He claims to have 1000+ hours per week (25 people full-time-equivalent) of volunteers and contractors working on InIn projects, with very little to show for it in terms of output.
When you read comments by contractors/volunteers, even longtime ones, they don’t show anywhere near the understanding of InIn material you would expect from people spending this much time reading InIn writing. Examples: John, Beatrice, Cha.
InIn appears to have developed a culture where whenever Gleb posts something it’s expected that members will show up to comment with vacuous praise.
I’m not convinced that the contractors are acting on their own, as opposed to because Gleb is paying them or because they hope to be paid in the future, even for things that are nominally unpaid.
acting on their own, as opposed to because Gleb is paying them
Whether they’re paid or not is beside the point.
Let’s take a pair of examples:
1) Person A respects person B deeply, reads everything B writes, upvotes B’s posts, comments to say how insightful they find B’s writing, etc.
2) Person C is an employee of person D, who is paid to read everything D writes, upvote D’s posts, comment to say how insightful they find D’s writing etc.
Persons B’s actions are fine, person A’s actions are fine but maybe annoying, person C’s actions are kind of scummy, and person D’s actions are very scummy.
Sometimes people do things because they want them to happen, sometimes they do things because someone else is paying them to, sometimes it’s in between: it’s a continuum. Situation (1) is the sort of thing you expect at the unpaid end, (2) at the paid end.
I don’t think those are good actions. I was just talking about whether he was treating them appropriately. The post implied that people were not being paid enough. I’m using the same reasoning as in the GWWC’s position on fair trade.
It sounds like I misunderstood your objection. Are you saying that if InIn had an explicit rule like “we pay 1⁄3 of the Upwork minimum wage, but we cast this as a 2:1 volunteering:working policy in order to get around their requirements” you would be fine with it? The idea being that minimum wages are harmful because they keep people from making mutually beneficial exchanges?
So, first, I think EA organizations should pay at least the legal minimum wage as part of a general work-within-the-law system. Here we’re talking about an Upwork policy, though, which is weaker than a law and it’s more debatable whether to violate it. But if it were just that I agree this piece of things would be much more minor. The problem is Gleb is insisting that this is not what’s going on, and that all the unpaid work is fully voluntary. And further, that actions they take in their allegedly fully-voluntary time shouldn’t be attributable at all to Gleb/InIn.
He claims to have 1000+ hours per week (25 people full-time-equivalent) of volunteers and contractors working on InIn projects, with very little to show for it in terms of output.
When you read comments by contractors/volunteers, even longtime ones, they don’t show anywhere near the understanding of InIn material you would expect from people spending this much time reading InIn writing. Examples: John, Beatrice, Cha.
InIn appears to have developed a culture where whenever Gleb posts something it’s expected that members will show up to comment with vacuous praise.
I’m not convinced that the contractors are acting on their own, as opposed to because Gleb is paying them or because they hope to be paid in the future, even for things that are nominally unpaid.
Doesn’t change the point of my post.
Whether they’re paid or not is beside the point.
Let’s take a pair of examples:
1) Person A respects person B deeply, reads everything B writes, upvotes B’s posts, comments to say how insightful they find B’s writing, etc.
2) Person C is an employee of person D, who is paid to read everything D writes, upvote D’s posts, comment to say how insightful they find D’s writing etc.
Persons B’s actions are fine, person A’s actions are fine but maybe annoying, person C’s actions are kind of scummy, and person D’s actions are very scummy.
Sometimes people do things because they want them to happen, sometimes they do things because someone else is paying them to, sometimes it’s in between: it’s a continuum. Situation (1) is the sort of thing you expect at the unpaid end, (2) at the paid end.
I don’t think those are good actions. I was just talking about whether he was treating them appropriately. The post implied that people were not being paid enough. I’m using the same reasoning as in the GWWC’s position on fair trade.
It sounds like I misunderstood your objection. Are you saying that if InIn had an explicit rule like “we pay 1⁄3 of the Upwork minimum wage, but we cast this as a 2:1 volunteering:working policy in order to get around their requirements” you would be fine with it? The idea being that minimum wages are harmful because they keep people from making mutually beneficial exchanges?
So, first, I think EA organizations should pay at least the legal minimum wage as part of a general work-within-the-law system. Here we’re talking about an Upwork policy, though, which is weaker than a law and it’s more debatable whether to violate it. But if it were just that I agree this piece of things would be much more minor. The problem is Gleb is insisting that this is not what’s going on, and that all the unpaid work is fully voluntary. And further, that actions they take in their allegedly fully-voluntary time shouldn’t be attributable at all to Gleb/InIn.