
Apply HN: Kill Wages- Baseball Like Draft for Programmers - georgist
If we removed wages and time as a proxy for value, everyone would make more money. This is not about social Justice.We aim to replace wages with mini X-prizes.<p>Why would business prefer this?
-Fire prevention Vs Fire Fighting-- code is done well once and for all.
-Less operating capital-- free from pressure of monthly salary expense.
-Programmers who speak up--- less waste from boss&#x27; ego features.
- Deeper talent pool-- Have a whole &#x27;guild&#x27; look into your problem vs only the persons you have hired&#x2F;contracted.<p>Benefit to programmers
-Direct attribution to profit and growth.
-Keep more of your paycheck Vs burning it on high rent. 
-Automate yourself out of a job and earn perpetual royalties.
-Build apprentices- nurture and discover talent to take over from you.<p>If tech and AI are about efficiency and driving costs down, then wage free prog(workers) will accelerate us to the new  golden age.
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onion2k
If I understand correctly, the "baseball like draft" would turn every
developer in to a contractor working to an annual contract, right? There seem
to be some paradoxes in your idea though. You believe that a "baseball like
draft" would mean everyone would make more money, but at the same time
businesses would like it because it lowers costs. How does that work? You say
that it would relieve the business pressure of ongoing monthly salaries, but
at the same time all the programmers would receive perpetual royalties?
Programmers who speak up would improve things somehow, but there'd be less
waste from boss' ego features - what if the newly outspoken developers want to
add ego features?

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georgist
Nice questions. if we had 'teams' of programmers and each team competes for
new members, that is where 'the baseball like draft' analogy from. The
programmers would be earning an income from their team so I am not about
turning developers into contract workers. Just to clarify a team could be a
co-op( or whatever structure).

Making more money doesn't have to come from wage inflation. it can be derived
from cost saving. Just like if you are a member of housing co-op, you still
pay rent but the benefits you derive are incomparable if you just paid
directly to a landlord.

For a capitalistic business, the two options are either pay a fixed monthly
wage and keep most of the profit or have no upfront wage costs and share your
profits(royalties).It all comes down to preferences and what position each
party wants/can negotiate.

It is not perfection I seek but less options that I seek to avoid. About Egos
that where the "xprize' esque comes in, business pay for explicit specific
outcomes(think of it as a service level agreement).

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Stanleyc23
Im still a bit confused. I've been on both the building side and the hiring
side so I'd be in your target market. Can you contrast this model from hiring
a typical dev shop or freelancer to fill a project spec for me? The business
saves money, but pays royalties? The dev team gets a monthly wage but have to
live together?

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bobwaycott
Can you provide a walkthrough scenario or two that really explicates what this
would look like in practice?

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georgist
A programmer is a member of a 'guild', where he/she draws a monthly income. A
business needs some sales/biz dev automation done. The usual approach is to
either hire someone or contract out the work, what I propose instead is that
the business puts out specific outcomes that they want with a monetary value.

For example; we will pay x amount per customer who stays for 3 years and we
spend only time(t) per week servicing this customer. The benefit here
is,instead of maybe just creating a DB and automating invoice collection(which
are just features and piecemeal work) the programmer and business are forced
to look at the totality of biz operations and explicitly state the cost and
value of each action, step and procedure.This way a programmer can directly
identify the value that they created from cost savings or higher billings. To
me the 'Xprize' is about specific successes and outcomes.Even if these
outcomes may take time to be seen, the programmer is earning an income from
the guild and the business pays up for actual value when it is experienced.

~~~
ryporter
X Prizes (and their ilk) are great, but they have limited application. So much
of what developers do is not directly measurable. For example, how do you
measure the value of a scalable, modular, and extensible platform that will
serve as a basis for growth over the next 5-10 years? By only rewarding what
you can measure now, you risk running up a lot of technical debt in pursuit of
those metrics.

~~~
georgist
" For example, how do you measure the value of a scalable, modular, and
extensible platform that will serve as a basis for growth over the next 5-10
years?" your questions provides evidence of why I would prefer a wage free
environment. As it currently stands now, a business will pay you an upfront
fee to develop this platform, and earn most of the profit for the next ten
years. I would rather earn a royalty from my platform in all these ten years(
this sorts out the technical debt issue).

Again this is not about worker Vs business, it is about what arrangement makes
more money for everyone especially from the business perspective, and are
incentives aligned.

~~~
ryporter
That's sort of how startups work, with equity grants to early employees. What
you are proposing for larger businesses is simply impractical and so
inconsistent with the current state of affairs that it really has no chance.
To succeed, you're going to have to fundamentally shift our business culture.
I see the ideal that you are striving for, but I can't fathom a path to get
there from here.

