Ask HN: Who is paying the most for EVM smart contract development? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Who is paying the most for EVM smart contract development?

5 pointsvmception6 comments

I want a job doing smart contract development. I can be Staff/Lead Engineer but I would be willing to consider entry level.

Its annoying that its mostly underfunded and European startups doing this, which caps pay between $100k - $150k. I would prefer $250k mostly cash compensation like I would get in software engineering trades, stateside. I wish FAANG valued this skillset, but instead they indoctrinate everyone to be dismayed that mindshare is even being used on blockchain state machines and finance (while they work on ad retargeting systems lol). So, they have superior risk-free compensation but do not value this skillset. Square/Jack Dorsey has the unnecessarily exclusive Square Crypto team, which I would love to work for, but they are not doing work on EVMs. A bunch of Square shares somewhat makes up for that, but I really want to do work on EVMs and not Bitcoin/UTXO state machines as it will be a several years before the constitutional amendments pass on those networks for it to be more useful for arbitrary execution.

I personally find smart contract development to be the most lucrative, directly monetizable form of software engineering, and I personally find it extremely interesting. It is just so hard to focus as the space moves so fast. I would prefer the structure of a team and someone else's vision, as opposed to doing consulting contract work or figuring out everything about monetization myself.

Salary + Equity + Benefits + Tokens, ideally remote but let me know! vmception00 [at] gmail [dot] com

Writing so called "smart contracts"[1] in Solidity isn't a full-time job, it's mostly for part-time employees, freelancers or consulting companies.

They're an important, but fairly small component of the entire system. If you want a full-time job in crypto , you will also need to handle security audits, frontend, backend, DevOps, Oracles/price datafeeds, KYC/AML, data engineering, integrations with exchanges and other chains, cryptoeconomic simulations, token sale websites, marketing websites, telegram chatbots, etc.

Not sure what's the current status of the Enterprise Ethereum (EEA), but I see real companies learned to avoid this stuff, i.e. MS Azure winded down their managed blockchain services. Not sure whether banks and Big 4 accounting firms are still doing permissioned blockchain pilots. But if they do, it's either an in-house blockchain enthusiasts from internal innovation labs or outside consulting companies.

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[1] IMO the correct term is "Agents", or "Agents with the wallet"

> If you want a full-time job in crypto , you will also need to handle security audits, frontend, backend, DevOps, Oracles/price datafeeds, KYC/AML, data engineering, integrations with exchanges and other chains, cryptoeconomic simulations, token sale websites, marketing websites, telegram chatbots, etc.

No, the rest of the team and head of the organization handles that. A single employee doesn't.

does your [1] opinion matter if nobody uses that term to convey that concept?

Good point about it only being consulting companies doing smart contract development. So which ones are those that pay well?

https://iron.finance

I heard those guys have some projects lined up and they'd probably do with an experienced dev.

serious replies only

their code is a copy and paste job, but even the speed of deploying that requires research and understanding the format of oracle and administrative key use

should we reverse engineer a farming system, or should we reverse engineer and deploy an AMM, or should we reverse engineer and deploy another "decentralized" oracle system, or should we reverse engineer and deploy a bridge etc

the point is to get paid well and not care about the consequences, as that's the founder's and users problem, just like any startup

Where ar eyou getting $250K mostly cash based compensation salaries ?

Honest question.

mid sized, sometimes publicly traded, non-VC backed companies that still invest in engineers instead of consider them expenses

I can have a lot of experience, depending on how I want to present myself (I often pretend to have less experience though)

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