Introducing the Trilema jobs board

Originally I wanted this to be a dedicated site. It didn't work out. Generally I happen to be a staunch believer in the "use it first, engineer it after" philosophyⁱ, and it only now occurs to me that I had in fact diverged from it. As it happens each and every time I do that, I am actually the worse for having done it. So, here we go, a wiser me and a completely low tech job site, consisting of a category on Trilema.

It will work like so :

1. The title will indicate whether the job is [OPEN] or whether it is already being maintainedⁱⁱ. If the job is open you may apply, preferrably through contacting me on #bitcoin-assets (webirc link to the right).
2. The body will contain a complete spec. You are not to diverge from anything explicitly given. You are to make your own choices as to anything not explicitly given. You may ask for any refinements or clarifications you wish, but don't expect more than "doesn't matter" in response.
3. You are expected to negotiate your own pay.ⁱⁱⁱ If the project is going to generate revenue, it will probably be organised as a MPEx asset, and you can ask for equity, either as shares, stock options - read up on the current contracts there to form an idea. In any case you can ask for Bitcoin either as a lump or periodic payment. You will not necessarily get what you ask for, obviously, but such is the way of the world.
4. You require a WoT account in good standing to participate. You can not participate without one, irrespective of what you may think about "the real world". The real world is in fact going to require WoT presence as a matter of course in short order, whether anyone likes the idea or not, best get in ahead of the curve. Depending on the project, your account could be too new, or too poorly regarded. Neither possibility should discourage you from asking - should it be the case you will probably receive suggestions as to more suitable projects or otherwise constructive help to remedy whatever deffects.
5. Your commitment will be preserved in the shape of a signed & notarized GPG contract. Your reputation will suffer if you behave erratically, fail to deliver and so on. Your reputation is by far your most valuable asset so take good care of it.
6. Generally contracts include maintenance. This is not a boyish contest of "can you do X", but an endeavour for adults. Immense piles of useless, unmaintained code have no value and present no interest. Bear in mind that yearlong commitments are a basic requirement, and no excuses have to date been accepted.

Bitcoin is the great school for the world of the future. Take advantage of it today.

1. In staunch opposition to the autistic behaviour displayed by your average Internet-enabled software engineer, which roughly works out to "overengineer it first, use it never".

   To illustrate by example : if I wish to keep track of the sluts I fucked, I'll open a text file and simply dump names in there. Then as the file grows I use grep or whatever the fuck to make sense of it. Eventually as specific things piss me off I have the process re-engineered targetting them. Once it becomes complex enough I'll have it refactored, and so on and so forth. The goal is never to write software, the goal is always to solve problems. Meta-considerations are of interest only as the aggregate value of the thing increases past certain thresholds - I do not now nor will I ever care about the "readability" or "elegance" of codebases worth 5 bux.

   Opposite to this, if your average software engineer figures he might some day end up dating a girl, nudely on the strength of the observation that "it is possible", he will proceed to WAIT on common sense stuff like you know, talking to that mousy chick in accounting that's been giving him the eye for six weeks because he has to first write the Sluts KeepTracker 9000. Which he proceeds to do in Ruby or whatever the fuck other nonsensical piece of idiocy is fashionable at the time. And it'll have this that and the other because "that's how you write code properly", because writing code is a fashion, like literature, and it makes sense to have schools in it, like it were fucking literature, and all sorts of conceits and contrivances. They're crucially very important and everything. In the end, he ends up spending more hours fighting bugs than he spends using the tool he wrote, thus never getting rejected by an actual live female, and everyone's happy. For some values of everyone.

   These are obviously extreme exagerations, thick caricatures. Just like the actual software engineers involved. [↩]

2. [MAINTAINER], whom you can search for in the WoT. [↩]
3. There is no such thing as working for free. If you do useful things pro bono your standing will increase with it, exactly like things worked in the original empire that created that pro bono expression. [↩]