OSC Levels
Open Source Contributor Levels
Motivation
On the Web Team, we lacked a framework for making decisions about who should be in linear.app, when someone should join standup, what groups do we add them to and what are our expectations, etc. When we discussed with the strategists, we found that they had similar issues in setting expectations (e.g. you don't just write a strategy then sit on a beach and collect profits, there's further to go) and understanding who was meeting those expectations.
This is a set of guidelines to help all of us frame this conversation. It's expected that this will evolve over time based on things we see working really well, and also problems we run into.
Anytime the team has a disagreement about when or how to bring someone in deeper, the outcome of that discussion will be updates to these guidelines.
Outline
-
𝟎 - Anyone
- anyone can make stuff for yearn, like the iOS app "yearnings," without any access
- good candidates can go directly to level 1 or 2, but you have to be at level 2 before you can go to 3
OSC Levels
| OSC Level | General | Access | Trust | Commitment | Compensation | Criteria to Level Up |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ⅰ: Entry | Anyone who wants to contribute can ask to join Secret Entrance and start doing stuff. |
| none | occasional contribution |
| If they provide value, any 2 level 2 people can vouch them up to level 2. |
| Ⅱ: Contributor | People are active in more workgroups |
| Trust that they can add value | Consistent contribution |
|
|
| Ⅲ: Trusted Contributor | Has demonstrated reliability over time, at least a month Strategists: Have an ETH mainnet strategy on production (not just in review) |
|
| Trusted consistent contribution, they are reliable |
|
|
| Ⅳ: Doer | Citadel & most trusted |
| Just as trusted at the Citadel | All-in |
| Commitment |
Visual of Teams
When you take the above and apply them to teams, the specific implementation of the levels changes based upon the systems in use and processes followed by that teams, but the spirit of each level is very much equivalent. Someone who's a trusted contributor on the Web team would be considered the equivalent of a trusted contributor on the Strategist team, and they'd both be welcome to the same conversations.
Transitioning Levels
To move to OSC II
- At least two individual sponsors of OSC III or higher
- Completed at least one issue of significant size and complexity
- Or, have completed multiple issues showing a pattern of quality and thoughtfulness
- It takes less time to ask the person to do the work and review their work, than it does for you to do the work yourself
- Demonstration of quality work
Questions to Ask
- Will they add value to the conversation in telegram?
- Will they respect coordinape and opt-out when they're not contributing?
- Is their work at least the quality level of a promising junior engineer?
- Has any of their completed work caused regressions or serious bugs?
- If so, do we believe they've learned from this experience? Or is this a recurring behavior?
Who asks these questions & who makes this decision?
- The team they're contributing to (e.g. web team, strategist team)
- It's not required for the team to vote on this, but they should be made aware the person's being elevated
To move to OSC III
- At least two individual sponsors from doers
- They've been given privileged information and haven't leaked it
- They complete 1-2 issues per week (on average)
- They opt-out of coordinape when not working
- They assign all their gives in coordinape every epoch (soft requirement)
- They are an asset to engineering
- Either contributing strong technical thinking
- Or contributing quality work that frees the team up to focus on more critical items
- They self-structure their work and can succeed even with minimal requirements, reaching out to the right teams as needed
- Their team trusts them
- At this point, the person is effectively being evaluated for becoming a doer
- This is not a guarantee
- Some people may not move past this point due to personal considerations, job circumstance, etc.
- We should not promote anyone to this level we don't think could be doer material
Questions to Ask
- Do they regularly participate in telegram?
- Do they improve the quality of the conversation?
- Could I assign an area of responsibility to this person? (e.g. fix any bugs that come into GitHub on the v2 site)
- Do they follow process?
- Are their tech design tickets of good quality?
- Do they display exemplary attitude in peer review? (i.e. do they take feedback well?)
- Do I have to structure their work or can they self-structure?
- Have they come up with issues to suggest?
- Do they review others work?
Who asks these questions & makes this decision?
- The team their contributing to (e.g. web team, strategist team)
- Sponsors submit a proposal internal to the team for teammates to weigh in on / vote on
- A brief summary of the person and poll are submitted to the team's core telegram
- The summary should touch on 'questions to ask', above
- The poll should use the following format
- Agree
- Stand-aside
- Block
- If anyone blocks, or stands aside, the issue must be cleared before the person can be brought in. 9 agreements and 1 block on a 10 person team means the person in question isn't elevated.
- (It's fine to stand-aside as a 'pass' if you don't have strong feelings, just let the team know that's why you're standing aside)
- Sponsors submit a proposal internal to the team for teammates to weigh in on / vote on
Additional Considerations for Strategists
Strategists have multiple roles at OSC III & higher. For example, it's possible to obtain the StratOps or other higher level Strategists roles without being a doer (e.g. roles above & beyond "I just write strategies", with commensurate reward). Though yearn would generally prefer to have someone in StratOps, etc. as a doer, it may not be possible for the individual, and we don't want to prevent them from being able to do so.
To move to the StratOps or higher level Strategist role within OSC III
- At least one sponsor from doers.
- Some kind of selfless activities
- Reviewing strategies from other people
- Being active in the YFI Strategist group
- Helping manage the vaults
- Contributing to evolving the protocol
- Vaults releases
- Creating bugs, raising issues, giving feedback
- Vaults releases
- Monitoring their strategy in ganache fork and doing harvests
- Letting the group know when something's off
- Proactively raising issues, preventing stuff from breaking
- Plugging in monitoring and altering
- Updating dashboards with scorecards for their strategies, making sure the thresholds are accurate and up-to-date
- Monitoring underlying protocols
- If you have a strategy using a protocol, you're effectively the 'account manager' for that protocol
- In close communication
- Understanding behavior changes, flagging to yearn team, etc.
- If you have a strategy using a protocol, you're effectively the 'account manager' for that protocol
To move to Doer
- At least three sponsors from doers, from more than one team
- Will I bleed for this person?
- Do I trust them with my livelihood and my freedom?
Questions to Ask
- Have they driven significant technical scope?
- Have they contributed significantly to technical design thinking?
- Do they regularly file quality issues and complete tech design reviews and code reviews?
- Does the team breathe a sigh of relief at locking them in as a full-time doer?
- Have they had constructive, positive interactions with other teams?
Who asks these questions and makes this decision?
- Team submits a proposal to doers with the sponsors sign-off
- Treasury says if we can afford the headcount
- yTeams reviews & approves/disapproves
Offboarding
Offboarding Steps for OSC I
- None, just don't accept their PRs
Offboarding Steps for OSC II
- Ideally the conflict resolution process is followed with the individual. If they were a solid enough contributor to vouch into Coordinape, what's going on that we're now removing them?
- At minimum the team should have a retro after the person is removed to discuss how they could do a better job on selecting people for vouching in.
- Coordinape uses a vouching out process. Where two people are required to vouch someone into Coordinape, four people are required to vouch someone out.
- Consequence
- Ejection from Linear, Coordinape, YFI Contributors
Offboarding Steps for OSC III
- The conflict resolution process is followed for one-off incidents. If there's a pattern of problematic behavior, then the offboarding process is considered.
- Offboarding Process
- A brief summary of the person and the concerns are submitted in a poll to the team's core telegram
- Outcome of this vote is whether or not the person requires a performance improvement plan
- If performance improvement plan is required, someone coaches the individual and shares the performance improvement plan, including steps for the individual to take, and the expected timeline in which the team needs to see the behavior change for them to continue as part of the team.
- The coach meets with this person at least weekly to discuss issues and assist in their performance improvement coaching.
- If nobody's willing to coach the individual, that's a strong point of consideration - should they just be offboarded instead?
- Also, if someone is still trustworthy, but their contribution is no longer reliable, should they just be dropped down to OSC II and kept as a contributor?
- Once the performance improvement window has passed, a brief summary of the person and the reason for offboarding are submitted in a poll to the team's core telegram
- This should include details from the performance improvement plan, did they follow it, to what degree, do we have confidence outstanding issues will be addressed, etc.
- Outcome of this vote is whether or not they're ejected
- A brief summary of the person and the concerns are submitted in a poll to the team's core telegram
- Consequence
- Ejection from Linear, Coordinape, Telegram, Standup, Planning, Retrospective, etc.
Offboarding Steps for doer
- Similar to steps for OSC III
- Additional consequence is termination of recurring grant and rug-pull of vesting YFI