zIP: 5
Layer: Company
Title: Controversy
Author: nopara73, David Molnar
Status: Obsolete
Type: Process
Created: 2022-10-02
License: lol
zkSNACKs is peculiar in a sense that the traditional command and control status hierarchies exist to a lesser degree here, than in other similar sized companies. This is the natural consequence of our cypherpunk roots, where individualism thrives and authority is frown upon. This makes us flexible, agile and adaptable. However we're no fools and we recognize this also makes collaboration between larger and larger numbers of contributors more and more difficult. And we're rapidly growing... To further delay building out centralized status hierarchies where power tend to corrupt, we prefer setting up systems that are tackling well-defined and well-acknowledged problems instead.
With our current numbers, ~40 contributors, a great source of demotivation, friction and inefficiency can be traced back to our tendency of spending large amounts of time on controversial tasks. A software developer may spend weeks on a feature that never gets merged. A writer may spend weeks on an article that never goes out. This document aims to promote the problem to our collective consciousness and proposes a workflow to resolve our controversies in a deliberate manner.
First step is to identify and collect tasks that are likely to lead to a large amounts of time wasted.
Once a task has been identified as a potential future timewaster we need to minimize the time and energy spent on it. Any further work on a controversial task may be considered disrespectful, as it's a sign that you are not respecting the time of other contributors.
Most controversial topics make no sense to deal with at all: all things considered you are better off doing other things. However some are worth going through the pain it means to resolve them, but it must be done in a more rigorous manner.
Bitcoin ain't all sunshine and rainbows, but we have a good chance of making it so. What story do you want to tell your grandchildren? The one where you have to explain that they are living in the age of financial mass surveillance, because we didn't get our shit together in 2022, got lost in analysis paralysis and missed our chance of making a difference? Or the one where they can't even imagine the dystopia that we would have created if we had not gotten it together, because for them, living as sovereign individuals is as natural as breathing oxygen.