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tags: compensation, performance, paladins
---

# Performance Evaluation Conversation Notes

This is a work in progress and mainly intended to collect the notes from a Discord discussion in the `paladins` channel on 5/12/2022 around compensation, runway, and performance evaluation.

## Context

The current market conditions have led us to conversations around runway, which includes key questions around compensation and performance evaluation.

We may now need to start being more intentional with our runway. This has a few implications:

- More care and scrutiny around bringing new people in to contribute to projects and workstreams
- While we've been working with more of a *growth mindset* with regard to onboarding contributors, we may want to become more selective and shift toward more of a *survival mindset* as resource allocation in our current market environment looks different than when in a Bull market
- April 2022 saw a significant amount of retro requests, with a large percent coming from a specific circle (Rangers)
- This leads to questions about budgeting per circle and how we determine how much funds to allocate per types of work and workstreams
- How do we say 'no' to ideas, projects, and requests?
- Move toward having *fewer contributors who are more dedicated* combined with a budget (potentially per circle/focus area)
- Move toward 3 or 4 "2 pizza teams 🍕🍕" focusing on shipping product/marketing/tokenomics
- Workstream committments can also be a method for making teams accountable for a budget
- Integration with GitHub Project boards -- we're using these anyway, so what if we weigh projects and connect to compensation in some form?

### Contributors Time Levels

Comparing our last cycle (cycle 3) with the possibility of 2 pizza team (with 6 people per team) is 18-24 total contributors depending on number of pizza squads
- We currently have 24 total contributors, but equating to **14 full time equivalent contributors**
-

### Committment Track Value Levels

- Value levels are another 'lever' in this -- we currently accept everyones self-assessment of their value level each cycle
- This ties in to *resource allocation* as well
- How do we allocate resources for different roles at the same value level? How do we determine what a Level 5 (or 4, 3, 2, or 1) is for each particular circle or workstream?

## Goals/Guiding Questions

1. How do we establish a budget?
2. How do we make the hard decisions on funding
3. How do we reach consensus on appropriate value levels for each contributor?

### Design Considerations

- Frictionless system for evaluation
- Light on documentation and process so that we can lean into folks engaging with the system
- Continual improvement -- start by making small changes with aim toward process improvement
- Balance of mechanisms and humanistic processes and practice
- What aspects can we automate? Can we bring in anything as *inputs* so that folks don't have to spend as much time doing this?
- We have our DAO shares as a potential decision weighting mechanism.

## Potential Ideas

- Value being a composite of different points:
- Self-identifying/self-assessment with loose grounds
- Start from the monthly burn rate, set up a system to weight priorities and assign a portion of monthly burn
- Have individuals commit to circles, roles, workstreams & then do math to determine budget.

## Next Steps

Have a process/meeting where the output is:

**Level 1: Importance.** Allocating "importance points" to each circle.

[Resource Allocation Initial Survey](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1X1GshZ7KNowwUqnJKlKXXkvPXODPLJ8wNeVwJ7eXEvo/edit)

**Level 2: Priorities.** One level down. Priorities - what does Warcamp think Magesmiths/Rangers/Paladins/Alchemists should be focused on?

This is not a consensus mechanism - more of a signal.

This could lead to a budgeting process "This is in, this is out"
This could lead to a less binary approach that is not consensus driven.

**Take a census:**
Give people the same number of points as they have shares in the DAO.

1) Ask how important are projects that these circles are engaging in to the success of DAOhaus.
3) Allocate these points for next 2 months
4) Get a quantitative measurement of priority across the 4 circles.
5) Map that roughly to how much resources we're allocating to each of those 4 circles.

## [Cycle 5 Compensation Review Committee Proposal](https://hackmd.io/wfZbRgvhScqcVasHlrKY4Q)

**Cycle 4 Interim Plan:**
* By the end of the week:
- We've already done half of step 2 (gathering)
- Hold a period for comment (2 days)
- Splinter everything and have individual votes on everybody
- Have a form where you say: "What I think everybody should be"
- If you have a strong disagreement then note that.
- Downside of getting something wrong is only 2 months.
* Feedback - Framing is "leaning into a more formal review process for committment track allocations that involves feedback from WC"
- Totally optional
- Period for comment
- If there is a divergence, kick it to Paladins for a recommendation

One of the elements that we're sure will be part of the plan for Cycle 5 is soliciting feedback from WC. So in that vein, we're going to solicit feedback in Cycle 4.

Take Step 2 (gathering) data and present it.
Invite feedback within some constraints (anonymous)
What value level do you think they should be at?

Present this as our direction for cycle 4, with reference to Cycle 5.
Present a survey or form that has questions for each person.
- Grid based question (value lvl 1-5, each person & include reference to their proposed value level)