Employment Opportunities

Ty For this very sensible post from a true supporter of rich content in SL.

One mans trash is anothers treasure. Clubs are rich content to some, art is rich content to some.. and they are both trash to another.

One year ago we were run what may have been the largest resident run "job machine" in SL at that time: In 15 different location in SL we offered jobs to event hosts, employing multiple even teams all over SL. The money came from rent paid by retailers who were renting shops near the event location. This was very well received among hosts, especially after Linden Lab removed sponsorship for most event type.

Then this whole setup was totally destroy when Linden Lab introduced some arbitrary limitations to posting events on the events calendar that, at the time, made it impossible for our hosts to announce events on our land. This was so much anti-business and anti-employement that Guni and I decided to not engage in any similar effort again. The signal sent from Linden Lab appeared to be clearly against the idea of hired employement in SL.

Other reasons why we hire very little in SL now:

- Lack of contracts
- No copyright protection for content that was created for us by employees
- No rating system or functioningl recruitment agency that would help us filter the small fraction of reliable people from the flood of people who jump jobs as soon as they get bored
- Group permission system that make it too easy to steal land or destroy content

Basically what we would need is people with some traceable work history, the ability to secure the copyright of content they create while work for us and some kinda employement contract.

I suggest to implement some listing inside SL where employers can POST employment contracts that include things like job description, pay, duration of contract and so on. Employees should be able to APPLY for such contract, after which the employer should have option to ACCEPT or to REJECT.

Each accepted contract should permanently be stored in the history of the employee and become viewable by future potential employer when the employee applies for new job. This is very important and allows people to build one real resume/career. Of course the employer should be able to add some comment after the contract ends or get canceled to allow future potential employeers know how the applicant did in previous jobs.

Of course people would try to game this by have friends employ them and write great comments. Some ways to reduce this problem could be:

1. Not allow alts to act as employer
2. Allow businesses to register in SL, maybe charge one substantial fee or have other checks/requirements. Then add one filter that allows people to only view the employment history of somebody when working for registered business
3. Allow people to permanently transfer copy/mod/transfer rights. This means that I can pay somebody to build something and receive the exclusive rights, without risking that the hired person, after receive the pay, uses copies of the work elsewhere.

As of now the situation in SL is too chaotic and too risky for offering serious jobs. That is why usually there is just the low end jobs like dancers or the quick short term contracting. And not many business really invest serious amount of time and effort in train people advanced skills, such as content creation.

We have even started hire people RL, without any prior SL experience, because with them we have clear work contract and know that when we train them 3 months they will not disappear right after.

That is music to my ears.. I won't have to worry about you
replying to my posts anymore. Thanks Selene. I'm glad I could
make the point that Offshoring is Good for America.


And as for the person who has no idea.... That would be you.
Trying to make a dollar in a economically depressed town. Good luck.
Your peers are 10x ahead of you because they decided to work in
a economically booming region of the country.

Enjoy your life. When your business fails, repeat after me, "Would you like fries with that?"

I wish this forum was moderated...

Currently I need complete trust in someone to work with them, since it means passing full-perm items around, or giving them officer access to group holdings.

I would like:

1) More permissions control. There have been plenty of detailed suggestions in this thread, I won't repeat them here

2) More control of groups. The officer/member thing is not enough. Allow ranks to be created, roles to be assigned.

3) Scripting support for groups. llGetGroupKey(key groupname), llIsInGroup(key group), llGroupRank(key id, key group) and so on. The current lack of scripting related to groups is a problem.

Back to the Prim mining and other "make work" schemes:

Whatever jobs there are, they ought to be real jobs that accomplish something. It would be silly to use up server resources for no reason other than to satisfy some game-like requirement, like mining prims.

The events calendar needs to be moderated by a Linden. It is really hard to find any real events, which makes it hard to start and run any new real events.

more res mods!!!!

So do I. Some people just can't seem to get the damage a hurricane can do through thier thick skulls. Not just the physical damage but the economic damage as well. It would be nice if everyone could just pick up and move any time they felt like it, but, that just doesn't happen in the real world. Some would do well to walk a few miles in another's shoes.

Great Idea, resumes....job experience, previous notations as of the satisfaction of the employers(and possibly if there is dissatisfaction...some sort of outer intervention to perhaps remedy the situation of dissatisfaction)contracts....also another great idea, I love to have a sense of accomplishing something and am sure at least a few share in that. Maybe feedback should be based upon completion of an approved task? May be a good idea to base stipends on if they were to be kept.

Maybe someone could start up a "Department of labor"....subcontracting agency to prescreen employees/employers. I had thought of doing something like this in the past, however, still lack the proper training to accomplish all of this...but who knows...its possible, I do seem to have a lot of freetime lately in between customers, and someone recently directed me to the prim tower library(which I have actually found quite useful in the way of learning to build). Now if I only had the land to try this idea out on.

I'm not meaning to knock your idea Jahsun, because it is a good one. But I just have to ask... just how much like real life do we really want SL to be? The longer I'm in SL the more like RL it is getting to be and I don't think that is a good thing. RL is hard enough, why would anyone want to get online and go into a VR world only to have to deal with RL crap (aside from the usual online drama)? SL is too much like RL as it is (that's what The Sims is for). Please, let's not let it go too far.

I was just talking about his basic stipend and tier idea

(sorry I hacked your message down so much Jahsun... hopefully this captures the jist of it)

And thanks for the follow up. I feel strongly that stipends shouldn't be enough to live off of in SecondLife. They should be enough to play with so that players, er citizens, will learns what they can do with them and want more... through the more 'economy-friendly' method of buying them via the LindeX.

A problem with doing away with stipends/dwell/ratings bonuses of course, is the funds used to fuel camping chairs, money trees and to some degree tringo will likely dry up too. While I'm not fond of the camping chairs, they are a means of wealth distribution that gives less wealthy (in game) consumers more to spend without investing US$.

The problem with making stipends temporary is that players will create more alts when the stipends run out... if they're into stipend harvesting. Of course, they do that anyway but it would probably increase the problem.

And, I'd be all for basic accounts with a small tier allocation instead of stipend as an incentive for them to invest money into the game for their first land.



Cheers!

Completely agreed. There currently is no technical support (=features) in SL that really allow for hiring. Right now all we have are hacks and kludges built around groups, which were never really made for that purpose.

What is needed is more fine-grained delegability of access rights, and maybe even a whole new group-like feature (and I'm waiting on LL's announcement of "covenants".


Since copyright exists entirely outside of SL, it's possible right now, but just very unpractical, to use written contracts for copright transfer. But it might mean having to deal with lawyers for scripting / texturing / building in SL

LL cannot really help in this regard, since copyright of SL's content is (for the most part) not theirs, so they cannot act as a "government" to enforce it. All they can provide is an easy way to transmit and collect contracts (your suggestion for an entity that collects contract agreements and vouch for both employees' and employers' rights is nice), which would still maintain legal enforceability. The problem, as always, is in the details, because not every country regards electronic documents the same as physical ones, and applicable copyright laws might differ for the employer and employee in different nations. And, when things go wrong, would leave the problem of jurisdiction wide open.

Doesn't it strike you all that everyone here are complaining about the lack of controls that would allow ppl to hire other ppl and provide for safeguard against abuses from employees....

*/sarcastic mode/* Whatever happened to good honest people???

the american dream indeed, fully fulfiled at last within SL...

Bring me your poors, your downtroden, blah, blah, blah,

*/end sarcastic mode/*

I wish ppl in SL would leave their self-inflating egos in RL and try to pretend to be better persons. But nooooo, can't do that! WE NEED $L!!! So we can buy skins and tattoos anf fake houses to spend al our $L on....

Really, this lack of imagination from ppl has got the better of me.
I'll put all my stuff for sale at $L0.00 today on SLX, just to make the point that something non-created from nothing has no value other than that which is in your mind.

It is a shame that people who had their lives and economy destroyed
by a Hurricane decide to remain in the region knowing they will struggle
day and night. Unlike others who relocated to Salt Lake City, Atlanta,
Chicago, etc and are doing just fine. They have money in their pocket
and a roof over there head.

Ohh well, some people love to suffer. Otherwise have the smarts to realize
reality and leave. Not to mention the fact that anybody who rebuilds in a
region below sea level and is prone to hurricanes deserves whatever it is
mother nature throws at them..

Now where was I? Ohh yes, pack up and leave or stay and suffer.

Like I said... Its time to move. If Lee can do it, you can too.
Don't be lazy, get off your duff and get a job, a life, a new start
somewhere else.



The Times-Picayune

UNLIKELY HAVEN

Monday, December 05, 2005
By Tara Young
Staff writer

.
.
.
In Lee's opinion, Hurricane Katrina is the best thing that has happened to her family. She said she's certain it was only a matter of time until she could no longer shield her sons from the drugs and bloodshed crippling the Lafitte community.

"Raising boys in a project, it's not a good thing," she said. "I wanted something better for my kids."

Utah has became Lee's yellow-brick road to financial independence.
.
.
.
Source: http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1133765990242940.xml

Legally you have the same copyright protection whether there's a rights system in SL or not. What you mean is there's no enforcement of copyright law... and that comes to the first part, the lack of a mechanism for enforcing contracts.
This is something you could implement yourself.
And this is a real problem that needs to be addressed. I don't really understand why Linden Labs doesn't simply abandon this arbitrary distinction between mainland and island, and allow contiguous Linden and Private estates. There's no reason Dreamland couldn't be part of the Atoll Continent.


Some of that you can do. Group Inventory and Mainland Estates would supply the rest.

That's where Group Inventory comes in. The idea would be that every group would have one. When you Take an object owned by the group, it goes into the group inventory. Only officers can deed objects or land to the group, but members can edit and otherwise manipulate them, so long as they're in the group.

Objects in Group Inventory would have separate Officer(Owner) and Member(Group) rights, so an object could be mod/copy/transfer for officers, but copy/no-transfer for members.

When editing, if you're a member of a group and you have the right to copy a group object, that copy remains owned by the group. So you'd have to create a new object by copying a prim deeded by an officer, but the duplicate (shift-drag, create copy, etc) functions would allow you to build a group-owned object without being able to take it into your inventory.

That would be interesting. The Basic account would have a 512 tier (but no more) and could buy first land... but would have to get the money to do so from LindeX.

Oh I'm not saying doing away with stipends/dwell/ratings bonuses for premium accounts, what I'm talking about is the basic account stipends....now that you put stipend harvesting into perspective...maybe just do away with it completely for the basic accounts, then LL and premium account holders can provide more incentive for basic members to find a way to make money(i.e. money trees, camping chairs(which are a good idea for dwell....etc, although I am still not sure how that works, or jobs) maybe that would help curb stipend harvesting...because honestly....500L$ a week for premium accounts at this point in time isn't really worth harvesting because of the money you have to pay to have that premium account.....and if you are a premium member sitting in one of these camping chairs...whats the point of being a premium member...



As for this,well what I mean is that if say I(your typical very bored with SL since minerva left AV)wanted to make some L$'s but didn't want to camp or dance for minimal L$'s, it would be great to go somewhere often and find "projects"to complete for some sort of pay(thus giving me something to do in the meantime AND making L$'s) I'm not looking for taxes, or business permits...or anything of the such...but some sort of projects to keep me entertained or working at while making a few L$'s at the same time. In the meantime I will try and polish up my building skills, although that has been getting very boring without some task at hand, and yes I know I could probably go apply for some employment as a builder somewhere....but I somehow feel that I would feel like I was robbing someone of their L$'s with my building experience.

Soz if it's been suggested already, but I'm not in the mood to look through 12 pages.

--> Market research.

Companies are always giving out small rewards for people filling out questionnaires, why not L$?

That means more camping chairs. Which hurts builders because the pot of dwell money is supposed to go to content creators to improve the variety of builds in SL... *and* dwell is just as much "money minted by Linden Labs" as the stipend.

Just as in RL with programmers who write code, anyone who does computer drafting, and a bunch of other professions -- there is no way to enforce this 100%.

Because as I'm building or scripting something, I'm likely to end up with anywhere from a few to a couple dozen different versions of it. Although LL might come up with some way to make it so I can permenantly transfer rights of the final version, that's not going to do anything about the potentially dozens of other semi-completed versions I have (any one of which might be exactly the same as the final product.)

And although it might be technically possible to make every object in the game have a history (or DNA type aspect) that would make it so that when you transfer the final version, it'll transfer all the various parts and their versions that went into building the final version -- BUT it still won't prevent me from simply Copy/Pasting my script out of Second Life before tranfering to you, or writing a script that serializes out a build (along with another script to reconstruct it) and copy/pasting that out of Second Life. And of course all textures begin life outside of Second Life, so there's no way to protect those.


Managing distribution of the final objects that creators do transfer you, is something that Group Inventories could help with -- but it won't be a solution in and of itself. Just as in real life when you hire that assistant manager and give them a set of keys to your building, your going to have to simply trust that when you come back tommarow they haven't cleared out the place over night.

Ok still not understanding how that works...please work with me on this because I honestly don't know what LL pays incentives on. Maybe you would be able to better help me understand this.

I've skimmed this rather than read it in detail at 12 pages it's just too long and too circular in the parts I did read.

Like some others I want to question how much SL is a RL-like economy. Jobs might be the centre of the RL economy - but there are obvious unskilled or semiskilled jobs out there. Amazon may have caused a decline in bookshops, but it's created more jobs for packers.

But the vast majority of the jobs that fill meet that description aren't relevant in SL - shops run perfectly well empty (better possibly, since there's fewer avies consuming sim resources) and they're already usually resource hogs for textures. We don't need the packers *either* as SL gives us tools for packing that we use quite happily.

Stuffing different things in boxes requires funny perms alterations - hence the rise in networked vendors for all their risks, or a great deal of trust in the person you're employing to correctly reset all the permissions.

There aren't obvious, at least to me, low skilled job opportunities that aren't already being exploited - store cleaner might be one if estate tools are rolled out so we can give permissions to people to delete things although lots of places get round that with groups and autoreturn already.

But, with the greatest of respect, can I suggest the underpinning assumptions might be wrong. SL is not RL for a variety of reasons - including the absence of need to consume (clothes etc. and food) and the complete integration of tools that cut out low skilled jobs. Just maybe the assumptions of the economic model that Vasudha seems so keen to avoid sharing with us (did I miss it anywhere?) lest it bore us could be looked at. C'mon Vasudha, share the analysis and the models you're using some of the people here will look at it smartly - and some of us will continue to suggest that low skilled jobs in SL is NOT going to work without a complete rejig of the whole of SL. Does Phil really want a revolution?!