View source for Board/Minutes/2020-03-F2F/Hiring

= Participants =
* Rory McCann
* Paul Norman
* Tobias Knerr
* Joost Schouppe

''The rest of the board members were present at the parallel session about attribution.''

[https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Board_Member_Bios&oldid=6864 Board member bios]

= Hiring Notes =
''Draft notes by participants - Dorothea was present at the attribution session.''

== Next steps ==

# Brainstorm (in board & community) limits & risks of hiring
# Community consultation
# Draft the hiring practices
#* Decide on criteria for when we -can’t- wait for volunteers to step up
#** We should strongly not prefer hiring when there’s decent volunteer options.
#* Brainstorm (in board & community) & write down checks & balances, on hiring rules, to address risks
#* Strong preference against paid staff having prestigious job titles <-> job title can be practical, are cheap and make you a more attractive employer
#* Hire from long-time volunteers (except if necessary to keep essential services going) <-> don’t hire people just because they’re volunteers
#* Avoid paid leadership positions
#* No “automatic” replacement of employees who leave
#* Contractually enshrine that first loyalty is to the community <-> make sure people don’t have 10.000 bosses
#* Set a groundwork so that Dorothea does not find herself with a worse contract than others
#* make employees cooperate remotely through the same platforms that volunteer contributors to that project also use
#* How would we hire people
#** procedures, budgets, committee, nitty gritty details
#** Work out employment policies
#* Define management protocols
#** Define reporting structures
#* Define interaction with community: expectations and “how” //''MM: Keep a focus on creating a good working environment for staff/employees. So may need some finesse on the hiring practices. For instance job titles can be useful for someone’s career path; volunteering should be a factor, but not the only one (a stronger non-volunteer candidate should not be unduly penalized); replacement isn’t automatic, but backfill should be discussed; “loyalty to the community” could result in 1000 bosses, needs reframing.''
# Community consultation
# Implement: management, reporting structures, interaction with community

== Limits and risks ==

=== RISKS to model and mitigate ===

==== Harm to volunteers ====

* Crowding out of volunteers
* Paid work drives away volunteers, who don’t want to do it if someone else is getting paid

==== Community Ownership ====

* Project becomes used to what the employee(s) provide, so there is no choice in rehiring, the project would ''have'' to rehire, meaning rapidly needing to find funding
* Paid staff has other incentives than volunteers, less of an implicit filter for well-intentioned people
* Paid staff set direction of the project
* Who pays the piper, calls the tune. A company can tell us what to do, or they will pull funding
* Board (or whoever ultimately decides what people work on) becomes a lot more important → vulnerability for takeovers, departure from do-ocracy

==== Bad hiring outcomes ====

* Exponential growth of number of employees
* Nobody wants to work for us (or they burn out quickly)
* Paid staff don’t interact with OSM contributors

=== LIMITS ===

* Avoid exponential growth of number of employees
** Do we define a limit of X number of people, explicitly limit the growth rate
* Explicitly ban certain terms in job titles: “Manager”, “Executive”, “Director”, “Chief”, etc?
* Require that funding for each employee comes from N different sources, who don’t contribute more than 1/N of total
* Require funders have a X year cancellation notice period
* Re-evaluate after X time

== Not covered ==

* Paying for this
* What general roles to hire for

= Follow-up =
''Addition by Dorothea after the meeting''.
* 2020-05-25 [[Advisory_Board/Minutes/2020-05-25| Consultation of Corporate Members of the Advisory Board]] ''(online meeting)''.
* 2020-05-06 Board: [[Board/Minutes/2020-05-06#Hiring_policy_.5BTobias.5D| Hiring policy discussion during May mid-month board chat]] ''(online meeting)''.
* 2020-05-06 Consultation of OSMF membership on [https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/osmf-talk osmf-talk] mailing list ''(registration for OSMF members only)'': [https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2020-May/006816.html "Framework for the foundation's hiring practices"].
* 2020-05 Consultation of [[Advisory_Board|Advisory Board]] via email: "Framework for the foundation's hiring practices".
* 2020-04-30 Board: internal email discussion about job titles ''(Initiated by Rory McCann: "My thoughts on Job Titles").''
* 2020-04 to 2020-06 Board: work on a Hiring Policy ''(Board Gitlab ticket #229 (board access only), Hackmd.io pad for drafting policy)''