In Open source software, developers work on whatever project they want, whenever they want from wherever they want, as much as they want. It's pretty chill. They do this even though they are not paid (but there will still be indirect financial benefits from participating, for example that you get another project on your resume). And things gets done, even though people can choose whatever task they pick up, the bugs get resolved and the projects succeed. Often there is one dictator or a committee on top, but people can decide whichever task they want to solve without managers assigning tasks to each individual.
I'm wondering if a similar model would work in regular businesses, but just with pay (for example per hour). Would it be possible to just let people work as much as they want, whenever they want on which task they want? There could be a max (and min?) amount of hours. This would probably be a great way to work for people who have reached FI (or are close to reaching FI). One problem with work, how I currently see it, is the pressure that is in the fact that you have to show up every day for 8 hours and provide excellent (or at least decent) work for those hours on the exact tasks you got assigned. I think it would be way more chill if work life was like open-source, just with pay.
What do you think? Would it work?
Make work-life similar to Open source software development?
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ducknald_don
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Re: Make work-life similar to Open source software development?
To me it seems there are two different types of open source developer. The first is employed by a company to write software that happens to align with their mission. They may be working for RedHat writing software that complements services RedHat wants to sell or Intel writing drivers so they can sell more hardware or Oracle because supporting Java stops Microsoft from getting too big for their boots. This is a job just like any other software job and I think you are as likely to get the flexibility you want as in any other role these companies offer. IE not very likely.
On the other side are people who do it for the love of the work. These are the people who write blog posts complaining about how difficult it is to keep projects financed, we see an endless stream of them on HN, Reddit et al. Their work isn't valued by the companies that use their creative output, you can see this by how little financial support they give. To some extent this is natural, if you give your software away then you are putting a value of zero on it. It's little surprise the "customers" don't value it. Not online that but they seem happy to dump their thankless bugs, support and feature requests on these poor developers. This is common across all businesses, whatever market you are in the bottom tier is like a cesspit, move up the market and you get treated with more respect.
Of course there are a some examples that appear to work for the individual and customer but in my experience they are few and far between. Contrast that with a commercial endeavour where every customer is a validation of your effort simply because they are willing to put their hand in their pocket to buy your offering. Open source devalues the work of software developers hence I don't see much use in the model.
On the other side are people who do it for the love of the work. These are the people who write blog posts complaining about how difficult it is to keep projects financed, we see an endless stream of them on HN, Reddit et al. Their work isn't valued by the companies that use their creative output, you can see this by how little financial support they give. To some extent this is natural, if you give your software away then you are putting a value of zero on it. It's little surprise the "customers" don't value it. Not online that but they seem happy to dump their thankless bugs, support and feature requests on these poor developers. This is common across all businesses, whatever market you are in the bottom tier is like a cesspit, move up the market and you get treated with more respect.
Of course there are a some examples that appear to work for the individual and customer but in my experience they are few and far between. Contrast that with a commercial endeavour where every customer is a validation of your effort simply because they are willing to put their hand in their pocket to buy your offering. Open source devalues the work of software developers hence I don't see much use in the model.