On Fri, 19 Mar 2021 23:20:58 +0100, Joerg Jaspert wrote: > Leaving out the detail of Debian paying someone for work, this has one more > thing that can backfire hard, as I just could witness in an (entirely > unrelated) org: That those hired ones got more powerful than the actual > leader. Simply by being there continuously, doing ground work, that the > actual leader(s) over time didn't want to do. With time a big bunch of the > work just got done, mostly leaving the radar of the leader then, and so they > ended up controlling much, the leader being a figurehead in the end.
I'd like to echo what Ganneff is saying. I also know from personal experience in (non-software) volunteer organizations, and a friend of mine has written her diploma thesis on this topic researching yet another NGO, that a setup with a volunteer board/committee/chairperson/president and employed executives/secretaries is difficult, as the latters are the one spending more time, collecting more information, becoming the information centre, … over time, and hereby either become the de facto power centre or at least causing struggles or fights over who actually controls the whole thing. This is not to say that I would dismiss the idea of having paid employees in a volunteer organization completely; like Sam wrote, I think paying for work that doesn't get done otherwise and (my addition) that is not a core activity of the organization -- e.g. accounting -- can make sense. But I'd like to stress that the whole construction needs careful thought in order to prevent unintended side effects as far as possible. Cheers, gregor -- .''`. https://info.comodo.priv.at -- Debian Developer https://www.debian.org : :' : OpenPGP fingerprint D1E1 316E 93A7 60A8 104D 85FA BB3A 6801 8649 AA06 `. `' Member VIBE!AT & SPI Inc. -- Supporter Free Software Foundation Europe `- NP: Bettina Wegner: Jesus
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