Anyone willing to respond,
A question and a few comments.
<< Question >>
If given such a choice, it would be interesting to know if the community would prefer a candidate whom may have more time (say 100%) to spend on the AD role but may be less qualifed or a candidate whom may have less time (say 50%) but may be more qualifed. What’s more important? Doing less work with higher potential quality, or more work with more moderate quality ?
I suspect there would be many opinions here, but it would be interesting to see what people think about that. In my mind, if quality is the most important attribute then we do need to sort out how to lower the workload to match a lower time profile to ensure we focus on that and attract more candidates with potentially more time constraints.
<< Commnets >>
I have no religion on the matter of paid vs. Unpaid AD roles, but what’s apparent to me is that the trend of getting enough qualified candidates is a challenge (seems to be a longstanding issue). I would say using historical modes of operation (say 10 years, ago, longer perhaps) is a good data point, but we should not rely on that to best understand what is needed now (we need new ideas, not just protection of old ones). It’s possible ADs have historically been able to execute the roles in a traditional manner of employer supported volunteer mode (100% time for IETF paid for by employer) but this general model may not last forever.. We can try accept that as a potential trend, or we can ignore it.
Even though many key larger companies have supported candidates to spend most/all of their time in volunteer roles, times change and so do economics. I have seen more then one company pull back from traditional support (in terms of full time employees whom spend a lot of time at the IETF) due to changes in leadership, economics and other factors. Such trends can only be observed and reacted to by us, not controlled. Again, I am not saying the old model will not work, but continuing to insist that it worked in the past, may be a poor way of planning for the future.
The other item that continues to weigh on my mind is the need for potentially good candidates needing to “sell” their value to a company to support such initiatives. Some (maybe most?) of the historical candidates may have been able to do this successfully, but that also may have been opportunistic as companies may have had leadership which already recognized the value - so the sales function internally was not that hard. As we move forward, if companies shift focus or leadership changes, we may have many potential candidates who may not have the opportunity/ability to sell the opportunity inside their company, therefore we as a community will miss out on some good candidates.
What I see in our industry is a fundamental change to the power/position of many traditional corporate sponsors who have supported folks in the IETF. These companies will likely continue to see competition, which impacts profits which impact money directed to positions that support candidates ability to do full time industry roles (like ADs at the IETF). This shift will change at least some of our historical approach to finding candidates who will be supported by their companies. I think this is not a trivial issue to be overlooked.
Regards,
Victor K
On Sat, Jul 28, 2018 at 12:57 PM Ted Lemon <mellon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John, have you never had a consulting job? When you have had one, were you required to not do other work as a condition of employment? I agree that some of the issues you've brought up are real obstacles, but it's not as if there aren't real obstacles as it is, and I think it is definitely true that there are completely insurmountable obstacles for a lot of IETF participants—being at a company that can afford to have you on the IESG is a fairly privileged situation.Christian, what prevents the IETF from being captured by the ADs now? Is it the case that any organization that pays its workers is hopeless, that there is no feedback mechanism that can prevent the kind of capture you describe?Toerless, what you described is what I'm talking about, except that I think the ISOC would have to raise funds to pay for this, and that would probably involve some corporate sponsorships.On Sat, Jul 28, 2018 at 12:39 PM, John C Klensin <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> wrote:
--On Saturday, 28 July, 2018 11:27 -0400 Ted Lemon
<mellon@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It's interesting that it's seen by quite a few people who have
> responded to this idea that an AD who is paid by the IETF
> would be _less_ neutral than an AD who is paid by some company
> that's sending them to the IETF. I would like to think that
> the ADs that nomcom appoints would be neutral in either case,
> but it seems to me that the incentives for an AD to play
> favorites are worse, not better, if the AD works for a company
> than if they are paid by the IETF, all other factors being
> equal. Of course, if companies that want to buy ADs were
> able to do so, that would be bad, but if the funding
> commitment is made in advance of AD selection, I don't see how
> that would happen. Maybe I'm just naive?
Ted,
I don't think this is worth a long discussion and it appears
that most people don't read my in-depth analyses anyway, but
there are a long list of things wrong with your idea, most of
them, as Andrew suggests, proven by bad experience elsewhere.
As just two examples:
* ADs who come from different companies at least have, we hope,
limited incentives to collude. Maybe we should be requiring
most explicit and public disclosures about day job commitments
and entanglements, but one of our protections come from the IETF
being made of of people from competing (or at least
non-affiliated) organizations. If everyone were paid by the
IETF, that safeguard would presumably disappear, leaving people
to promote their own collective ideas.
* Even if you don't believe that, consider the pragmatic issues.
People end up on the IESG at various stages of their careers and
from different career paths. Would you expect all of them to be
paid the same amount or for IETF-supplied salaries to reflect
the most recent day job one? Also, while a company can make a
decision to lend someone to the IETF for a few years and those
who are self-employed can choose to reduce other workloads to
make time for AD responsibilities, if someone is going to take a
salary from the IETF, many (perhaps most) employment agreements
would require that such a person either resign from the day job
or be put on a leave of absence, possibly with guarantees about
being allowed to return. In some cases, the requirement would
be for the salary to be paid by the IETF to the company and for
the ADs to continue to draw their normal salaries, giving the
worst of both worlds -- IETF spending the money with no effect
on real or imagined conflicts of interest. Those kinds of
issues all suggest that, even if "IETF pays ADs" were otherwise
a good idea, which I don't believe it to be, sorting out all of
the issues would be very complex and probably well beyond the
limits of where this community can reach even rough consensus.
Of course, some of those problems would disappear if the ADs
were hired by the IETF and expected to make the IESG a career,
but the latter has not worked out well in the past even without
being complicated by a compensation package.
best,
john
