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  • RFC: Budget and Compensation for the DAO in 2023

cpt_zeke

Hi Zeke, as per usual thank you for your input on this proposal in a clear manner!

On the first point, I disagree firmly. When creating this proposal we looked at several compensation studies done in the industry which clearly showed Olympus was paying above market rate. Many of these studies were on contractor level. In DeFi especially, many companies only employ contractors, Olympus isn't an exception and the salaries you can find are generally for contractors. On top of that, the flexibility of a job at Olympus is hard to find in an employee agreement. If we are very honest with ourselves I think the majority of contributors are not working 8h+ for Olympus.

Personally and anecdotally, I floated our compensation structure to many defi projects in the space who confirmed my belief that we are compensating in a competitive manner (even without equity). It's hard to share screenshots or personal conversations since this is a sensitive topic, so disregard if you must.

      The proposal seems directionally good imo and an improvement over the previous structure. I have a few reservations:

      1) I still think potentially $1.8million (stratego + project bonuses) in compensation for shipping three projects on-time is a bit high, unless those projects include some estimate of commensurate value accrual to the treasury/dao funds.

      2) What seems to be missing here is talk of inflows vs outflows. I understand we don't need to be net positive on dollar value accrued but it'd make sense to at least go towards that direction. e.g. assuming no reserve bonds, based on some napkin math, the treasury can be expected to bring in (at least) around ~$1million from LP fees and DSR. Are there similar projected revenues that can be included here to see where we stand in terms of net difference, we can perhaps even include inverse bonds in there as "revenue". I don't think the difference will be huge if worked out, but will be great to see.

        Wartull If we are very honest with ourselves I think the majority of contributors are not working 8h+ for Olympus.

        Not working 8h+ a day or week?

            Firstly thanks to all the DAOs contributors, paid and unpaid, who help make Olympus what it is. The work you've delivered as a whole this past 6 months (RBS, OHM bonds etc) has been amazing and is showing sizeable impact on OHM and improving perception of the protocol across defi imo. With regards to those who are compensated and rely on Olympus for income, I appreciate the macro has made delivery to OKRs difficult, and I do think this delivery focused approach for the next year is probably for the best while conditions improve and we're still building out the protocol.

            I agree with much of what is proposed, but fundamentally it concerns me that, "contributors couldn’t directly affect them and thus felt unmotivated when it was clear the market wouldn’t allow us to reach them." I am not going to be so naive as to suggest extrinsic motivation is not important, but the base salaries aren't negligible and Olympus is fundamentally a startup. One that comes with a mission and a vision for how to achieve that. If there are specific individuals who are having trouble feeling consistently motivated then I wonder whether they are brought into that enough? No amount of money can substitute for alignment with a company's mission. I'll vote for "Yes" this, but just want to suggest that the DAO ensure all of y'all are still here for the right reasons. Keep up the amazing work team!

              thomasscovell

              Thank you for recognizing the hard work that has gone into the protocol and the products this past year that has impacted the Olympus Protocol as a whole.

              To address your concerns- Olympus has global contributors. All costs of living are not created equally, and the base comp was not guaranteed as a salary. While the number certainly isn't negligible I'd be remiss if it wasn't made clear:
              -Nobody has signed contracts
              -There's no healthcare
              -No 401k match
              -No vesting tokens
              -No other benefits
              -Contributors carry the full tax burden
              -Variability in comp from month to month

              So while there is the flexibility of working remote, there's also the demand of conforming to the groups meeting times even if inconvenient personally. Additionally most weekends you'll see contributors posting, and I saw far too many active on the holidays. There's no guarantee that you'll have the same comp from month to month, and at some arbitrary time the community could put forth an OIP that would drastically impact your ability to pay the bills. As you said, Olympus is a startup. And adding to that risk, it's a defi startup.

              I think contributors still worked diligently to ship, and I'm sure you can see how it would be frustrating when you've taken on the risk, put in extra effort to try and hit the goals, and it doesn't move the needle. Here's the thing, the projects that we shipped, didn't. I think our OKR's missed the mark twofold, not only were they market based and out of contributors direct impact, they also didn't align with shipping things like RBS that, arguably, improve the protocols health.

              And I think that is the biggest factor of them all. Building products that improve the protocol's ability to support OHM as a currency are not the same products you'd build if you were strictly playing a number go up game.

              In other words, I believe it would be difficult to replace the team we have now for the same costs, and there certainly wouldn't be the cohesion + baseline knowledge that has formed allowing for easier collaboration and production. The contributors who are here now are here because they believe in Olympus. These comp discussions are brutal for the team and I don't think contributors would stick around if it wasn't for the deep rooted desire to help Olympus be successful.

                  hOHMwardbound Thanks for the detail, which I totally understand. I hope I was clear that I'm voting "Yes" for this and think the base compensation + new bonus structure makes sense. My only concern was with regards to extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation.

                  This proposal focuses purely on the former and I wanted to ensure that it wasn't a case of "money will fix everything" and that other avenues for ensuring contributors were enjoying the work, and feeling motivated, were being considered. As a DAO we can't have free snacks in the lunchroom, complimentary massages on friday, or "drinks down the pub" together - i don't know what the online equivalent of these soft benefits is, but I'm just raising it.

                  The phrasing of the RFC made me consider whether vision alignment was an issue, but if as you say, "The contributors who are here now are here because they believe in Olympus." then that question is moot. Good to hear

                  Apologies if I added to the "brutalness" of the conversation, I hope it is clear I support the proposal and applaud the work to date.

                    Thanks for the questions and feedback everyone, will just answer what hasn't been addressed so far.

                    z_33

                    1. The 3 is just a minimum based on the previous year. We actually have a lot of projects within the DAO, but the plan is to submit the highest impact, pillar projects to the community for approval when it comes to bonuses. On the bonuses themselves, they have three purposes. One, they are essentially compensation for a job well done on time. You'll notice that the base comp has been reduced and that part was shifted to bonuses.

                      The second purpose is long-term alignement with the DAO, as bonuses won't be paid out to contributors not actively contributing at the end of the year.

                      Third, is the motivation aspect and I'll use this opportunity to quickly answer @thomasscovell as well. It's not that people were unmotivated to work on Olympus with the market-based OKR system (my bad phrasing), it's more that, at a certain point in the year, the unattainable market-based bonuses were more demotivating than not having them in the first place.

                      The proposed bonus system projects internally and externally what the priorities are and makes sure every contributor knows it. As an individual, you can still love Olympus and be motivated to work on it, but deliver your part of the project a week late which could introduce a much larger delay on the DAO level. Communicating and coordinating work in a strictly remote world is harder than everyone (including us in the past) thinks. Our thoughts are that this kind of bonus system would make that easier and the DAO more efficient because of it.

                    2. To your second point @z_33 , the DAO at the moment has the amount of OHM listen in the proposal as its holdings. Coupled with that, we are restructuring the treasury to add a new lead and have a more coherent strategy and will provide updates to the community as that's done. It's definitely a valid point and something we've been considering as well, but don't think projections now without the new treasury lead would be the best representation.

                    • z_33 replied to this.

                        @"shadow"#p10880 Thanks for clarification. Much appreciated.

                        shadow thanks for your quick and thorough response shadow!

                        PS I ran some numbers, my toilet paper math says just between FraxBP, DSR and LP fees protocol can expect to bring in between 3million and 4million USD of very close to risk free revenue! Numba looking gud!

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