Privacy freak ∩ surveillance biz model

These things really aren't so far apart.

                    --> solve the problem
                  /
    see a problem
                  \
                    --> exploit the problem

Learn the tactics, techniques, and procedures employed by large corporate/state surveillance adversaries, identify gaps in their capabilities, secure your PERSONAL privacy based on your insider knowledge, anonymously distribute similar protection methods to the privacy-conscious, and get paid to do it? Sounds like a no-brainer to me...

Well this hits the nail on the head...

It's supposed to be the technology of the future that everyone uses. It's not supposed to be like direct methods in crystallography, which are understood by a dozen people, of which half are over 50 years old.

It's not like that by design. It's still very niche from a dev perspective, and constantly evolving with so many different protocols released on the regular (most are shit), but you still have to sift through it to stay in the "know".

By comparison, crypto really just isn't that useful or interesting. What will humanity learn from crypto.

Right but a bunch of nobodies on HN actively disparage the entire sector for whatever reason, which requires a pretty deep knowledge that the average REST slinger doesn’t possess, so the market is tight for competent devs let alone top-tier.

Yea, it's disparaged constantly for no good reason and if you know about crypto you are a God and everyone else is shit.

Could be somewhere in-between. There are very intelligent people focusing on the crypto, defi, decentralization and "metaverse" space. It's colloquially referred to as web3, but after "Web 2.0" people here have skepticism of such a term. Why would they be spending their time on this? Are they all just, as another poster said, "ideologically delusional and/or pathologically greedy"?

> for whatever reason

Gimme a break

and also 2 years at a FAANG is normal and non-news