Employment Opportunities

Hello!

I would like to start a discussion on how we can increase job opportunities in SL. Please share your ideas with me. Thanks!

Might I respectfully suggest... that you stimulate the discussion with some of your thoughts/ideas/observations.

Seconded.

Three words spring to mind... "Event Calendar Resmods".

Yes, I'm volunteering.

Im assuming you are talking about "volunteer positions" rather than something that will actually cost LL any money.

Lewis

You may also want to utilize the sldevelopers.com forum.

As a content creator, unfortunately I think that the most useful ways to improve job opportunities that myself and those in similar positions could create would involve development work to support us by providing flexibility with the management and distribution of our products and services. As LL seem to be considerably backed-up with development already it seems quite pointless to list through possible changes that would achieve this.

As an example of this, however, one big change that would help foster job opportunities (both developer jobs and sales jobs) would be a much more flexible permissions system which was discussed on the forums with Cory early last year. Judging from Robin Linden's post yesterday (/139/9f/94727/1.html) it appears that this isn't sometihng that will be happening any time soon.

It would just be temporary, but I'd like to see a world's fair--something of the order of Burning Life, but with each builder depicting a nation, and with selling and shops allowed (rather like Epcot). There could be quite a few associated events and shows that could employ people for tips or donations, as well as employing builders, scripters, and retailers.

Do you mean cute little shopping-linden-earning jobs or employment equivalent to a real life job?

My idea is to explore and create, with the community's feedback, more money-making opportunities for residents without a very steep learning curve. (Volunteering is always welcome, of course! Unfortunately, that's not most people's calling!)

Here's a way:

make it so when you set something for sale, a % of the sale goes to the creator (the creator would set the % and a min/max price).

This way there would a huge set of employment opportunities for people who wish to resell other items .. they could do demos, provide support, etc.

This is fantastic! Burning Man-like fairs, cute lil' linden shops, % of sale going to creators are all excellent ideas! Bring it on!

I thinking I'm going to like Mr Vasudha Linden!

Employment in SL... Why? I don't mean why should there be employement, cause their should. The problem is why work? I work in RL to pay for food, pay for fun and drinkies, then there is my rent, my pension, my late night drinkies and finally to pay my taxes!

I don't need to work in SL cause.. I don't pay for food, or fun or rent or require a pension and most of my drinkies are free too!

There is no class.. I can't say I'm working class I want to work harder to get to middle class, cause I can just put on a suit, change my AV and "WOOOF" I'm middle class.

I loved minerva.. There you had to eat to survive, and people had to work in farms to do that, it took time and therefore people didn't want to do it, so they paid other people to do it (creating a upper and lower class) and they got on with other things! In SL you can do nothing but convert your stripend on USD!

We need a reason to work. I can see it now.. Gordon Brown (UK Chancellor) says to everyone, we're going to give you money for nothing... but you still have to go to work! You know what would happen? 1970's Brittian AGAIN - Failing state, goverment in Debt and inflation running away... (don't look now, I think SL is there!) we need a Mrs Thatcher and kill the free money, or make you work for it and you'll soon see inflation comming under control!

Hope this helps... and If you need a UK/Irish view on the SL world, give me a shout 8-D

x

Umm I don't mean to be a stickler, but that's a goal, rather than ideas/observations. I would glean from this however, that you've identified (correctly) that there are very little employment opportunities in SL that don't come with a steep learning curve. In many ways, that's going to be hard to get around. Most non-skilled tasks are scripted.
Have you identified any areas where you see a use for low skilled employment?

I'm inclinded to think that an adult with broadband and enough computer savvy to run SL isn't going to be interested in "low-skill" employment. But then, people do sit in camping chairs and fly around to money trees.

I'm still not clear on whether we're talking about providing opportunites for people to earn real money or just a few lindens a week for fun. There's a world of difference.

To get your stripend you have work down the mine for 2 hours a week! mmmmm yep your right, no one would do this with out a reason.... For every 2 hours worked you get 100 prims to sell? I like it!

x

One word: Education.




Who can get a 'job' in Second Life?

Someone with the following qualities:

1. great reputation and a nice person (main thing)

2. someone that loves helping out

3. someone that really would benefit from the income
(not just "this was fun but I'm tired of it now"

4. someone "in the know" with regard to various intricacies of Second Life (building, land tools, textures, scripts, that kinda thing)



It's #4 where assistance can be provided, not the first three.

Sure, passing out free $L for 'jobs' and so forth might make another false economy, but education is where it is at. It makes people so much more worth hiring in SL.

I can see people wanting to hire certified individuals right out of 'school'.





Incidentally, I've got a dream to establish a "Hogwarts-like" academy in one of the upcoming Caledon sims (perhaps Caledon Highlands). I'll probably lose a nice chunk of rental property doing it, but... meh. Finally getting to the point where maybe I can have a little fun

Imagine a place where a faculty of well-proven clothiers, builders, scripters and so forth could hold classes, issue certificates and so forth. Instructors getting at least a token sum (or more) for their time from students, to keep out folks that wouldn't pay attention.

What would the following be worth on a job market?

- An advanced texturing certification from Nephaline Protagonist.
- An advanced building certification from Baron Grayson.
- An advanced scripting certification from Crystalshard Foo.

(not that any of these people are associated with me in any way whatsoever, I am merely citing some skilled people whose creations speak for themselves)

Could anyone pull off such a thing? Masters of their craft are rarely interested in teaching, or pupils. Professor Snape may be sunshine and butterflies compared to some Second Life masters.

But if it happens, I think it would carry the magic of the 'real' Hogwarts school, and its founding faculty will be no less interesting.


Job creation is just about assured as a side effect, if new students have the endorsement of well-established masters in their field.

Using camping chair technology, you can have NPCs (and just plain targets) in games, actors in builds, models in stores, or other 'service jobs' where the avatar is operated by a script.

You can reinstate a "nerfed" version of the reputation bonus to turn reps into tips, encouraging another 'service industry'. Just make sure that the value of a rep point is can never exceed the cost of giving it by enough to make it worthwhile to game it (or even at all).

Well SL, as well as RL, is currently a very complex and technically oriented society. The notion that there are lots of jobs in either world that don't rely on work with a steep learning curve is not very realistic IMHO.

Unskilled service jobs like sandwich shops, lawn maintenance, house cleaning, etc. don't really exist in SL beyond maybe escorts and camping chair sitters. What is considered unskilled labor in RL like factory work or fast food service now relies on the work of lots of business, technical and financial experts to exist.

My point is that for people to work in jobs without a lot of knowlege they have to be selling or using tools that other people who chose to climb that curve created. Currently the curve doesn't go high enough. There's lots of stuff that's pretty much impossible to create because LSL and the various prim and world capabilities are so limited. SL has to become a tiered economy with people adding value at several levels, but that's really not possible now because of the limits on permissions, building tools, and stable legal structures.

If you want to have a richer world with more niches for people to fit into, give the wannabe experts a richer tool set to create it.

Point well taken! Not "working" is always an enjoyable option. In the U.S. economy there are many who voluntarily leave the work force but obviously still spend and consume. I certainly was one of them, until recently.

However, there are people who "want" to work and want to make money, because SL is fun and it a great community and there's nothing like it out there.

Without going in to boring details of economic analysis, employment and hence income are pretty much what sustain economies. If we as a community can make "work" fun, easy and play-like, we are creating and increasing the value of the SL economy. Hence, we want to explore and create more low-skilled money-making opportunities for SL residents.

For a little while I had considered offering a service that generated notecards. Since LSL doesn't allow us to write to notecards, the basic idea was to create a set of scripts that I could sell that other scripters could put in objects.

These scripts would allow you to "Create and deliver" a notecard to a resident. In the background it would essentially do an object to object email of the data, to employees wearing a "work" HUD. The employee would get the data spewed out as chat, and they would then cut/paste the data into a new notecard and submit it back through the HUD -- and the system would deliver it to the intended resident.

Of course in the end, I figured it would probably just be more economical to lease an external server and transfer all the data in/out via emails and XML-RPC. I've even played with scripting the SL Client to have a "bot" create notecards and deliver them.

Comes back to what others here have said, that most people can either script unskilled labor, or aren't willing to pay for it.

That said -- I am thinking of hiring some people as hosts for a community, and possibly as teachers/sales people for some projects I have in the works. But it wouldn't be enough to live on in RL -- the payrates would be more along the lines of allowing Basic Account holders to work a few hours a week for spending money for new/cool stuff.

What the gheto-ization of SL? Within the current limitations of NOT being able to do business that matches my/our RL businesses - that's exactly what will happen.

MacLindinazition ala WalLindenMart = generally means low-skill, low pay.

If LL is serious about job creation - then you need to allow for users to have business accounts that I/we can tie directly to our RL businesses.


I want an Account-Name option that allows me to establish a real life account so I can have my RL business presence tied directly into SL, ie. my/our business names, domain names, business typles (DBA's, sole propt., S-corp., Inc.'s, etc) website linkage, IRS filings, etc.

Once that is implemented, I for one, would be able to offer some EXCELLENT! resources within SL to the SL population, and to my RL clients; ie. small seminars, job development, recruiting and consulting services, etc. etc. This can not be done as Merwan Marker - as I'm in the Healthcare Services Industry and my customers are NOT going to deal with Merwan Marker. They will deal with my RL business name here is SL if I could have such an account.

This would be an EXCELLENT business decision LL as many small RL businesses, especially in Healthcare, Finance, Insurance, Real Estate, Human Service, Non-Profit and Employment Recruiting require full disclosure of identity, credentials, business references, not to mention HIPAA laws. These customers/clients just won't do business without knowing who they are dealing with via. full disclosure.

Enable outgoing RPC, that would make a great many new things possible, along with potential jobs.

Vasudha: Are you the economic expert of LL? If so, maybe some reality check is in order for you. Not to be mean, but the great majority of people do not consider work as fun nor enjoyable, but as their only mean of survival. In SL, only the learning part of building, texturing, scripting, etc is "fun". When those become work to earn $L to pay for tier fee, the fun part rapidly fades.

Jobs in SL will really become popular when the earning within SL can easily and rapidly be transfered into the real world. There is no possibility of having a long term sustainable economy if it is within a closed world like SL. There comes a time when your accumulated $L just sits in your account because you have already bought everything you wanted.

I have heard before that SL was to become a platform for business... How? Not much business for virtual stuff in the real world. If you could take that virtual plane created in SL and carry it into another virtual world, that would open a new kind of business, maybe. Or how about using SL to display RL products, taking orders, and do customer relations?

But then again, why work in SL? Building was a hobby for me in SL, with some selling of the stuff I built as a bonus. Most people that do not have any skills useable in SL are here just to play, or sit in camping chairs, of socializse in clubs...

It would be a great help for everyone concerned if you could make plain and clear what SL is intended to become in the long term. Is it a business platform like the internet can be, or just a very limited and buggy sandbox for architect wanabes?

Sorry for ranting, please don't take it personally. After almost a year in SL, I just don't see the point of being here anymore.

In this particular discussion, a job might need to generate what, roughly ten or fifteen USD per month?

To pay tier on a small bit of land, maybe cover membership and some 'fun money'?

That would mean the job would have to pay out perhaps $L 4000 a month, or (very roughly) $L 100 to $L 150 per day.

This is EASY once you have even some rudimentary basic skills to apply.

The hardest part is to convince people to bother to try. After that, with just minimal patience and a Find listing, the money comes.

As such, I still believe it all goes straight back to one thing: Education. Building, scripting, textures and such.

Maybe with a sprinkle of business and marketing 101 thrown in. Who doesn't find it fun to be in charge of their own little company?

It is almost impossible to employee people right now due to group limitations and permissions issues. I think many vendors would employee sales people, but the current limitations make that impossible.