[Council;DR] Council Discussion Summary, Weeks 2021/09-10

[Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg)]

Council;DR Weeks 2021/09-10: 2021-03-01 to 2021-03-15

We have another new developer on staff: welcome Martin (freaktechnik)!

Employment:
- Martin joined the team as developer.
- There are discussions related to potential new hires.
- There are discussions related to existing hires.

Communication / Transparency:
- The financial report should go out this week, and ongoing financial
information will also be included on https://stats.thunderbird.net
- There was a town hall meeting. Thanks to everyone attending!
- There are plans to test Big Blue Button at the next town hall meeting.
- A draft for the CPG mail is currently being discussed.

___

Voting record for official motions in this period:

A motion related to employment has passed.

____
"We" is the council speaking in the name of the Thunderbird project.

Some aspects may be missing or intentionally vague, as the council works
with confidential information that cannot be shared with the public.
_______________________________________________
tb-planning mailing list
tb-pl...@mozilla.org
https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/tb-planning

[Ben Bucksch]

Hey Dirk and TB Council,

May I suggest to use the following wording for the future meeting notes?

"- There were discussions about certain subjects."

If the Council were to use that phrase, finally the meeting notes could
be sent within a matter of days after the meeting. Unless there is some
objection from a Council member about some details in that phrase, of
course. In that case, we would understand that the report is delayed in
some cases.


Am 22.03.21 um 02:01 schrieb Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg):

> Employment:
> - Martin joined the team as developer.

That's nice! What will be his work area? Independent and additionally to
what, would he like to post a little introduction about himself? Would
be nice to get to know him.

> - There are discussions related to potential new hires.

For which positions? Do you already have candidates?

> - There are discussions related to existing hires.

Please exclude names, but please do include the subjects discussed.

Ben

[Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg)]

Hi Ben,

> "- There were discussions about certain subjects."

Just to make sure: I'm almost certain the first paragraph was sarcasm,
but if it was an honest suggestion I'm not getting it and it would be
great if you can rephrase it. I'm taking it as sarcasm for now. ;)

As you might have read in minutes the original idea for Council;DR was
to have intentionally vague statements marked with a star for everything
that is discussed internally but cannot get communicated about in
public, so people can get an idea about what high-level topics the
council's secrets are in.

The star idea did not find a majority, but we compromised by keeping
unmarked vague statements (and adding a disclaimer that they are
intentional) to remain reasonably topic-complete. I personally like that
more than not showing what kind of secrets we are working with, but the
downside is of course having statements with only a tiny bit of information.

>> Martin

> What will be his work area?

As some may know, Martin was previously involved with Thunderbird's chat
system, so that would be a natural place to start at. But that is not a
fixed confinement, developer roles are relatively fluent.

So the technically correct but useless answer would be "Thunderbird" :P

> For which positions?
"Senior Software Engineer" and "Software Engineer"; you can always find
the current list on https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/careers/

> Do you already have candidates?

Obviously there are candidates (how else to discuss "potential new
hires"?), but applications remain open until we have signed the
contracts for each position.

> Please exclude names, but please do include the subjects discussed.

Council;DR was approved with the baseline of "no people matters", which
includes concrete topics; the last two hires could be named as Magnus
got the ok to publish them in the minutes, but the baseline still holds.

That being said, I don't really see what benefit publishing this
information could have? There were good arguments to keep anything
personal regarding our employees a secret, and just not including
people's names does not invalidate them.

I hope that answered at least some of your questions, and gave you an
idea where the vague statements came from.

Kind regards,
Dirk


Am 24.03.21 um 00:51 schrieb Ben Bucksch:

[Ben Bucksch]

Am 24.03.21 um 02:43 schrieb Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg):

> Hi Ben,
>
> > "- There were discussions about certain subjects."
>
> Just to make sure: I'm almost certain the first paragraph was sarcasm

Yes, of course that "suggestion" was highly ironic. Unfortunately, I
found no better way to express that we're at a point so whitewashed and
vague that it's completely useless.

To further clarify, this was not directed at you, because I know you
want transparency and are working hard on it.

> the original idea for Council;DR was to have intentionally vague

> statements ... but ... reasonably topic-complete. ... showing what

> kind of secrets we are working with

OK, it seems that I misunderstood the purpose. I thought the original
goal was to get information out more quickly, in summary form,
informally - just you personally speaking, not the Council officially -,
and without approval process, whereas the Meeting Notes are official. I
thought you speak personally and thus have more liberty to speak your mind.

Thank you for the clarifications below.

>
> >> Martin
> > What will be his work area?
> As some may know, Martin was previously involved with Thunderbird's
> chat system, so that would be a natural place to start at. But that is
> not a fixed confinement, developer roles are relatively fluent.
>

Fair enough - that little bit was already useful for orientation.

> So the technically correct but useless answer would be "Thunderbird" :P
>
> > For which positions?
> "Senior Software Engineer" and "Software Engineer"
> you can always find the current list on
> https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/careers/

Thanks.

For reference for others: There are currently 3 open position for
software engineers, one of them for a senior.

> > Do you already have candidates?
> Obviously there are candidates (how else to discuss "potential new
> hires"?), but applications remain open until we have signed the
> contracts for each position.

Maybe it's a language deficit on my side, but I understood "new hires" =
"roles" / "job postings", not "candidates". Thanks for the clarification.

> That being said, I don't really see what benefit publishing this
> information could have?

For example, I know that one or two generic hiring/invoicing companies
(not Mozilla, not TB community) get a significant amount of the
Thunderbird donations (6-digit sum, from what I gathered). I was
wondering whether you are making progress on fixing this, now that you
have the MZLA company. Part of the goal of a Thunderbird company was to
get more flexibility, which was very important, but also to get rid of
these hiring companies, but I see the expenses are still there. If you
hired somebody to take care of this, and making sure that your employees
are happy (doesn't have to be a "director"), it would still be cheaper.
I wondered whether that's one of the things discussed.

There are an number of other questions that I know need to be addressed,
and I'm wondering whether they are being discussed.

> I hope that answered at least some of your questions, and gave you an
> idea where the vague statements came from.

Yes, thank you, that was very helpful and kind.

Greetings!

[Dirk Steinmetz (rsjtdrjgfuzkfg)]

> I thought the original goal was to get information out more quickly,
> in summary form

Just to be clear: that was and is the primary goal, which topics we have
secrets in (instead of omitting them completely) is just a part of the
information to get out.

But while I indeed am the person drafting Council;DR, it is not a
personal statement: every issue goes through a one week review process
(see minutes from 2020-11-23 when we introduced Council;DR, sent to
tb-planning on 2021-01-18). That's what causes the delay of currently
one week.

> Maybe it's a language deficit on my side, but I understood "new hires"
> = "roles" / "job postings", not "candidates". Thanks for the
> clarification.

I'm also no native speaker, so this could also be me picking suboptimal
terms. In retrospective, 'candidates' does seem like a better word^^

> hiring/invoicing companies
The option of switching to direct employment was briefly mentioned in
the first Council;DR, so you can safely assume that this topic is
something that is discussed at least occasionally. ;)

Maybe I got a bit lazy in the employment section, and missed aspects
that can be phrased in a way not giving away secrets. I'll try to
reflect on that when I draft the next one.

To vaguely answer your question regarding direct employment, changes in
that direction have happened, but you might underestimate the financial
overhead of employing people, from taxes / legal things to benefits.
There seems to be a reason why said "hiring/invoicing companies" charge
the rates they charge – and it is not (only) greed. :P

Kind regards,
Dirk

Am 24.03.21 um 05:37 schrieb Ben Bucksch: