publish second article on OpenSource.com

[chadwhitacre]

Follow-on from #551. Ping @semioticrobotic.

Drafts

1. Part 2
2. Part 2
3. on Google Docs

[chadwhitacre]

Dug up the IRC announcement for the switch to take-what-you-want (gratipay/gratipay.com#1073):

https://botbot.me/freenode/gratipay/2013-06-27/?msg=4128376&page=4

[chadwhitacre]

Actively working on a draft here: https://medium.com/@whit537/308ffbfdf15d

Part 1: https://opensource.com/open-organization/16/5/employees-let-them-hire-themselves

The main serendipity for part 2 is that I've learned about a lot of other organizations already doing so-called "self-set salaries." I think I had sort of convinced myself that I thought up the idea myself after failing with a rankings-based system. Now I admit to myself and yinz that I got the idea from Maverick, a book which @pjz gave me back in 2013, when we were first iterating teams. At #314 and #464 I heard that Reinventing Organizations gives examples of self-set salaries—Semco, yes, but also Morning Star and one or two others (I bought that book, and just reordered Maverick).

So the story here is less "Check out what we invented/discovered" and more "Here's Gratipay's take on self-set salaries."

[chadwhitacre]

Alright, draft 1: https://medium.com/@whit537/part-2-308ffbfdf15d.

[semioticrobotic]

Love the draft, @whit537. I think it's shaping up nicely. Especially valuable is the section on "tensions"—those moments in which the program seemed to strain or sputter—and the concrete action you undertook to address these moments. I see you're planning to build on those bits, and I applaud that. Happy to keep looking as it continues to take shape.

[chadwhitacre]

@semioticrobotic Can we aim to publish on July 19th? I can aim to deliver a second draft next Monday, the 11th, giving us a week for final edits. Does that work for you?

[semioticrobotic]

Yes, @whit537. We can absolutely do that. Looking forward to seeing the next draft.

[chadwhitacre]

@semioticrobotic Awesome, thanks. Here's the second draft—just copied/pasted from the first for now. I'll drop you a line when it's ready for review! :-)

[chadwhitacre]

Looks like I'm not gonna get to this today. I'll try again tomorrow!

[semioticrobotic]

No worries, @whit537! We'll catch up tomorrow.

[chadwhitacre]

Okay, @semioticrobotic! Here's a second draft! Looks like it's weighing in at 1,800+ words, so we'll have to see what we can trim. Let me know if you think we can get this down, or if we should split out a third part!

[semioticrobotic]

Looking at this now, @whit537. Heads up: It' easier and preferable for me to edit in a word processor, so I am plunking the text in there and doing the work that way.

[chadwhitacre]

Sounds good, @semioticrobotic. Besides being too long, I'm not satisfied that the conclusion is punchy enough. Interested to see your take.

[semioticrobotic]

This is awesome, @whit537. Yes, it's longer than some of the stories we typically run on Opensource.com, but it's just chock full of insights, including a well-balanced bit of background that really sets the stage for the experiment and provides offshoots for folks looking to dig deeper. On top of that, it's pretty tightly written, so I don't see much we can cut without damaging the integrity of the piece.

I did edit a few things for style, readability and (a little for) length. Per your request, I also toyed with the ending a bit.

Looks like I'm not allowed to upload my ODT file (sorry about that), so I hope a DOCX will suffice. Let me know what you think of the changes.
gratipay_twyw.docx

[chadwhitacre]

Thanks @semioticrobotic! I've thrown the DOCX into a Google Doc for easier sharing. Reviewing your changes now ...

P.S. I've also emailed support@github.com to ask for ODT file attachment support. :)

[chadwhitacre]

his or her

I think we should use the singular "their," to avoid unnecessarily excluding folks who use other pronouns.

[chadwhitacre]

We need to update all the links to remove the Medium redirects.

[chadwhitacre]

Hey @SimonSarazin, do you have the screenshot of the take-what-you-want listing for Gittip back in the day? The one you used during the session in Lille? (And did I ask you this already somewhere else? :) Mind sharing that here so we can consider including it in this article for OpenSource.com? I think it really helps to give people a concrete picture of what the system looked like—a 🎨 is worth a thousand 📝 ! :)

[semioticrobotic]

I think we should use the singular "their," to avoid unnecessarily excluding folks who use other pronouns.

I'm on board with that!

[chadwhitacre]

@semioticrobotic I'm actively revising in Google Docs. I haven't used that much before—I think it'll give us a nice editing history.

[chadwhitacre]

I'm experimenting with their commenting features a bit as well, not sure yet what the best usage pattern for us will be ...

[chadwhitacre]

I've made a pass through everything but the conclusion, hoping to return to that after lunch.

The biggest structural change I made was moving the first paragraph under "Stress testing" up into the previous "Take-what-you-want in practice" section, and the two-item list of abuse prevention measures down into a new intro under "Stress testing". My thinking is that "Twyw in practice" is now about the system's normal operation, and "Stress testing" is about the system under load (as it were).

[chadwhitacre]

Alright, finished a pass through the conclusion.

@semioticrobotic If you want I can give you permissions on this Google Doc to edit it directly. Let me know an account to invite if so.

[chadwhitacre]

We need to update all the links to remove the Medium redirects.

Done.

[chadwhitacre]

just flag me and point me to the version that we'll publish

I don't see a good way to refer to a snapshot of a Google Doc, so here's the basic link again (also added to the description on this ticket):

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EGHLGRGnbs6ppsUd91EGpNMivcq5koWF857HCRJt8iI/edit?usp=sharing

I suspect I'll revisit this again tomorrow morning, but I don't expect to make any more big changes. :)

[chadwhitacre]

Looks like I'm not allowed to upload my ODT file

Here's what I heard back from GitHub support:

I can certainly add your request for ODT files to be added to list of supported file types.

I can't promise if or when we would implement but as a workaround you could add your file to a ZIP and upload the ZIP.

Hope this helps and please let me know if you need anything else!

[semioticrobotic]

Great! Thanks, all. Just a note that I've pulled the version currently in GDocs and am working with that as the canonical version.

[chadwhitacre]

@semioticrobotic Thanks for getting the post proofed and ready to go! I read through it [NB: link received in private email] and made two changes, hopefully non-controversial:

• I corrected one obvious error: "MorningStar" to "Morning Star" in the second instance.
• I split the sentence beginning, "If you'd like to dig deeper," out into its own paragraph, as a compromise between attaching it to the last paragraph (original) and second-to-last paragraph (proofed).

Last request: Can we change the title? I'm not comfortable changing it without your permission, but it is currently:

• Does 'take-what-you-want' work for employee compensation?

This runs us afoul of Betteridge's law of headlines, wherein the answer to yes-no questions in headlines is assumed to be "no." How about one of these instead?

• 3 lessons from a 2-year 'take-what-you-want' experiment
• How Gratipay solved money & motivation in open source
• Mixing open source and money with 'take-what-you-want'

This last might be the strongest, because it echoes DHH's "The perils of mixing open source and money." DHH painted a dire picture, and we are giving a concrete counter-example.

Thoughts?

[semioticrobotic]

@whit537 Our content manager has final say on all headline decisions, but I will certainly send these suggestions to her and see what we can do. If anything, we'll riff off them to generate something more appropriate than what we have there now. Thanks for catching and fixing those typos.

[chadwhitacre]

Sounds good, thanks @semioticrobotic.

P.S. She doesn't by chance have a GitHub account, does she? 😁

[semioticrobotic]

She doesn't by chance have a GitHub account, does she?

I don't believe so, but I'll check!

[chadwhitacre]

She'd be welcome to join us here! :)

[chadwhitacre]

This last might be the strongest, because it echoes DHH

On the other hand, we may decide it's better to avoid casting this too strongly as a direct response to DHH's post. We reference his post, but I think ours stands on its own.

[chadwhitacre]

Actually, now that I check I see it's been changed to "3 lessons from Gratipay's take-what-you-want compensation experiment," so I guess we're good! Thanks @semioticrobotic! :-)

[chadwhitacre]

We're live! 👍

https://opensource.com/open-organization/16/7/compensating-employees-letting-them-take-what-they-want

https://twitter.com/opensourceway/status/755367591741231104

Thanks for all your hard work on this, @semioticrobotic and OS.com team!

[semioticrobotic]

Woo hoo! Great job, @whit537. We're promoting via all our usual channels today.

[chadwhitacre]

@semioticrobotic How about a link from Part 1 to Part 2?

https://opensource.com/open-organization/16/5/employees-let-them-hire-themselves
https://opensource.com/open-organization/16/7/compensating-employees-letting-them-take-what-they-want

[semioticrobotic]

@whit537 Yes, for sure. Looks like you beat me to it. Great idea (one I should have thought of before publication).

[chadwhitacre]

Looks like you beat me to it.

Hmm ... I'm seeing the second article under "Related Content" at the bottom, but I was thinking of something like an "Update:" after the "Stay tuned for Part 2!" (or maybe just link "Part 2"?). Are you seeing a link somewhere else that I'm not noticing?

[semioticrobotic]

@whit537 Ah! I mis-read your original message. Had the logic reversed. I'll get on that right away.

[chadwhitacre]

Failed to reach the top ten, as before.

[semioticrobotic]

The editorial team included this story in our weekly newsletter, sent to more than 100,000 subscribers. I suspect that'll get more than a few extra eyes on it!

[chadwhitacre]

Thank you! 🙇 I actually noticed that in my email right before seeing the notification about your message here, and thought "Huh ... that's cool." :-)

[semioticrobotic]

~200 more people read the story yesterday!