Re: letters from Ted & Alissa

[Ted Hardie <[e-mail]>]

Hi Scott,

The following is a personal opinion, not the view of the IAB.

On Wed, Jul 3, 2019 at 12:34 PM Scott O. Bradner <[e-mail]> wrote:

> thanks to Ted & Alissa - these letters were (actually) helpful in clearing
> up some lingering questions - they
> are somewhat ‘it was not us’ in tone but that appears to be the case.
>
> now we need to hear from the RSOC in regards to at least two outstanding
> questions
>
> 1/ why did the RSOC decide to a/ rebid the RSE contract 2 years early & b/
> decide to tell the world about it a further
>     2 years earlier
>
> 2/ did the RSOC consider that the move could be seen as a termination
> notice
>
>  there have been some limited responses to 1a & maybe 1b but nothing that
> rang true as explaining the root causes, at least to me
>
>
As I tried to lay out in the message which started the RSE Model thread, I
think there is an underlying structural problem in RFC 6635.  It presents
two different views of the RSE and those views have some inherent
conflicts.  One of those views is of a senior technical contributor to the
community who is expected to both manage the evolution of the series and
represent the value of the RFC series to others.  The other view is of a
contractor whose role is defined in a set of contracts and extensions and
who is overseen by a set of unpaid volunteers.  As Mike St. Johns noted,
being a contractor does not mean being a low-level employee; you can have
contractors who are subject matter experts and quite well-valued
contributors to a community effort.  But even for those subject matter
experts, there are communications which are addressed to them as a
contractor.

What that means is that this role inherently has two styles communication;
that of peers talking to a peer and that of an organization talking to a
contractor.  Linguists would talk about those styles as "registers" and the
act of moving between them as "register switching".

I think this particular case was one of a failed register switch.  The RSOC
had a message to deliver that was, essentially, good job, we'd like to
renew the contract.  Had they delivered that and stopped, it seems unlikely
that we would be where we are right now.  But they went on and delivered a
second message, about their intent to work on concerns about the RFP
process that Heather and others raised.  That message was, at least as far
as I can tell, meant in the other register:  peers talking to a peer about
an issue which she had raised.  Had they delivered it in a different
context where that register was clear, the situation might be different.
But by combining them into a single message, the result was that the
communication was taken by Heather to be addressed to her as a contractor,
not as a peer.  In that context, it came across very negatively, and it is
not just Heather who perceived it that way.  Several senior members of the
community have said to me, essentially, "As a contractor, if I had received
that message, I'd take it as a vote of no-confidence too."  What's been
striking has been that each person who has said that to me started with "As
a contractor" or something similar.  That's part of why I believe that this
is essentially a register switching problem.

It would be easy to chalk that up to a simple error on the part of the
RSOC, but I honestly think I might have made a similar mistake in their
shoes.  Almost all the RSOC's interaction with the RSE are on a peer
basis.  Switching out of it to contractor mode was not the norm, and
lapsing into that peer mode again quickly seems like an almost inevitable
result.   That's partly why I think we will eventually need a structural
resolution rather than simply starting over again with a new RSE.  It would
be great if we could resolve that before the next RSE contract is let, but
I think it will take time and that we will instead need to have the next
RSE be part of that discussion.


> if the RSOC was dissatisfied with Heather’s job performance & wants to say
> that the root cause was a
> personnel issue and thus not discussible in public so be it - but such a
> response will not stop the
> speculation that the cause was related to the genesis of the RFC++ BoF (in
> spite of what Alissa wrote)
>
> but even such an assertion (that was a personnel issue) does not answer
> question 2
>
> I'll note, as I have before, that personnel discussion are generally
judged by outcomes, since the details are not available.  In this case, the
field of outcomes included that of re-bidding at once, and I note that they
did not choose that outcome.

I’m sure that others will have their own question for the RSOC but the
> above are mine
>
>
regards,

Ted

> Scott
>