Back Office · office.temerarii.xyz
PROGRAM-OPERATIONS.md
Back Office · office.temerarii.xyz
How the work actually gets done, how episodes actually get made, and what the rules are.
Everything in this document is published before any contract starts. A rule invented
mid-season is unenforceable in practice and corrosive on a show whose whole premise is
that the process is fair and visible. If it is not written here, it is not a rule.
Most disputes come from collapsing these together. They are separate, they use different
evidence, and they are made by different people.
| Decision | Basis | Decided by | What it affects |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eligible to participate | Paperwork signed, onboarding complete | Automatic — binary check | Whether you can be on the show at all |
| Milestone accepted → paid | Objective acceptance criteria, published in advance | Machine-checkable output + the attendance log | The sprint's pay |
| Advances to the next round | Competitive judgment | Executive Chairman + Executive Managers | Your seat |
The consequence that matters: nobody argues about whether someone deserves to be paid.
The only question is whether the sprint's acceptance criteria were met. They were written
down before the sprint started, and they either were or were not.
Being excellent and being eliminated are compatible. Being eliminated and being unpaid for
work you delivered are not.
Published here because every one of these dates is something a participant needs to plan
their life around, and none of them should ever have to be asked for.
| Date | |
|---|---|
| Season 1 begins | Sun Oct 11, 2026 |
| Elimination 1 | Sat Nov 7, 2026 (week 4) |
| Elimination 2 | Sat Dec 5, 2026 (week 8) |
| Finale | Sat Jan 9, 2027 (week 13) |
Elimination streams run every 4th Saturday. If one falls on a holiday it moves
earlier, never later — the same rule that governs pay.
The finale deliberately breaks the 4-Saturday rhythm. The 4th Saturday after Elimination 2
is Jan 2, New Year weekend, and the season's biggest broadcast should not air when the
audience is away. Running it a week later also restores the 4-4-5 round ladder the budget
is built on.
Why the season does not start a week earlier. An Oct 4 start was considered and
rejected: every 4th Saturday from there lands on **Halloween, Thanksgiving weekend, and the
day after Christmas**. No federal holiday flags any of those — bank dates and audience
dates are different lists, and elimination nights are the format's tentpoles.
Both eliminations land exactly on a pay-period close, so **nobody eliminated is ever paid a
prorated part-period**. The finale falls mid-period, which costs nothing: nobody is cut at
the finale, and everyone remaining simply finishes out their last period.
Full pay schedule through 2028: docs/operator/PAY-CALENDAR.md. Regenerate with
python scripts/pay_calendar.py.
Three alternates per track — twelve in total — ranked, unpaid, and under no obligation.
They exist for one reason: if a seat empties mid-season, the show does not run a track
short for five weeks. A removal becomes a substitution.
It carries no obligations at all. No availability window. No meetings. No requirement
to watch the broadcast, stay reachable, or hold time open. Nothing is asked of you and
nothing is owed by you.
That is deliberate and it is not a technicality. The moment standby requires something —
being reachable on a Saturday, watching an episode, keeping a slot free — it stops being a
waitlist and becomes work, and unpaid work would break the promise this program makes in
public: nobody works unpaid. An alternate who is genuinely free to ignore us until
called is honest. One who is expected to hover is not.
You may take other work, including competing work. If you are unavailable when called,
you say no and we go to the next name. Saying no costs you nothing and does not remove you
from the list.
or not you are ever called
| When | A seat empties mid-season — removal, withdrawal, or a participant who cannot continue |
| Who | Highest-ranked available alternate for that track |
| Rate | The current round's rate, not Round 1's. You join the program where it is, not where it started |
| Pay start | The day you start, prorated to the end of the current pay period |
| Assessment | You are assessed from your start date. You do not inherit the record of the person you replaced, in either direction |
Rankings are refreshed after each elimination, because the field you were ranked against
has changed.
Paperwork, not availability.
Nobody goes on camera without a signed release, and release clearance is scoped per round —
it never carries forward. An alternate called on a Wednesday for a Saturday broadcast
cannot appear if their paperwork starts that Wednesday.
So: alternates sign at selection, not at call-up. The release, IP assignment and
confidentiality terms are executed when someone accepts a place on the list, kept current
across round transitions alongside the active participants', and they are told plainly that
signing creates no obligation to accept a call. It is the difference between a substitution
that happens in a day and one that takes a week — and the week is the one where the show
airs a track short.
You have a project Telegram channel and the Chairman's direct line. Both are real
access. This is how to use them so they stay useful.
The channel you choose is itself the signal. If everything goes to the direct line, the
direct line stops meaning anything, and the one call that genuinely could not wait arrives
looking like the other forty. Picking correctly is part of the job.
If you can undo it, decide it.
Most decisions are reversible. A reversible decision made quickly and wrongly costs less
than a correct decision made three days late — and you were hired to make them.
| Tier | Channel | Response | What belongs here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decide | none | — | Sprint scope. Task assignment. What ships under your brand. Brand sign-off on an episode. Accepting or rejecting a milestone against its published criteria. A logged note on a participant. |
| Inform | Project Telegram | no reply expected | Decisions already made that the Chairman should know about. Post it and carry on — you are not waiting. |
| Escalate | Project Telegram | within 24h | Scope changes that move budget or the calendar. Anything touching another EM's brand. A gate failure that will block a broadcast. A written warning. Calling up an alternate. Partner or sponsor enquiries. |
| Call | Direct line | immediately | It is about to be public and should not be. A live broadcast is in trouble. Harassment or a safety issue. An immediate-removal event. Press, legal, or a platform strike. A credential exposed on air. Money leaving the company. |
The direct line is for the irreversible and the time-critical, together. Irreversible
but not urgent is Telegram. Urgent but reversible is Telegram. Both at once is a call.
Escalate these every time, however confident you are:
The sponsor scenario in the EM hiring test is exactly this. Deciding it alone is the
failure; escalating it with a recommendation attached is the pass.
Not: "What should we do about the sponsor?"
Instead: *"Sponsor wants three episodes, $4k, competes with part of our stack. I'd
decline and offer a non-competing slot instead. Need you by Thursday or I'll hold them."*
The second one can be answered in ten seconds from a phone. The first requires a meeting,
and meetings are what this structure exists to avoid.
This matters more than the rest of the ladder, because a single point of contact becomes a
single point of failure the moment nobody has written down what to do without him.
| Tier | If no response |
|---|---|
| Inform | Nothing. You were not waiting. |
| Escalate | After 24h, decide it yourself and log the decision in the project channel with your reasoning. A silent 24 hours is consent for anything reversible. |
| Call | Default to HOLD. Do not air it, do not publish it, do not sign it. Then keep trying. The cost of a delayed episode is one episode; the cost of an irreversible mistake is the thing you were calling about. |
The standing exception: the Director's panic controls never wait for anyone. Cutting a
feed, muting a stream, or ending a broadcast for a safety or exposure reason is executed
first and reported after. Nobody is ever in trouble for cutting a stream and being wrong.
A sprint is two weeks and it is exactly the pay period. Sprint boundary and pay boundary
are the same date on purpose — there is never a partial sprint inside a pay period, and
never a payment that spans two scopes.
| When | What | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Sprint scope agreed as a team, written down: per-person deliverables, each with its acceptance criteria | EM leads, whole team agrees |
| Day 1 | Scope is posted where everyone can read it. Unwritten work is not in scope and is not owed | EM |
| Daily | Standup, on air. It is content, not overhead | Director runs it |
| Day 10 | Demo on the broadcast. You show what you built, live | Each participant |
| Day 12 | Acceptance run — gates executed, attendance log reviewed, conduct log reviewed | EM + Chairman |
| Day 14 | Milestone accepted or not. Pay period closes | Chairman |
| Day 14 | Retro → produces the next sprint's scope | Whole team |
The Day 10 demo being public is deliberate. It is the strongest accountability mechanism
in the program and it costs nothing: nobody wants to be the person with nothing to show.
For technical and creative work, done is machine-checkable and the check is named in the
contract, not described in prose:
python -m engine.sim.unify --weeks <N> --no-liveA milestone is complete when the named registry entries move from planned to certified, the
gates pass, and the command output is attached. That is not an opinion anyone has to defend.
For roles whose output is not code, acceptance criteria are still written in advance and
still stated as an observable fact — an episode aired, a brief was delivered by a date, a
decision was recorded. "Good effort" is not an acceptance criterion.
| When | What | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| T−7 days | Featured brands named. This determines whose sign-off you need | EM |
| T−3 days | Concept locked; production plan written; guests confirmed | EM / Director |
| T−3 days | Guest releases current for this round — clearance never carries forward | Director |
| T−1 day | Run-of-show published | Director |
| T−1 day | Tech check: every feed, audio levels, delay buffer armed, backup path confirmed | Director |
| T−1 day | Brand sign-off(s) in — one per featured brand | Brand EM(s) |
| T−1 day | Show sign-off in — always exactly one | Chairman |
| T−1 day | Assets rendered, gates passed | Technical Operator |
| T−60 min | Green room open; mic check every participant; −16 LUFS | Director |
| T−0 | Live. Director on the panic controls for the duration | Director |
| T+30 min | VOD published; multitrack harvested | Director |
| T+30 min | Incident log written — even when empty | Director |
| T+1 day | Clips routed; registry updated; metrics logged | Technical Operator |
An empty incident log is a real entry. "No incidents" written on the day is evidence; silence
reconstructed three weeks later is not.
They fail independently, and neither substitutes for the other.
moment. Answers: is this right and true for the brand?*
episode?*
Work can be flawless for the brand and poor television. An episode can be compelling
television that misrepresents a brand. Either blocks it.
A brand-agnostic episode carries no brand sign-off and still needs the show sign-off.
Sign-off never drops to zero.
EM↔brand assignment is fluid. Look it up; do not remember it. A Director who cleared with
last month's EM has an unapproved episode.
Attendance is part of the deliverable, not a separate fine. The sprint milestone includes
appearing live for the sprint's episodes and the mandatory syncs. This is stated in the
contract scope.
Three tiers, because a rule with no exception path is a rule nobody can follow honestly:
| Tier | Definition | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Excused | ≥24h notice, within the per-round budget, cover arranged | None |
| Unexcused | Missed with late or no notice | Logged; counts against the round-completion milestone |
| No-call/no-show | Absent, no contact, nothing arranged | Two in a round = round-completion milestone not released |
Excused-absence budget: 2 per round. People get sick, and a program that punishes a real
illness in week 3 has a rule it will quietly stop enforcing — which is worse than no rule.
Attendance is logged by the Director in the run-of-show on the day. Not reconstructed.
Contract terms do not help mid-broadcast. Technical control does. These exist so that a
bad thirty seconds does not become a permanent artifact:
the show has — it gives the Director time to cut before anything reaches an audience.
Being in the call is not being on the show.
practiced in rehearsal, not discovered live.
Applied identically to everyone. That is what makes it hold.
Short, unambiguous, and no warning path — these cannot be warned through:
The last one is listed separately because the harm is not proportional to the act. A single
strike can cost the program a distribution channel permanently — a loss to every other
participant, not just the person who caused it.
round-completion milestone released at round end against the attendance and conduct
record. This is a split of the same money, not a holdback of extra.
the least is known about anyone.
Nov 25, Dec 25 → Thu Dec 24**.
heavy lifting; an operator who becomes fluent finishes faster and keeps the difference.
That incentive is intentional and it is honest.
Work delivered against agreed criteria is paid, whether or not the person advances, and
whether or not the Chairman liked how the sprint went. Elimination is not a payment event.
Anything contract-relevant goes in Upwork Messages. Scope changes, acceptance, warnings,
absence notices, milestone decisions.
Day-to-day coordination can live wherever the team is fastest. But a scope change agreed only
in a voice call did not happen, and an absence excused only in a DM was not excused.
No participant holds production credentials at any point in the program. Not as a matter of
trust — as a matter of design.
participant can propose anything; they cannot ship it.
Director holds operator-level access only. The show must be endable by someone who is not
competing in it.
Rehearsed once, before the season, so it is muscle memory rather than a scramble.