Re: RFC Series Editor (RSE) Statement of Work

[Michael StJohns <[e-mail]>]

On 7/29/2019 4:07 PM, Michael Richardson wrote:
> Stephen Farrell <[e-mail]> wrote:
>      >> [JL] If this is the case, I wonder if it much matters to the community
>      >> whether the role is an employee (full or part time) or a contractor
>      >> (full or part time)?
>      
>      > For reasons stated earlier on the iasa2 list and as I stated at
>      > the plenary during open mic, I remain opposed to the idea of an
>      > employee-RSE. It does seem to keep being suggested, but that won't
>      > IMO make it a better idea;-)
>
> Are you opposed to the "clerical" issue of how the person is paid,
> or are you opposed to the person being hired by interview rather than RFP?
>
Practical:

1) The general LOE for the RSE according to RFC6635 is 20 hours a week.  
It's difficult to be just a part-time employee as a salaried worker for 
various reasons including benefits, and the general assumption that if 
you're working for company A, you're not working for company B.  Throw 
in the need to do full time weeks 3-5 times a year for the RSE (IETF and 
various retreats or other meetings) and that time has to be taken from 
other employers and you get into some messy situations.

2) The employing organization (e.g. the LLC) doesn't really have the 
size to be able to handle traditional employees.  Even the ED hire is 
going to be interesting.  Think about payroll, HR, benefits, etc.  Then 
think about the need for some manager.  You could make it the LLC under 
an "employee with a contract model" and assign them to the LLC to 
manage, but there would still be a lot of things to work out.  Then 
there's "advancement" or the lack thereof.   For Ray, we punted - he was 
really a contracted for employee by the IAOC of a larger company (ISOC) 
as far as I can tell.   And placing the RSE under the ED is pretty much 
a recipe for failure for oh so many reasons.

3) Stephen's other note (surprising to me) about life tenure after a 
period of time in certain companies.  I don't think we want to limit our 
selection to countries where this isn't the law.

Relational:

1) This is a senior person who really should be co-equal with the IAB 
and IESG.  Contracts at least allow for some specification of 
relationships between these three entities without screwing up supremacy 
issues in each of the entities bailiwick.   I would expect the next 
contract to be rather restrictive on who gets to give direction to the RSE.

2) We haven't any one who could actually be a manager respected (in 
terms of the ability to actually provide value add in managing someone 
who knows more about publishing than the putative manager) by a good 
candidate for the RSE position.

Obvious:

1) Publishing is not in any way a core competency of the IETF.