Let me first make a general comment, and then I will address each of your reservations individually. The question isn't whether there are some virtues to a bounty system that will be lost by hiring full-time employees, but whether on the whole having full-time employees is better than having exclusively bounties. I don't see why we can't have a mix of bounties and full-time employees. It seems to me that if the full-time employees act in concert, then they could decide, with the approval of the board, what specifically . I can't emphasize enough that we have millions of dollars at our disposal, and we ought to use it intelligently and effectively.
I really don't know. I'm split on this issue, honestly, as you can tell from my posts. I have favored full-time employees before because I know the talent is excellent and I know they will get the job done, but at the same time, I now realize this subtle difference in mechanism of motivation could mean a lot down the road, on a systems level. It also forces those developers to become an authority and would probably burden them with managerial responsibilities than they normally have to. I know at least one developer that does not want to deal with that kind of stuff. I asked for their input in the Dev Thread to come in here in order to voice their side, but I like to think these guys simply wish to stay out of the politics and just do what they do best by solving problems when presented clear cut objectives with a very clear cut reward. But I don't know, I wish they spoke more on this topic.
I think there is a greater variety of personalities among programmers than you're acknowledging. Of course *some* programmers won't want to get involved in the managerial and political side of the project, but it doesn't follow that there isn't a good programmer who not only won't mind this side, but may actually enjoy it! Not every full-time programmer needs to be a manager, one or two, who could represent the interests of the devs in discussion with the board would probably be enough. In any case, it seems bizarre to let your suspicion that developers won't want managerial responsibilities stop you from searching for them. What do you think?
On that note, I think it is important that the board members explicitly answer rbdrbd's question: "Do we have anyone on the board that has "boot on the ground" operational experience growing profitable software/tech startups with more than 5-10 employees?"
I do not. The quieter board members like Brock Pierce and Jonathan Yantis I do believe so. I will let the others who have accounts here speak for themselves. Anyway, looking into it some more, I found this interesting article that involves both Brock and Jonathan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGEThank you for engaging my question, hopefully the other board members will also respond. Is there a place I can find an exhaustive list of the Mastercoin board members?