Re: admin director (was The other parts of the report..)

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

Brian,

Based on the experiences of the last month or so, I'm not
enthused --to put it mildly-- to put "write a job description"
into the hands of a committee appointed by unknown methods, with
an unknown set of instructions, and supervised by groups who
have no obvious charter (or experience) for this type of work.
You may well be right that "the person" is important, but I
think the current environment is going to make it hard to hire
the right person, or to have confidence that we have done so,
especially with all of the surrounding uncertainty about
structure and mission.  

The notion that we are going to hire this person in parallel
with writing and getting proposals on RFPs that he or she will
have to manage also makes no organization sense to me.   Before,
so that the person can participate in the RFP effort (which I
think was the original plan) makes sense.  After, so the person
taking the job understands what he or she has to work with...
maybe not ideal, but workable.  But "in parallel" is the sort of
thing that, IMO, would cause anyone competent, experienced, and
who understands the issues to be extremely reluctant to consider
the job.  And I can't believe that we want to bias the selection
process against the competent, experience, and comprehending.

So, if "be specific about what this job is about" is going to be
delegated from "community review and approval of a proposal that
is presumably based on Carl's report" to "a team that writes a
job description", then I think the community needs to review and
approve that job description before any hiring effort starts.

Otherwise, we seem to be sliding backwards into these decisions.
And that just is not, IMO, the way to work through a "you bet
the entire future of the IETF" process.

    john


--On Monday, 13 September, 2004 16:55 +0200 Brian E Carpenter
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> We have to bootstrap somehow. Asking ISOC to hire someone, on
> a fixed term contract of employment, would work for me. Of
> course,
> the team that searches for and interviews the candidates has to
> start by writing a job description.
> 
>      Brian
> 
> John C Klensin wrote:
>> 
>> --On Friday, 10 September, 2004 08:49 -0400 scott bradner
>> <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> imo we should start a search for a Administrative Director
>>> now
>> 
>> 
>> Good idea, except...
>> 
>> 	* We have only the vaguest of job descriptions
>> 	
>> 	* We don't know who the individual would actually be
>> 	working for organizationally, which could make a
>> 	difference in who would be interested
>> 	
>> 	* We don't know enough about organizational structure to
>> 	be able to have a serious discussion about benefits,
>> 	etc., which could make a difference.  We don't even
>> 	know, for sure, if we have budget for salary, since that
>> 	presumably would need to be approved by the Board of
>> 	ISOC and/or the hypothetical foundation.
>> 	
>> 	* We can't make any assurances about how long the job
>> 	commitment is good for, because we don't have a
>> 	structure to put around it.  
>> 
>> And, with regard to the "contractor" question, there are two
>> ways of doing "contractor":
>> 
>> 	(1) The individual is hired as an independent
>> 	contractor, and hence is responsible for his or her own
>> 	insurance, benefits, taxes, etc., but is otherwise
>> 	essentially an employee.  In particular, we select the
>> 	individual who is going to be in the role.  The problem
>> 	with those models is that sometimes the taxing
>> 	authorities don't like them and pronounce words that, in
>> 	US-speak are "statutory employee".  Those are _very_ bad
>> 	words; for an explanation contact your friendly attorney
>> 	or accountant.
>> 	
>> 	(2) We hire a company to supply us someone.  Problem is
>> 	that, at the bottom line, they pick the someone. 
>> 
>> Neither of these are consistent with the level of control
>> which the IETF leadership (or their spokespeople) think they
>> need.  Of course, that is another unresolved issue.
>> 
>> Sorry.
>> 
>>       john
>> 
>> 
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