<aside> đź‘Ą Rook Labs Contributorship Strategy

Investing in people is a key way to grow the collective value of a DAO. Long-term contributors are the foundation of long-term success, and incentives that attract and retain the best talent, while aligning their interests with those of the DAO, are essential.

We offer exceptional terms and higher total compensation than big tech and traditional finance. As a long-term contributor, you are a co-owner and your potential payoff is unbounded. We offer the chance to work with the best, create original products and research, and advance the state of the art.

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References

[1] How Netflix Reinvented HR https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr

[2] https://www.levels.fyi

[3] Olympus DAO Compensation Project Plan (forked 12/29/2021) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nyiSi5XfHAbbU9wSdPVVAPASxswMxhBLbDIEz3nB1zs/edit.

[4] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Amazon/salaries/Software-Engineer/

[5] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engineer

[6] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Coinbase/salaries/Software-Engineer/

[7] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf

[8] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Amazon/

[9] https://reinventingorganizationswiki.com/theory/compensation-and-incentives/

Background

This document defines a systematic approach to contributor compensation at Rook Labs.

We want our contributorship to be a “transparent racehorse” 🏇 a lean, highly-competitive group of top performers who can operate with minimal overhead and high transparency. Compare sports teams, where athletes are paid well and catered to, but the work demands excellence, and is visible for all to judge. Those who can thrive in this environment will prosper [1].

Each contributor fulfills a role at a particular level, L1-L5. Related roles may be grouped into families such as “Engineering” or “Operations”. The "market rate" for a particular role or family and level is determined by regular wage surveys of comparable roles across benchmark industries. This data is publicly available from sources such as levels.fyi [2].

Once the market rate is determined, we define a pay scale, based on where we want our incentives to be compared to the market rate. In general we will want to ensure that contributors are always paid at competitive rates among comparable roles in their field. The pay scale defines the total compensation for a contributor. From there, we attach additional terms and provisions as described below.

Market rate determination

Rook Labs is a deep-tech project with high crossover between Big Tech, Fintech, and Traditional Finance, as well as crypto-native organizations. For simplicity, we determine a baseline market rate using Software Engineer salaries at the following reference companies for which public data is available: Amazon, Google, and Coinbase.

These companies have three different approaches to compensation, which we smooth over with a simple average, then augment, to create a fair benchmark that should be appealing across the board.

Levels