How to lure top devs into being hired by BitShares

[Gentso1]

Where do low cost, high talent programmers like to hang out?

In their parent's basement.

Seeing Dan and Stan relation their may be some truth to this but I am going to give Dan some credit and suggest he hangs out in his own basement now.

[gamey]

Where do low cost, high talent programmers like to hang out?

In their parent's basement.

[Gentso1]

El mato and his mobile wallet are great to showcase.

He showed up out of the mist it seemed with just a faint glow from his mobile wallet that was working but early alpha. We practically jumped the guy like some kind of rabid pack of crypto enthusiasts and demanded that he run a delegate @100% pay rate.

Their are alot of reasons for not doing certain things until 1.0 of the client is released but trying to hire talent is not one of them.


Bitcoin talk may not be the ideal place to try to push Bitshares but a signature campaign along of the lines of "Bitshares: The blockchain is hiring" might be effective. After all we aren't trying to convert them per say just looking for talent. The only cost would be sig space and a banner and that should be minimal.


Where do low cost, high talent programmers like to hang out?

[davidpbrown]

Whats the best way to get Chinese devs thinking up ideas etc ?

Communicate the opportunity widely.

Make obvious that a good dev can present their idea to BitShares core developers by way of a pitch for a slice of a delegate.. and state how much money that is; have a delegate ready that can be passed to them as something of a prize. Perhaps set up a prize fund from a 100% delegate and award to the most useful and innovative dev.zh. Competition and bug finding prizes?

Put out calls for what we know is needed.. if only those are translations of key software; mobile wallets; etc.. perhaps first step is getting key texts translated.. make the wiki readable to dev.zh and perhaps also bytemaster's blog. I have a welcome page on my site, which must be one of the most translated pages on the net.. and that was trivial from simply by asking passers by in each language to translate it.. capture the preferred language setting of visitors to the wiki and drop them to a page targeting their language and asking for their help translating that page or others. Beyond translation, just use the preferred first language =zh and push those to a page acknowledging their interest and declaring BitShares' intention to engage devs.zh.

Make clear the ambition and allude to what is missing.. anything that directly engages merchants and businesses; and anything else that gives wider access to rich populations.. doesn't have to be just .zh maybe could equally be opportunity in India.. they must have talent too? Is India warm to crypto-currencies and assets??.. bitRuppee ftw???

All efforts to reach beyond .en will be another dimension that Ripple etc miss out on.

[gamey]

So the big question is how do we get Chinese developers interested in the project?

From my observations developers will need to make their own role.  Dan has talked about how much more productive everyone is when they're on site.  I believe that.  However there is the flip side to that and that is the communication is done in person and a remote developer would likely miss out on a lot of discussion and have a harder time ramping up.  So typically they'd do aspects that are fairly independent like web services of value to the community.  Mobile apps etc.  Anything peripheral.

So it goes back to getting Chinese developers interested in the BTS project so they can even begin to understand the codebase or what services are needed.  The best thing is obviously if they get their own project and start showing it to people.  A business plan type thing would be fine too.  Finance your own project!  So we are asking for people beyond typical software developer skills - like pc said.here is a problem - solve it.

Doing blockchain development really seems to be an interesting job.  I don't think it would ever hurt a resume if it is legitimate Bitshares type project.  Whats the best way to get Chinese devs thinking up ideas etc ?

[Empirical1.1]

2.5K USD a month can hire a very talented PC developer in big cities in China . (by highly talented , I mean highly highly )

The developers on mobile device are more expensive , around 3000 -4000 USD a month .

But the problem is that crypto currency industry is not yet recognized in China . Most people think crypto currency is somehow a ponzi , let alone quit their real stable job and working for one .

BitShares / blockchain developement bootcamp in China Might even be profitable...

Or a chinese developer could simply be guarented a pay in cny and a delegate converts the bts into cny and pays it to the developer. If there are some legal hurdles 15% or something could be kept for doing legal due diligence and maybe setting up a chinese enterprise if necessary. Just a few wild ideas...

I think the main issue is finding the right developer. Toast was already involved through this forum, met Dan and co and it worked. I think he brought in Vikram too.

Having said that, there is a strong Chinese presence, and besides the dude who fronted the money for I3 certainly has resources to find the right guy (he allied with BM in the first place after all).

This is the obvious direction I see BitShares and everyone who wants to be competitive going. China is the 2nd largest economy in the world, largest population and we are very lucky that they are already our largest stakeholders. As it's a global market and crypto is global, if shareholders can get the same quality of work for <1/3 of the price then obviously many of the development jobs in this industry will move there over time. The high money Western jobs will end up going to a few rockstar developers but mainly BitShares entrepeneurs, advertising, marketing & PR as that's something a strong Eastern base won't be able to get right for a global market internally.

[sumantso]

2.5K USD a month can hire a very talented PC developer in big cities in China . (by highly talented , I mean highly highly )

The developers on mobile device are more expensive , around 3000 -4000 USD a month .

But the problem is that crypto currency industry is not yet recognized in China . Most people think crypto currency is somehow a ponzi , let alone quit their real stable job and working for one .

BitShares / blockchain developement bootcamp in China Might even be profitable...

Or a chinese developer could simply be guarented a pay in cny and a delegate converts the bts into cny and pays it to the developer. If there are some legal hurdles 15% or something could be kept for doing legal due diligence and maybe setting up a chinese enterprise if necessary. Just a few wild ideas...

I think the main issue is finding the right developer. Toast was already involved through this forum, met Dan and co and it worked. I think he brought in Vikram too.

Having said that, there is a strong Chinese presence, and besides the dude who fronted the money for I3 certainly has resources to find the right guy (he allied with BM in the first place after all).

[santaclause102]

2.5K USD a month can hire a very talented PC developer in big cities in China . (by highly talented , I mean highly highly )

The developers on mobile device are more expensive , around 3000 -4000 USD a month .

But the problem is that crypto currency industry is not yet recognized in China . Most people think crypto currency is somehow a ponzi , let alone quit their real stable job and working for one .

BitShares / blockchain developement bootcamp in China Might even be profitable...

Or a chinese developer could simply be guarented a pay in cny and a delegate converts the bts into cny and pays it to the developer. If there are some legal hurdles 15% or something could be kept for doing legal due diligence and maybe setting up a chinese enterprise if necessary. Just a few wild ideas...

[jsidhu]

You are not factoring in income tax.. At 5k a month It is about the same as 8k a month in fiat.

You still have to pay income tax if you are a public figure such as a delegate. 

10K isn't greedy either.   It is a reality that if you give a developer a choice between:

1) Working for Google at $120,000 per year and buying $60,000 worth of BTS per year
2) Working for the block chain at $60,000 per year and spending it all on living expenses

And you assume the developer knows BTS will go to the moon... he will pick 1 over 2 every time.

For those outside the software development industry you are experiencing a recession, but any developer with any kind of skill is in high demand even developers straight out of school such as Toast, Vikram, and Nathan.   

You only pay tax when you go back to fiat or declare your BTC (stupid idea). It is a different concept from income tax because you're take home pay is automagically factoring in income tax while payment from delegate is not.

I agree that any kind of serious software developer is in high demand and is worth his weight in gold at these prices. Definitely one of the best careers going fwd. Especially those that have some kind of business sense.

[btswildpig]

2.5K USD a month can hire a very talented PC developer in big cities in China . (by highly talented , I mean highly highly )

The developers on mobile device are more expensive , around 3000 -4000 USD a month .

But the problem is that crypto currency industry is not yet recognized in China . Most people think crypto currency is somehow a ponzi , let alone quit their real stable job and working for one .

[bytemaster]

You are not factoring in income tax.. At 5k a month It is about the same as 8k a month in fiat.

You still have to pay income tax if you are a public figure such as a delegate. 

10K isn't greedy either.   It is a reality that if you give a developer a choice between:

1) Working for Google at $120,000 per year and buying $60,000 worth of BTS per year
2) Working for the block chain at $60,000 per year and spending it all on living expenses

And you assume the developer knows BTS will go to the moon... he will pick 1 over 2 every time.

For those outside the software development industry you are experiencing a recession, but any developer with any kind of skill is in high demand even developers straight out of school such as Toast, Vikram, and Nathan.   



 

[Stan]

There will come a time when delegate slots will become premium employment positions.

There will come a time when delegate slots will fund small businesses.  (At Bitcoin scale, each delegate has a potential 2 or 3 million dollar budget.)

Many of us look at Silicon Valley as the classic ecosystem for tech startup incubation.

Imagine a BitShares Valley of 101 innovative small businesses competing to hire top developers.

That's where we are heading.

In the mean time, it will mostly be entrepreneurs, not code-to-spec engineers, who are likely to compete for these slots with the goal of becoming one of the BitShares Valley Fortune 100 companies in a few years.  Entrepreneurs have always been willing to take a risky/loss-leader position in the short run for a shot at the pot of gold at the end of their journey.

We offer a "less-high-risk", fairly clear path for entrepreneurs to follow.   They seldom have that luxury.

...and that should be enough!

[jsidhu]

 5k is not really good money for a developer in the US.   That is absurd.  The average is 95k which is around 8k a month.   AVERAGE.

BTW. I'm not trying to insult anyone, but just be realistic.  Germany isn't that different from the US.  And for anyone working on Bitshares for significantly less than their market rate, a big THANK YOU from me.

You're talking about Bitshares as if it's Google or Microsoft. Startups do not pay "market rate". They pay below market rate because their goal is to build a profitable business and this requires working long hours for just enough money to survive.

If I were the CEO of a startup I'm not going to be focused on getting a fat salary. I'm going to be focused on launching the businesses and growing it. Bitshares cannot afford to pay developers 10k a month and it's only greed that allows anyone to think it can.

I'll repeat:
10k a month is greedy. [/b

Bring Bitshares up to 1 billion market cap and then we can start talking about 10k a month for delegates. 10k a month for developers not named Dan is ridiculous and that isn't any insult to any of the other developers.

Please do a basic web-search. You have no idea about what software devs are paid these days. 

Startups pay less because people are also paid in equity in addition to their salary.  We are past that stage even if it seems the same to you since people are paid in shares.

I didn't say anything about what is greedy or what isn't.  I'm just stating reality as a basis for this discussion.  Yes marketing Bitshares could bring in developers, but it is going to do so on the basis of charity by the employee or finding someone who lives in a country with a lower cost of living.

I find it fascinating that you expect people to work for less than they are worth then you call anyone who doesn't agree with that line of thinking greedy.  okey dokey whatever.

Having a discussion about how to hire developers is a good one.  It needs to be tied into expectations from multiple sides.  etc.

You are not factoring in income tax.. At 5k a month It is about the same as 8k a month in fiat.

[bytemaster]

 5k is not really good money for a developer in the US.   That is absurd.  The average is 95k which is around 8k a month.   AVERAGE.

BTW. I'm not trying to insult anyone, but just be realistic.  Germany isn't that different from the US.  And for anyone working on Bitshares for significantly less than their market rate, a big THANK YOU from me.

That is near the average pay of our team. 

[Rune]

Part-time work evades the question how much a developer is worth, it does not answer the question.
I know the "delegate proposal" method is often cited, but it has some severe flaws, IMO:
1. You (not you personally, but you the DAC as a potential employer) cannot expect a skilled developer to make a massive investment into registering a delegate with a mere hope of being voted in and perhaps making a profit at some point in the future. I find the suggestion of the OP very reasonable, to create a delegate beforehand and decide afterwards whom and for what to pay using the delegate's earnings.
2. The method turns the original intent "lure top devs" into a much broader scope. A developer's job is generally to come up with a technical solution to a given problem. That's what developers are good at. But you are adding "come up with a project", "create and run a delegate" and "do self-marketing and lobbying to collect votes" into the mix. It will be very hard to find someone who excels at all of these. Again, the OP's suggestion makes this much simpler.

I guess the reality we have to face is that delegates are a completely new form of employment that cannot simply be subsistuted for traditional employment. I was actually convinced that a huge amount of current coin devs would jump ship almost instantly at the prospect of working for the blockchain for stable salary (and simply campaign for several delegates if they deserved higher pay). But the problem is that if a person isn't able to "self manage" as I'd call doing the things you described here (make a project, create and run a delegate, etc.) then they just cannot work as a delegate. In the long run when bitshares has gained network effect and delegates are big business, then we will start to see devs hired under delegate management just like we're used to in the traditional business world. Until then it'll mostly only be developers who are already a member of the community and who understand and can accept the new paradigm of delegates who will get "hired by the blockchain".

The sad truth is that this means paid delegates will create less of a marketing buzz than I expected because we still need to first convince the big name devs that bitshares is the future (and that they should proactively invest time and energy into understanding it so they can make money off it and support it).