Hey everyone! I am tasked to monitor and make sure all paid contributors of Giveth Galaxy have work agreements. The purpose of having work agreements is for the contributor and Giveth to have a clear understanding of the responsibilities, obligations, and extent of the work or contribution. Generally, a work agreement outlines the following:
Role
Job Summary & Tasks
Agreement type & Compensation (full time, hourly or fixed)
Terms
Performance Review (for full time and hourly)
Giveth Buddy
Proposal for New Contributors
The buddy system may be existing already in the organization, but it will be formalized through including it in the work agreements.
Who is a Giveth buddy?
Usually the one who requests to hire the new contributor. The buddy can also be the one who has a similar job description or tasks.
What is the purpose of having a Giveth buddy?
This is to help the new contributors to integrate well into the organization, and help build an immediate personal connection between team members.
What are the roles of a Giveth buddy?
The buddy shall have weekly one-on-one syncs with the new contributor for the first few months. This will allow for a consistent feedback loop about priorities and performance. The buddy will also conduct a mandatory performance review after 3 months in order to decide whether the agreement shall be continued or not.
This is my proposal on integrating work agreements in the onboarding process for new contributors moving forward.
Before a new contributor starts working, the buddy shall fill out the template since the buddy would know the specific details of the tasks or project.
I will coordinate with the buddy to ensure the details of the work agreement are complete.
Once the contributor agrees, I would provide an openlaw.io link to the contributor for signing. Thank you Marko for suggesting this open source for us to have proper documentation of the contributorâs agreement.
Iâll update the contributorsâ tracker/monitoring spreadsheet which includes the work agreement links.
Please see the link to the work agreement template below. The terms stated are general / default which were based on existing work agreements. The buddy can have additional terms or revise the default terms in order to fit the situation.
For now, we are using Google Docs in filling out the template, and pasting the final work agreement in openlaw.io for signing. We can also transition and fill out the work agreement template in openlaw.io directly without using Google Docs.
Proposal for Existing Contributors
Griff intends to have the buddy system implemented to existing contributors as well. Iâm still trying to figure out the process for this. I would greatly appreciate suggestions on how to assign and identify buddies for existing contributors. It would be ideal that each has 1 or 2 buddies.
Once the buddy system is implemented, the buddies would conduct performance reviews at least once every 6 months. This is important for existing contributors to gain useful feedback about what they are doing well and where improvements can be made. I would be monitoring the schedules and documentation of the performance reviews as well.
This folder was shared to me by Ashley. I am also proposing to transfer the contents of these documents to the work agreement template since there is some missing information. I will be reaching out to each of you once we can figure out the buddy system for existing contributors.
Looking forward to your feedback! It would definitely help streamline the process.
Looks good, I think the buddy system is a great way to help onboard new contributors.
I donât think however having a buddy system for existing contributors is an effective way to manage people. I think it would make more sense to vest review processes into the stewards role. Naturally, at this point most existing contributors have found their âbuddiesâ and I donât see the point to add too much structure to the organic process that has already taken place.
I would think as well with new contributors after a certain point they wouldnât need a buddy anymore (after 6 months seems like a solid number)
Takes me back to the Unicorn DAC, where each new member had to be sponsored/supported by two existing members (Kris and Kay were my âGiveth unclesâ, lol).
So for onboarding, full support.
RE: Mitchâs advise on existing contributors, and the buddy system dropping after 6 months.
If we look at the buddy as a resiliency/redundancy aspect and direct feedback loops for each other in the review process, I see a lot of value in everyone having a buddy, ie backup for approved leaves, travel away time, first level reviews of work product before going to everyone for example.
Yeah I like the Buddy system better than the stewards acting as managers⌠a network of supporters is better⌠the Buddy will deliver the feed back but i hope that in these reviews that feed back is collected by the buddy from all the people they work withâŚ
Also⌠for me, I have found more success with DAILY calls to onboard people for their first month⌠minimum 3 times a week. It is easy to get lost, especially early on working remote!
Once a week calls, even if its a simple stand up 15 min calls with someone just to check in on how they are doing is the least we can expect from a buddy⌠and I love a poly-buddy system⌠maybe with a primary buddy and multiple secondary buddies.
Itâs a great way to build a strong flat remote team that is human centered and caring. Having space dedicated to chatting about the week not only builds intamacy and connection in the team, but can also be used for bouncing ideas off people that wouldnât normally have space in a scheduled focused meeting.
In summary⌠I think the buddy system, if we commit to it, will have a lot of second order benefits beyond the satisfying the need of regular feedback rounds.
Thank you Freshelle for leading this discussion! PRAISE
I love the idea of implementing buddies to help onboarding new contributors helping them get oriented.
As for buddies for current contributorsâŚwell, I think it is a pretty good idea to have some kind of regular feedback/performance review implemented. Maybe we can just logically organize ourselves with this? Choose our own buddies with their consent?
I think each individual has an idea of who would be the best person to review their performance.
Also, the process of work agreement approval and acknowledgment would be: Giveth Forum (Advice Process) > rDAO Voting > Openlaw signing (a perfect example would be Hannahâs). This will be the process for the existing contributors as well.
For existing contributors, I believe the next steps are the following:
I will reach out to each contributor and let them fill out the work agreement template.
While in the process of filling out the template, they would choose/identify their buddy and get the latterâs consent. Also, set the month/date for their first performance review.
After filling out the work agreement, each of them would undergo the approval process (Giveth Forum (Advice Process) > rDAO Voting > Openlaw signing)
Itâs so nice to just have the space dedicated to talking about (and thinking about) how things are doing⌠I do these reviews with people in general magic and so many great ideas for easy improvements come out!
I think that being flat means we donât have âmanagersâ but we should still have review & feedback sessions !
Making the space for âHow can we do betterâ and âHow can you do betterâ questions is so simple but so critical.
The Giveth DApp Development team would follow the Giveth Forum (Advice Process) > rDAO Voting > Openlaw signing process. @amin
For the rest of the existing contributors, kindly share your thoughts on the third step. If you have already done this previously (DAO approved), then we can skip the approval process. If not, maybe youâll follow the approval process.
For now, we have the following DAO approved roles (kindly comment if we missed anyone): Aragon - Hannah Aragon - Lauren Aragon - Ashley (thank you @WhyldWanderer for this list!)
Conducted work agreement hack session last September 22. For those who werenât able to join, please refer to this doc: Giveth Work Agreement Process - Google Docs . Iâll also be reaching out to each Givether to see what step they are in.
For the contributors from General Magic (GM) who contribute to Giveth (Griff, Marko, Mitch, Freshelle, Rodri, Mo, etc), we wonât be posting in the forum and have our roles approved by rDAO because our compensation is from GM, and not from Giveth campaigns. Also, the nature of our roles/tasks are different which includes providing support for other orgs as well. However, in our GM work agreements, we will include a âGiveth buddyâ portion and set quarterly performance reviews to make sure there is constant feedback on our work and contributions for Giveth.
Hey Freshelle! I was thinking about the buddy system and structure and have some ideas on how to make it a little better.
It would be amazing if we created some structure to the review calls, so that anyone could really be a buddy to anyone. Right now i feel like some buddies are not really sure how to be good buddies, so a template would be helpfulâŚ
The template would state that buddies would be responsible for asking things like:
How do you feel in your current position?
How would you like to grow/expand?
Is there anything you feel you need from Giveth in order to be better supported?
Or something like that. I bet @Griff or @Danibelle would have good feedback on the types of questions that should be asked.
Then the buddies can keep a record of their buddyâs responses and we could later (perhaps after the GIVeconomy) have like a once monthly review call where we look at this aggregated buddy feedback⌠see if there is any overlap and then as a team work on coming up with any solutions necessary.
Please see this document for the buddy review tracker / monitoring. While I made this, I propose that the Quarterly Buddy Review is scheduled at the same for everyone. It would make sense to schedule it uniformly since we will be compiling all the feedback of the buddy review to provide solutions, if necessary, as a team.
