Hi all, So, there are many questions here, and I'm afraid that I don't have the time to answer them all right now in the detail they deserve. :-( So this is a reply to some of the key aspects, and I'll try to follow up on the others when I have a bit more time available.
I'm very aware that there are multiple roles here. If we had the funds available, then we'd be hiring multiple people here - this is something that we'll hopefully be able to do in a year or so. At the moment, an 'all-purpose' hire seems to be the best way forward, with the expectation that they can specialise in one or more roles in the future depending on their abilities. There is a *lot* that can be done here, and the main limitation we're facing is not having someone available that can do them. I don't expect that they will be fiddling their thumbs - probably more likely they'll be rather overworked. :-/ In terms of contractors, we did look into this option, and unfortunately it appears to be untenable at the current time. We were being quoted ~£500 for a person-day with rather generic skills, and my expectation is that those costs would only increase as more of a speciality is needed. Contracting people *really* isn't cost-effective. Unless you know of organisations or advertisement mechanisms that might be able to provide contractors at a reasonable price per hour? We've also had negative experiences contracting people to do development work (e.g. we ran with a rather basic and inefficient direct debit sign-up form last year because the person we were contracting to do a better form wasn't able to deliver), and additionally there are very important incidental benefits to having a tech expert available 'on tap' in the office. In terms of thinking about this role, and the future direction of it: there's a reason why this has been in the planning process since 2011. We've been thinking about the best approaches for some time, and as a result that thinking has gone through various distinct phases (as have been documented by the various on-wiki pages on this topic). This job description has gone through the full process of board discussion and approval. Hiring paid development/sysadmin expertise is far overdue, and I've been putting in a significant amount of volunteer time to cover that expertise gap as a result. In hindsight in my role as a trustee, I should have been asking for help with that work - but in my role as a volunteer it has always appeared to be easier to do things directly myself rather than bringing other volunteers up to speed on the issues. Sorry about this. I'm a fan of the potential 'community liaison' role, but a) that role would be much broader than the developer needs that we have, and b) we don't have a budget line (or spare funds that could be turned into a new budget line) right now. This is something that definitely needs to be thought about for WMUK's 2013 activity plan. I'd really appreciate suggestions of ways to improve the job description - particularly including increasing the information given in the advertisement, and the best salary range to aim at. Tom, perhaps we could talk by telephone about this tomorrow? If anyone else has suggestions for changes, please either make them to the job description directly, or otherwise raise them on the talk page (which is a much more time-efficient mechanism than emails for this sort of thing!) Thanks, Mike P.S. Charles's experiences with being a WMUK employee aren't particularly relevant here since WMUK has changed *significantly* since then. Charles, I would very much recommend visiting the WMUK office and having a chat with Jon about our current management processes if you're interested in finding out the current staff experiences and recommending improvements to them. On 18 Jun 2012, at 20:38, Thomas Morton wrote: > Finding make work is inefficient. Especially if you hire them knowing > you have 0.8 FTE, but find they lack the experience to perform a > quarter of that. > > It's better to figure out the work in order of importance (I.e we must > achieve this by year end, or this is not so important) ten figure out > how to fulfill it. > > But from the listed work so far, there is a lot lot less > non-specialist work than justifies a full time individual. > > Tom Morton > > On 18 Jun 2012, at 19:39, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dal...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On 18 June 2012 19:15, Charles Matthews <charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com> >> wrote: >>> On 18 June 2012 18:12, Thomas Morton <morton.tho...@googlemail.com> wrote: >>> >>> [things that make sense to me] >>> >>> I'd also like to see quantification. Is the current provable need 0.7 >>> of a person or 1.5 persons? I'm still enough of a mathematician to >>> think that it's unlikely to be a whole number (and I guess Tom D. is >>> too). >> >> As a mathematician, I agree with you. Experience, however, tells me >> that there is always enough work for between 10% and 20% more people >> than you have! If you have enough work for 0.7 FTE, then as soon as >> you hire someone you'll find another 0.5 FTE worth of work appears. I >> don't think there is any real risk of hiring someone and not being >> able to find useful things for them to do. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimedia UK mailing list >> wikimediau...@wikimedia.org >> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l >> WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia UK mailing list > wikimediau...@wikimedia.org > http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l > WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ Wikimedia UK mailing list wikimediau...@wikimedia.org http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
