So whst should he do then? Better to give advice.

He pught tl search and replace crypto with fintech startup.

I have crypto on my resume, from a company that only ever took money from professional investors. What I did was a typical devops role, so I don't see why it would be a flag. I worked with typical AWS services and Kubernetes. Wrote some in house software as well. Yes it served a crypto product, but it could have been any sector really.

Not who you’re replying to but I have similar views and hire engineers.

One crypto position probably wouldn’t raise eyebrows like having Mindgeek on your resume wouldn’t, but having multiple crypto roles probably would imo. Not that OP has indicated they have multiple crypto roles unless I’m parsing their post incorrectly.

And as to why, it’s an industry full of scams and a lot of wishful thinking that I wouldn’t think would help actually build out a stable business. You might have worked at only the “good ones” but given how modern hiring works with regards to hundreds of applications, I probably wouldn’t spend the effort to check the quality of those firms.

There is a difference between working for 1 company that did crypto vs choosing to work for multiple companies that are in crypto and talking about it aggressively on your Resume. For example, whenever I see "Web3, Blockchain, Crypto Enthusiast", I pass. It shows me poor judgement in my opinion of course.

Maybe OP could tell they were in prison instead? Might work.

I have always seen Crypto as a red flag. Initially, there was just a suspicion, but then I ended up meeting with some Crypto people in real life, and corresponding with recruiters in the Crypto space. And if I was on the hiring department, Crypto on a resume would get a hard-pass from me. It filters out people with a mentality that I do not like to be around.

You're not an employer, so your opinion is irrelevant.

sounds just as bad as racism

Why? You can't choose how you will be identified by people as being of some race.

While you can make choices about what kind of work you think is ethical or worthwhile.

It is immoral to judge a candidate by the first but not immoral to judge by the latter.

You can't choose how you will be identified by people as being of some race, gender, religion, political beliefs... which all constitute illegal discrimination for employment in some countries (France is an example where it's illegal to discriminate on political opinion, or in our case, supposed opinion I shall say).

A hard pass on crypto means passing on people who

- wanted to bank the poor

- wanted freedom

- wanted self sovereign identity

- wanted border-less transfers for their family abroad

etc... Many people want to do good with crypto.

Questions: is it immoral to be in it only for the money at a carbon sequestration startup? How do you tell, from a resume? What if this startup is just greenwashing bs in the end? What if the money is to help his grand parents in the Philippines?

I think there's no clear cut way to judge the morality of someone from their resume: not from their skin color, nor from their previous work places. And I think it's unethical to judge people on what you presume of their own morality.

To paint an accurate picture, an hard pass on crypto would mean:

- wanted to bank the poor, with crypto.

- wanted freedom, with crypto.

- wanted self sovereign identity, with crypto.

- wanted border-less transfers for their family abroad, with crypto.

They could have chosen any of those areas without, but they chose to do it with crypto. There is a clear choice for them to do that, as well a very reasonable option for an employer to choose an employee "who wanted freedom, with XXX" over an employee who "wanted freedom, with ZZZ (crypto)". This does not equate to racism (neither is it unethical imo), regardless whether the employer chose to exclude based on perceived morality of their crypto choice.