3 ms·

More impressive (and useful) would be an auction of time. Percent of salary can always be gamed. I'm considering offering 5 years of a one-Saturday-per-month (

More impressive (and useful) would be an auction of time. Percent of salary can always be gamed. I'm considering offering 5 years of a one-Saturday-per-month (12-hour day) consulting commitment for somewhere around ~400-800k. Taken as an hourly rate, it seems very high, but: (a) I'll code, make introductions, advise, or whatever else is needed. (b) smart people can add high value in small amounts of time ("fresh pair of eyes" effect). I'm sure there's someone out there who could extract that much value from me. (c) if I became wildly successful, the person would be able to "pimp" my consulting services out to a client at a higher rate and pocket the difference, and (d) with the 5-year commitment there's a huge call option involved that's probably worth more than the underlying.

sliverstorm 14y ago
Sounds to me like you are just offering to be employed on a somewhat unusual schedule.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  It's different, because it takes advantage of the nonlinear value of time. It's specifically designed not to preclude other employment, hence the Saturdays. A highly competent person's marginal value per hour starts very high, then drops around the 100-hour per year mark, then goes up slightly again from 500 to 2200 hours. Most people are paid based on the bottom of that U-shaped curve. For example, pretty much any company would benefit from hiring someone like me at $1000/hour for a few hours at a time, because I'm very good at spotting problems and coming up with plausible solutions... but very few companies could justify a full-time retainer at that hourly rate. So that's the economic theory behind it. I feel like career modularity is going to be more important in the 21st century anyway. The evil of the current arrangement isn't working for other people or "being employed"; it's the lack of diversification and the fact that people are coerced into a one-size-fits-all model that has ceased to add value, especially at the upper end.

sliverstorm 14y ago

Sounds to me like you are just offering to be employed on a somewhat unusual schedule.

michaelochurch 14y ago
It's different, because it takes advantage of the nonlinear value of time. It's specifically designed not to preclude other employment, hence the Saturdays. A highly competent person's marginal value per hour starts very high, then drops around the 100-hour per year mark, then goes up slightly again from 500 to 2200 hours. Most people are paid based on the bottom of that U-shaped curve. For example, pretty much any company would benefit from hiring someone like me at $1000/hour for a few hours at a time, because I'm very good at spotting problems and coming up with plausible solutions... but very few companies could justify a full-time retainer at that hourly rate. So that's the economic theory behind it. I feel like career modularity is going to be more important in the 21st century anyway. The evil of the current arrangement isn't working for other people or "being employed"; it's the lack of diversification and the fact that people are coerced into a one-size-fits-all model that has ceased to add value, especially at the upper end.