? All transparently, all on the blockchain.

It hurts me to see that I’ve opened 25 usability / UI / UX issues and escrow is so hard and so unintuitive to use.

It hurts me. My heart cries.

:zap::zap::zap:

At the same time, I have to move on… The moment I was told me “you are not a developer” I thought that you want to pay me more - anyone can learn how to write some code, not everyone has various unique talents that are in high demand.

Now I’m working on the island… Survival of humanity is the name of the game.

With love & rage

#11

What do you mean?
I thought you moved on some time ago already?

#12

I moved on but the leftover salary negotiation was still ongoing.

Loads of meta-work, work about work, protracted negotiation, I’m so sorry for this mishappening.

Now we have 2020 post-COVID New World Order and I’m single-mindedly focusing on the island.

Check this Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1axqQAOVhtR8fFV63W1J5BNC4uTxJYEwt0i9GZPDNxOo/edit?usp=sharing

It contains some serious brainpower invested into identifying some pretty good use cases…

This is / could be the killer Ethereum app, this is the reason for next 1 million users to be onboarded into crypto.

#13

I see, some nice use cases explored in that document.
That’s a bit sad that you guys could not come to an agreement.

#15

This is how you hire people in 2020, 2021 and beyond: https://picklefinance.medium.com/into-the-brine-vol-5-smart-treasury-and-basis-picklejar-7a4b2de35802

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Real-life story:

I had so much PNK (more than half of my overall crypto) it became my obsession, I was losing sleep about it, that’s why really wanted to get a job to be more in control where it is all going.

I was able to diversify and from the mental health perspective it was the right call, no regrets, even thought hodling on and selling at $0.17 would be a better from a pure financial standpoint.