Distribution of effort in a truly open org

[chadwhitacre]

I think there might be an interesting point to be made about how in open source projects and organizations that practice open hiring, there's a smooth distribution of effort vs. a blocky distribution in a traditional-hiring org. Instead of mostly full-time with a few half-time people, effort in an open org is continuous from super-full-time to almost-but-not-quite-never.

I've been aware of this for a while but I just realized that this one fellow who helps with Gratipay chimes in probably once a year ... but it's on important fraud review tickets. He represents that long tail of partial effort that can be amassed into a single org when open hiring is the norm.

[semioticrobotic]

I like it! Resonates tangentially, perhaps, with part of Clay Shirky's argument in Here Comes Everybody.

[chadwhitacre]

Uh-oh. Somehow you knew that I am only a few pages from the end of the last book you put me onto (Weber's Success of Open Source), didn't you, @semioticrobotic? 😆 😉

[semioticrobotic]

If only I could find a profession that allowed me to indulge my penchant for assigning homework, @whit537.