I've been advocating off-list that we do charge corporations more for workshops than we charge universities, and I think this is another good reason to do that. (While still asking our instructors to be volunteers--the additional money would all go to SWC.)
I think it's entirely likely the Software Carpentry instructors are best-in-class when it comes to teaching novices, especially scientists, about computation. Be proud, everyone, you are really, really good at this! Any company that employs scientists should absolutely be interested in our services. By charging market rates for corporate workshops we: - raise additional money to keep SWC sustainable - compete fairly with others who sell this kind of training Instructors who volunteer for corporate workshops: - support SWC by bringing in extra funds - make potentially valuable connections - get the opportunity to learn more about a corporation - all the other benefits instructors have On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 3:42 PM Ruth Collings <[email protected]> wrote: > [full disclosure: I'm currently unemployed] > > Volunteerism can quickly become a contributor to the "race to the bottom" > in capitalist systems. > > - If a massive corporation like Nike crowd-sources a new design for a > shoe, they get an awful lot of work out of people for free rather than > paying wages for actual employees. The people who do the design might be > fine with spending their time that way, but there might be plenty of other > shoe designers (??) who can't afford to work for free. > - There have been plenty of moments in libraries where, when > taxes/funding needs to be raised, those being asked for the money say "Why > can't we just operate the library on volunteers and fire all the paid > staff?". > - There are currently two strikes going on at York University and > University of Toronto by teaching assistants and contract teaching staff > who are trying to draw attention to the "adjunctification" of > post-secondary education. > > Saying that doing SWC sessions at Monsanto gives instructors a chance to > market themselves for a potential job is dangerously close to the "Do it > for free, because exposure!" flavour of exploitation. See also: unpaid > internships > > I realize I'm not making a precise point for/against anything here, but I > wanted to reinforce the idea that, while volunteering is often a positive > thing, it can also have negative effects. Don't feel guilty, but do keep > it in mind. I don't necessarily think it's part of SWC's mission to > advocate for paying teachers better, but we also don't want to unknowingly > devalue the work of our colleagues looking to be paid for this kind of > teaching. >
_______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
