Team Proposal: Clearwood

[Clearwood]

Hello World.
I am Clearwood, a smart contracts developer. Over the past years, I have been closely embedded in the Ethereum ecosystem, working on Layer2 scaling, most recently with optimistic roll-ups.

I have experience with UTXO chains, building dApps, and strive for perfection. Working in decentralized and international teams for years, I know the pitfalls in organization and project alignment while being separated by oceans, continents, and time zones.

I am nominating myself as a new team member. At SushiSwap, I have been working together with @BoringCrypto to make sure to deliver BentoBox on time. I value the collaboration, being able to bounce ideas back and forth, trying to find the error in each other’s thoughts until arriving at an optimal solution.

Originally, developing on Sushi was a distraction from my other obligations but working on BentoBox and getting to know the hard-working people, both on the team and besides it, made me want to stay and make it what it developed into over the last month: my full-time occupation. It is love when the day turns into the night and the eyes are still focussed on the next line of codes and problems solve themselves overnight.

I want to hack our contracts before they go into production, find bugs before they go live. Over the coming weeks, I will invest my time into covering every line of our contracts with unit tests, starting with BentoBox.

However, smart contract development should not be limited to security. Efficiency is key, to limit the costs for users. It is crucial for us, that the costs of using SushiSwap are as small as possible, to drive and increase user interaction. Instrumental on this end will be implementing SushiSwap V2 on top of BentoBox.

Additionally, I will continue to work on products surrounding those smart contracts, such as my current work on the BentoBox subgraph with @I’m Software.

Currently living in Europe, I hope to relocate to Asia in the coming year.
Currently trying to brush up on my Mandarin.

Should SushiSwap hire me?

Should SushiSwap hire me?

• Yes, with a salary of 100k USDC + 200k SUSHI
• Yes, with a salary of 60k USDC + 250k SUSHI
• No

[0xNigiri]

Just to clarify, this proposal would be for 1 year?
So either 100k + 200k sushi = 524k USD for 1 year of salary
or
60k + 250k sushi = 590k USD for 1 year of salary.

Just to give a comparison :
Software engineer at google average: 202k USD
Software engineer at Facebook average: 224k USD
Software engineer at apple average: 185k USD
(https://www.gadgetsnow.com/slideshows/these-are-the-average-salaries-of-software-engineers-at-apple-google-facebook-and-10-other-tech-companies/facebook-224003-is-the-average-salary-for-software-engineers/photolist/67675915.cms)

I’ve worked in Silicon Valley for Google and others big tech companies.

Now people will say it’s crypto and it’s different, I get it.
But if we want this project to survive, I don’t think that these numbers make sense.
Don’t want to remove anything from you Clearwood. You do a great job but salary needs to adjust to the evolution of the market.

When Levx, ctrl, OmokaseBar and JiroOno were hired, the project was smaller and had more risk. Yearn was not here as an example. Therefore the higher salary was there to balance the risk.
Now that the platform is more stable and with better partnership we should adjust the salary.

We should also add vesting for the Sushi.

I think that right now, a salary of around 100k + 50k/75k sushi = 206k to 260k per year, makes more sense.
I will also add a vesting cliff of 6 months or 1 year to the sushi.

Based on these points, my vote will go to no for the proposal as it is right now.

I’m open to discussion.

0xNigiri

[levx.io]

It’s true that when at least my proposal was up, sushi price was much lower than now($0.7 as I remember) and yearn merger wasn’t even planned at that time so uncertainty was higher than now.

But I still believe clearwood is a good dev so he deserves 100k usd + 200k sushi. In this way, we could have more and more talents working for our protocol which obviously is good for the whole community.

[0xNigiri]

But we won’t be able to keep paying people 500k per year.
I mean I understand you need to pay a good amount to have the best dev. But 500k per person is unsustainable from my point of view.

[levx.io]

Yeah you’re right. I agree with you.

[Kastrye]

Perhaps it’s a little early to be hiring on our 4th dev into core team, that is a substantial amount of money.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Clearwood is great, but maybe in a few months when the water has settled a little?

[BlackCat]

Agreed with you! The salary can be expanded next year if his performance is well. 250k/y is made sense to me.

[SushiAllDay]

This is a persuasive argument against the proposal and it makes total sense to a new community member like myself.

[0xMaki]

I think Clearwood contributions are stellar in bringing Bentobox to the finish line and we should definitely add him to the team as a fulltime core dev to assist in the QA team under supervision of more senior individuals like Boring, levx, Jiro and Omakase.

We currently don’t have a clear compensation model at the moment, I’ll let the community speak out but I think the base salary at 100k is a minimum, Sushi can always be adjusted + vested to make sure everyone is motivated to perform at their best capacity.

I am positive on this proposal and we can always do weighted average like mine in case of contention.

[CryptoLamer]

Looks like everyone here agrees that it would be great to have Clearwood in the dev team. The question seems to be the amount of the salary, so may be there should be a new proposal - with more options for this amount?

[Pedrowww]

Clearwood’s contributions have been great and he’s been both committed and insightful. But it’s true that the asking salary is totally disconnected from industry standards (a software dev compensation package in Europe is usually around $80K). Since Clearwood is a fairly new (yet active) contributor, I’d suggest we onboard him as a freelancer (like Boring). It’s a more reasonable way to test him before committing to a formal hire.

That being said, I do think that the conversation about the hiring process should be ironed out a little better. Having contributors pitch their applications to the community is great, but let them choose their salary + vested sushi amounts puts the community on the spot with voting options like “salary A”, “salary B”, “no”.

I’m a former hiring manager and have interviewed and hired hundreds of candidates in my past life, and having a clear salary grid helps immensely on this front, aside from being an indispensable financial management tool. It could of course evolve over time, but we would benefit from more rigor and transparency on that front. Happy to discuss further.

[zafalijadev]

Someone should represent the community in hiring new developers, trying to negotiate the best deal for both parts.
In the earliest days of sushiswap someone tried to formalise the hiring process and he was told that crypto is different and that you need chemistry to build a team, both of these statements are definitely true…but someone on the core team should play the devil’s advocate, since we can’t hyper-formalise the hiring process but at the same time we can’t hire everyone.

With that being said I think that his salary is not a problem…we can afford to pay 500k per year after all…I mean, if he’s good, why not?
The real problem is the disparity between him and older developers/team members: people who kept working when shit hit the fan (when sushi was labelled as a scam project) can’t be paid less than the latest new entry

Anyway crypto is very risky and volatile so 250k SUSHI is not that much…ok, now it’s worth 500k USD but what happens if ETH flash-crashes?
What if SUSHI gets hacked?
What if community votes to stop SUSHI staking program, hence making SUSHI yet another useless governance token?
I’ll tell you what, SUSHI goes down and devs go broke.
This is why I voted 60k USD + 250k SUSHI : if he gets to work with that salary he’s really exposed to SUSHI…but again, are we overpaying him? Please notice that Boring is getting paid 100k SUSHI in total for something that could massively increase our TVL and then $SUSHI price…so we are either overpaying clearwood or underpaying bentobox.
I know comparisons are toxic and that putting your hands in someone else’s pockets really sucks, but the truth is someone HAS to play the devil’s advocate for sushiswap’s sake
Sorry if I’ve been boring lol

[Clearwood]

I would be more than happy to have my income in SUSHI after taxes and legal costs to be vested. If I commit my time to a project I want to be able to participate in its governance and be exposed to its ups and downs.
SushiSwap is currently not an incorporated company which means that there is a considerable legal risk for anyone working on it. Legal costs, company taxes, contributions to health insurance, a pension fund and similar aspects which are invisible in wages of Fortune 500 companies have to be added.
There is a risk to end up in personal litigation, especially when the core business logic (smart contract security) falls into someone’s responsibility.
Comparing it to the first employees of any FAANG company, they mostly got more stock options than 0.08%.

In the end, it comes down to whether you value the addition of myself as a team member as a net profit for the project.

Having the commitment to be paid for a year would enable me to plan my future accordingly in a way that freelance work can not, in that case, I would need to stick with my current obligations.

[SushiAllDay]

I think your addition to the SushiSwap team is welcomed. 0xMaki, himself acknowledged your contribution to Bentobox and that holds quite a bit of weight.

It’s pretty difficult to quantify the legal risk you’ve brought up but I am interested to see how all this unfold because I lack the wisdom and experience in approaching this situation. What I do understand is…its healthier to over-communicate your non-negotiable and desires so that the community could better understand how to move forward with your ask.

Having the FAANG companies as a benchmark is a good start but I feel we could perhaps learn from other established team like Yearn Finance or Aave or Synthetix?

[0xNigiri]

I am myself doing consulting in the Defi world with companies that are not incorporated and I am aware of the legal, company, and health insurance cost.
I understand that FANNG have this and that’s why I agree we could pay more than the average FANNG, I just think that we could have a middle ground here.

Also if you work for a FANNG you get your stock options on 4 years vesting with a 1-year cliff. This is the industry standard. Should we do the same with the sushi?

Like I said I value the addition of yourself to the team but unfortunately not at +500k per year.
If we do that, we will never be able to continue hiring new devs and make sure Sushi grows.
I will open another discussion to discuss the creation of a guideline for hiring. (I manage hr department for other companies)

In the meantime, I think we should wait to hire you. We could probably give you a grant for all the work done.
Again, I’m open to discussion.

[Clearwood]

I wanted to add a bit of background information on how this post came to be:
After lurking in the shadows for some time I created a proposal to implement xSushi V2. After going over two different methods to approach the project, Boring and I reached a consensus that neither would work. After a discussion with Maki about the most important project to tackle I joined in the efforts to finish BentoBox before the audit, for which I was paid by Boring.
After the delivery date, I continued my work full-time. After approaching Maki for funding on a weekly basis, he asked me to post an application as a core developer here instead.

If we assume the token value, I have been both paid 800 USD and 15k USD for a day of work this year. But I don’t think the dollar comparisons of the momentary token price lead very far, as I would take a bet on the future of the project while being able to actively influence it.
The salary options posted here are those agreed upon for the other core developers whose risks and responsibilities I would share. I see remuneration as hard facts on the valuation of someone and would be unhappy to receive significantly less than my peers. I would be more than happy to lock/vest SUSHI for a longer duration while retaining the voting power.

If all my legal, company, and tax advisory costs would be covered by SushiSwap, that would definitely make a difference to me. If the USD value of the SUSHI based portion of the salary matters, there could also be a proposal to change the point of reference to a USD based salary for core developers.

The precedence for small grants is even smaller than for salaries, a formalization might also be needed. I would also value a grant for the meantime to continue my work.

I appreciate you all for your participation in this thread.

[0xMaki]

If all my legal, company, and tax advisory costs would be covered by SushiSwap, that would definitely make a difference to me.

I think this is legitimate

I would be more than happy to lock/vest SUSHI for a longer duration while retaining the voting power.

We could potentially include this in a revamped proposal I think community would be more sensible to it.

After approaching Maki for funding on a weekly basis, he asked me to post an application as a core developer here instead.

I think Clearwood being part of the team is valuable for the long term and hope we can find a compensation that both him and community agree on.

[btcclever]

Can we only paid sushi valued in usd, like 200k usd worth of sushi, if sushi is 10 usd when pays salary, just deliver 20k sushi, not fixed 200k-250k sushi? If sushi is 10 usd, how can we pay 2.5M usd worth salary to a dev?

For example clearwood asked to pay 1. 60k usdc+250k sushi, or 2. 100k usdc+200k sushi. I would recommend: 1. 60k usdc+250k usd valued paid with sushi, i.e. if sushi is 5 usd, pay him 50k sushi, if sushi is 10usd, pay him 25k sushi. 2. 100k usdc+200k usd valued paid with sushi, if sushi is 5 usd, pay him 40k sushi, if sushi is 10usd, pay him 20k sushi. I am confident that sushi will be 5-10 usd in 2021. BTW, 300K USD total is already very high, like 0xNigiri said, it is 50% more than best engineers in silicon valley. It is very likely that google apple don’t hire devs in crypto, because threshold is a little lower.

And plz don’t forget to make KPI to measure team members’ performance.

[throbbingred]

I can’t speak to the specifics of @Clearwood’s comp requests, but I can speak to his overall work ethic and quality of work!

He’s made some extremely strong contributions to other projects-- he provides original, well-thought concepts and technically-sound implementations. Sushiswap would be lucky to have him, IMO.

I know I’m some anon/rando (trust me as much or as little as you’d like), but I have no connection to clearwood other than an outside observer/user.

[ImSoftware]

I’m going to avoid getting into the topic of pay, but I’ll be the first to recognise that Keno is motivated, competent, easy to talk to and receives criticisms well. He shares the qualities you’d expect to see from a high-quality developer and IMHO would make a good addition to the team alongside the other fantastic devs like Boring, Jiro, Omakase & LevX.