Author Topic: Dan is doing the right thing .. again!  (Read 24235 times)

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Offline bytemaster

I am going to come right out and say that experienced software developers doing cryptography and advanced c++ work in major cities like NY or CA can easily justify a $150 to $200K salary.   Those *ARE* market rates.    That said, web developers do not earn those rates and typically make much less than a c++ developer.  So not all developers are equal in the market.   

In order for me to hire people at $100K I had to look for "inexperienced" yet highly motivated individuals straight out of school and be located in Blacksburg, a relatively low cost of living.    Overall I am very happy with the skill level of this team and am certain they could all earn over $100K at other companies. 

That said, this same amazing team has been earning just $36K plus delegate pay for all of 2015.   

The BTS in the angle fund are gone because we sold them off over the past 6 months at ridiculous prices just to pay the developers $36K/year each.

As far as newmine's claim that "our stake from mining PTS" of over 100M should be enough to motivate us to complete it completely ignores the following facts:

1. Mining PTS was not free, we had to PAY to buy that stake.
2. We would have to sell the stake to pay for development leaving 0 stake at the end.

Our team is highly motivated by principles and goals.  We work for the love of the job and so far have asked for relatively little compensation.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2015, 08:27:42 pm by bytemaster »
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Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract between myself and anyone else.   These are merely my opinions and I reserve the right to change them at any time.

Offline JoeyD

Gotta admit that I feel pretty disappointed with Vitalik after reading those reddit posts a couple of days ago. Although I guess that was just me completely misjudging him.

Last I saw was him talking about one single guy on the team getting $150k because he earned something like $200k in his previous job. And that they had to pay of this 25% interest loan that had run up close to 1 million dollars so they had to cash out as soon as possible. Then there also was the whole sleeping in the same bedroom and living as frugally as possible thing the teammembers repeated on several occasions and then suddenly these numbers pop up. I didn't know Switzerland was that expensive, if that's the going rate for shared room lodging and bread and water.

I can understand people wanting to eat and pay the rent and all, I get that, but something here stinks. And not just with Ethereum who defend themselves by vaguely pointing to other people in unrelated occupations getting more money then them and trying to make it sound as if that somehow justifies their own abnormal salaries for the average start-up because I guess some feeling of their own superiority. One of the things I dislike the most, after all the hype about the non-profit crypto society they were talking about is the threats going around to drop the project if no new funds come in, as if running out of over $20 million funds in that short amount of time had nothing to do with them.

Mind you this is not just relevant for the ethereum devs, but I see this in several other crypto communities as well including bitshares. I see a lot of people feeling very self entitled and do a lot of comparisons with other jobs before they decide on a wage they feel they should get and then start making conclusions based on that. I get the distinct impression that most are in crypto as some kind of get rich quick scheme, which is clouding their judgment. The thing is, weren't we starting a revolution and trying to replace the broken financial systems and get rid of the asshole banks and inflation and all that.

Now here's the thing with most revolutions and start-ups, they usually don't start of with the founders having massive comfortable guaranteed salaries from day one. Actually most startups run into quite a bit of bad weather with only a small chance to strike it big. But we are not just a startup we are trying to start a revolution against the powers way bigger than any puny national one and realistically that should make people expect quite a bit worse weather than the average startup. Why does it appear that nobody in crypto expects any setbacks? I'm also getting a bit fed up with a lot of developers labeling anybody who isn't coding as some kind of freeloader or leech, as if our time, interest, efforts and word of mouth are nothing, Speaking for myself I'm not getting paid any wages at all, quite the opposite really, crypto is a massive financial loss for me so far, so I find these remarks coming from people giving themselves $150k wages in bad taste for lack of a better eufemism.

Wasn't one of the issues that we were trying to solve how the current financial system being a massive tumor sucking the life out of the economy? For starters it does sound a little fishy to me to still use their hyperinflated salaries as a comparison for salaries in this "better" system. In theory the cost of the system itself should be as close to zero as we can get which to me sounds diametrically opposed to the concept of the system making a profit. The "profits" should be generated outside with business models making use of the system. Trying to get rid of monopolistic bloodcloth toll-roads and instead create a more efficient road-network. What I'm fearing some crypto-devs plus communities are trying to do is building themselves the best tollbooth they can and be opposed to all other tollroads. In other words, I fear that quite a few people are starting to confuse the system with their business/profit models.

So I'm not opposed to cryptonomics setting themselves up as the contractors specialized in building new crypto-roads, as long as that doesn't mean they “own” those roads plus the roadsystem and have an incentive to optimize for toll-booths. I see nothing wrong with making money from building many many roads in the future. However the IP-move on the toolkit by bitshares/cryptonomex bothers me. Especially the listed motivations about not wanting/allowing competing chains in the same field and reserving all rights. I also think newmine has a point about the community funding the toolkit and now suddenly we don't seem to own it anymore.

Here's my biggest worry, the bitshares/cryptonomex team are only human, but having many conflicting interests is not something that works well for humans. Since most here seem to like the term incentive over interests, I'm very concerned over potential problems with the conflict of incentives in the move to cryptonomex/bitshares2.0.

Another concern I have is with what feels like a Cathedral type development model, with a select group of priest developing the new gospel in a hidden room, which the community at large then has to accept when they decide to publish the final version. I'm not seeing that many outside developers contributing or interacting with the source code, which I doubt is merely accidental or because of lack of interest. This doubt has been strenghtend when I saw the fear of being copied mentioned in the recent blog-posts as motivation behind the IP. While that model might be more comfortable to traditional corporations and people wanting control, it does limit community participation and winning hearts and minds naturally (IMO it also limits natural evolution), but I think it also requires  a very strong traditional marketing. And lets be blunt, marketing is not something the team in Blacksburg excels at. Btw did PayPals referral program really work without a powerful marketing at all? The blogs mention that corporations/investors were unwilling to enter because of the lack of IP-control. Does that mean there is a lineup of big money guaranteed to enter that vastly outweighs potentially alienating of kindred spirits or even existing community hearts and minds?

Keep in mind that I'm not saying that the bitshares team have bad intentions, actually for a lot of these choices I suspect them being forced into them by “community” pressure. However I do think the bitshares-team-members are only human and they are not making it easier on themselves to stay the course. I also hope the bitshares community is looking beyond themselves making a quick buck and really think about what they are building with their voting power.
« Last Edit: June 29, 2015, 07:31:27 pm by JoeyD »

Offline santaclause102

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I have been very impressed in this respect after listening to the last mumble session: https://beyondbitcoin.org/bitshares-developer-hangout-with-bytemaster-june-26-2015/

I am very positive that the right mindset will pay off in the long run! By right mindset I mean: Team mindset, believe in your product, "assuming it will work out as you want it to" and "not being afraid of each other but treating each other nicely", being humble. These all treats that the cryptonomex team  seems to have. Listen to the last quater...

« Last Edit: June 29, 2015, 05:42:03 pm by delulo »

Offline Riverhead


Do they not have tens of millions BTS each? Do they not have a +50 million BTS reserve still?


Not according to Dan on the mumble. Most devs have sold off a lot of their stake to pay rent.


The BTS shares received from the AGS/PTS donations and what they mined fairly in the begining, which turned into 100 million if not more BTS, should be plenty of incentive to finish what they started. The $3.6 million from AGS were they paid themselves $100K salaries last year  should be more than enough to work for two years comfortably and never have to touch their personal large BTS holdings for funding. Now the team is complaining because they received $100k last year and only $28k in BTS this year and still going. I would gladly take $100k the first year and $30k the next year all while sitting on a huge gold mine if I just got off my ass and laid the finishing tracks.


A lot of assumptions in there. Also, it doesn't account for operating costs like office space (and related), legal fees, etc. which would chew through those funds pretty quick. Also the $3.6M number is based on a valuation that may have been true at the peek of value, which lasted about a week.

Rather than get into a he said she said about how much was spent on what I'd rather look at what they started with, how long they made it last, and how the crypto space crash hammered every project's ability to fund itself.

The argument that paying developers close to market rates for a year and then a quarter that the next was overspending is unfair at best.

Offline donkeypong

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Developers need to be paid something approaching market rate. If they truly believe in the project, a portion of that can come from incentives. Much less and they'll be shopping around. Simple as that.

Offline NewMine

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Are they not taking money out of the system as we speak still? Do they not have tens of millions BTS each? Do they not have a +50 million BTS reserve still?

Your second quote has been my point all along. The BTS shares received from the AGS/PTS donations and what they mined fairly in the begining, which turned into 100 million if not more BTS, should be plenty of incentive to finish what they started. The $3.6 million from AGS were they paid themselves $100K salaries last year  should be more than enough to work for two years comfortably and never have to touch their personal large BTS holdings for funding. Now the team is complaining because they received $100k last year and only $28k in BTS this year and still going. I would gladly take $100k the first year and $30k the next year all while sitting on a huge gold mine if I just got off my ass and laid the finishing tracks.

Instead they had to tweak the code on company/Bitshares time just enough to be able to claim its different and to license it so they, not the BTS share holder can profit off it. What would have happened if an Apple employee tweaked iTunes just enough to create PeerTrax at Apple HQ? If, if they get away with the code change they would never get away with creating it on Apple time. We all had been being told that they are working fast and furious, long days, and weekends to complete Bitshares in the face of all the problems that arose since it debuted in July last year. In November we were promised a 1.0. A deadline which came and went again. Then again in March, we were supposed to see 1.0 but didn't. Then in May, big announcements were coming in Summer. This all the while some people can't even get the client to load, crashes when you got to the Market page, collateral is unusable to close a position causing losses etc etc etc.

The least these guys could do at this point is to kill their 100% delegates. They don't need it, as they claim it's not enough ($25 per day).



Offline xeroc

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Everyone complaining about Dan's plans about cryptonomex should read through this reddit thread on the ethereum subreddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3bbs4p/doing_some_research_on_crypto_projects_is/

money quotes:
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According to publicly available data, there are people who make 190k, 180k, 150k (all USD) and Vitalik's 137k Swiss Frank which is also about 150k USD. Presumably, the people making these salaries are the core developer founders, which I assume refers to Gavin, Jeff, Taylor, and Vitalik.
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These salaries turn me off the entire project. IMO this shows they have very little faith in the actual 'product' itself.

They got big amounts of premine that will be worth millions if they succeed. In most start-ups (stop calling Ethereum a non-profit) the founders work on very low salary. Often in the 40-60K range. Just enough to support themselves and pour the rest into the actual project.

This sheds light on why Ethereum is struggling with funds. They literally splurge
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The foundation is not a for-profit company you know. There's no business model. Ethereum is like the Apache Web Server, the Ethereum Foundation is like the Apache Foundation. Pretending it's a startup is ridiculous.

However, I think we should discuss again if and why the workers pay is/should be denoted in BTS or if it makes more sense to come up with a good scheme to pay them with bitassets ..

Discuss!