I've worked for a number of startups that, in retrospect, had terrible business models. Does that make me a "true believer" in their viability? Maybe, but then I learned better. Or maybe I joined because I needed a paycheck and they had a good offer. Either way, my performance as a developer had nothing to do with the viability of their business model.

Even if you make the argument that "crypto is a terrible idea as a technology, so anyone who engaged with it is stupid", well, again, in a long enough career you maybe make a wrong pick every now and again, especially early on in your career when it's harder to distinguish hype from reality. A good developer would learn from this and be a more valuable employee as a result.

A very significant fraction of crypto companies are basically just running a scam. FTX was the third largest exchange and even they turned out to be fraudulent! At this point if you are involved in crypto, my assumption is that you are knowingly involving yourself in an attempt to scam people.

I have no problem with not being a "true believer" of the company you work for. I do have a problem with willingly working for criminal enterprises. It's not 2014 anymore, you can't close your eyes to the issues inherent to crypto.

It reminds me of how I see a lot of applicants to LinkedIn job posts with people who list their work history all the way back, past their time in the industry. Eg McDonald’s cashier. You may think that has a positive effect (has experience talking to customers, can be trusted to handle petty cash, held a job even at minimum wage..) but in reality the first thought I have is “did bro really put McDonald’s on a backend dev resume lmfao”

If you’re a junior developer, and you want to make good money at it, you no longer have hobbies or a life (don’t worry, you get them back when you get good). Instead, all your free time is now dedicated to hobby projects & studying. Of course, only a small % of junior developers want/are capable of that lifestyle (the 10x engineers), and if you’re not one, you’ll just have to suffer making only 80k a year + benefits as a regular junior.

You could do us all a service by telling us the name of your company so we (especially junior developers) could give it a very wide berth.

1) enjoying the technical challenges of crypto is to me like a guilty pleasure. So do I, but I don’t tell the world about it (outside of this HN comment).

2) such a high % of the people involved in crypto are doing something shady or illegal. Personally I would bet that only a slim slim slim monitory of US crypto holders pay their taxes accurately. For any top security clearance jobs in the US, you can’t have any major outstanding debts, because they could be used as leverage against you. In the same way, hiring a cryptobro looks like an unnecessary risk to me.

3) they probably can’t do the job I need them to do. For example, any front end change to our sales funnel requires a sign off from compliance. Can I trust a cryptobro to work in an environment with stricter rules & compliance requirements? Not really.

Being involved in crypto related things is a huge red flag that the person is most likely deeply immoral, greedy and opportunistic, which are traits that will most likely make the person hard to work with for the other team members.

I think throwing them out entirely might be a bit extreme, but stamping them with a big fat red-flag and moving them to the bottom of the pile seems totally reasonable to me.

This is a huge assumption to make about someone's character when all you know is that they were employed in $CRYPTO_COMPANY_X FROM $START_DATE TO $END_DATE.

You are forever tarring someone you don't even know.

If you are involved in recruitment it might be worth taking a look at those guesses you are making.

Godwin's Law: Let me put it to you this way, would you immediately dismiss or red-flag someone who previously worked at IBM?

Some companies will make a good impression, some companies will make a neutral impression, and some companies will make a bad impression.

And with the current situation, I doubt that crypto companies on your CV will be in the first category.

And they're not running a ponzi casino, pump-n-dump sh*tcoin platform, or bullshit Web3 scam.

What do you mean you people?

Please don’t argue in bad faith.

Would you hire an FTX dev who didn't know about the things which happened behind closed curtains?

If you are a Rust developer, you pretty much need to do blockchain stuff, as most of the Rust jobs are related to that. And so on.

I'm not a Rust developer, but I must admit I'm kinda surprised by this statement. Let me do my own research.

https://www.stephendiehl.com/posts/crypto.html

Looking for Rust jobs on LinkedIn used to yield mostly postings in crypto. That may not be the case anymore with the downturn, my guess is that there are just fewer rust jobs now that the crypto ones are gone.

I think the reason is simply that crypto companies didn't have the clout or stability of big tech and also the sector has a poor reputation amongst engineers so they pick hip languages to compensate. Like "Yes I know, working in crypto is terrible but did you think about how you could write Rust everyday instead of Java??"

(I'm hoping to put a tiny dent in that by growing our non-crypto Rust team over the next couple of years. And I won't hold anyone's former means of putting bread on the table against them ;))

I know a handful of rust developers who refuse to work on anything that touches a blockchain, and they regularly express frustration that the majority of rust jobs they see advertised are in that space.

Of the tech companies I or acquaintances have worked at, I've personally 'believed in the viability' of maybe 25%. If the tech / pay is good enough I could see myself work at them for sure since its a job. not all jobs require personal investment.

I now see that the username is IRL_CHAD. I feel stupid for falling for a obvious troll

Oh well

After checking out your page, I’m absolutely appalled. I’ve forwarded this to a personal friend who works in the immigration department here.

Ukraine isn’t your playground to pimp women to men who aren’t successful with them in their own countries.

Btw you’ve probably seen me around Kyiv in bars/clubs/whatever. I’m the guy always wearing designer + an iced out rolex

Idk man, I think social media has people responding to comments in weird extremes and I just wish everyone could get away from that. Would you really say to someone's face IRL that you won't hire them because they worked in a specific industry? Takes a certain character to be that way...

I don’t really go to clubs anymore, and I don’t enjoy my flashy stuff anymore either.

Otherwise I stand by those comments. They were made to a guy running a sex tourism business.

So, so, so much of the crypto “industry” is just running scams of various sophistication. Having years of your life dedicated to that industry is signaling something!

I don't believe in crypto myself - but your statement sounds a bit egotistic. Should employees work at a crypto company (such as CoinBase) only if they truly believe in crypto and not for say, a good pay? The second statement about smartness too, doesn't seem like a good thing to say.

So if I previously worked on windows apps it means I believe that Microsoft is a fantastic company and Windows is the future of computing? :)

Especially when crypto paid very well

For every person who made money on crypto there was someone that lost as well.

And sure, you’re a “big boy company”…that sounds so satirical.

You should put that in your job listings to allow people to avoid even sending a resume to you

The comp and bennies tend to be extremely good, and the technical challenges are fascinating enough to make the work engaging.

Those who did were automatically ruled out. Edison wanted people who didn't make assumptions, since assumptions tend to be innovation killers.

... this was the man who assumed DC power was superior to Tesla's AC power and made every effort he could to stand in the way of innovations that threatened his own bottom line.

What an asshole.

I loath crypto, but I still did it for a couple years while they paid me in USD while I traveled to Asia extensively.

Even the skeptics here are laughing at such an absolutely nonsensical comment like this.

I guess engineers at Square, Twitter, Stripe, Mastercard, Visa, Checkout.com, Google, Meta, etc are not doing well for sure despite still having crypto products and partnerships. /s

As always, absolutist comments like this can be safely ignored and laughed at.

Dismissing crypto/blockchain is like dismissing user-generated content that lived in the forums on the fringes of the internet or in the comment sections of blogs. They were looked down and despised by the established mentality 20 years ago. In 10 years, user-generated content became the king.

...

Just like how others said - your behavior does not say 'big boy company'.

Are you one of those CEOs that needs sycophant applicants that pretend working at your company on your product is their biggest dream?

There’s more to the job than just technical skill.