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Comment by fruit2020 | Hacker News Reader

fruit2020

Because of the morals, the risks, or the pressure?

I can’t speak for parent but I’ve been headhunted by crypto companies a lot and my feeling is the same.

For me it’s as simple as: I will never work for a company where I cannot immediately and concretely understand the value proposition.

Crypto people can frame this as me not being competent if that’s what they need. But I think I’m reasonably smart and usually it just sounds like a fraud.

HN is the absolute worst place to recruit given the bias against crypto here. But I’ll flip it around and say many startups in all manner of verticals are shaky - Fast.com, innumerable food delivery and fintech, “AI for XYZ” etc. etc.

One thing you can use to differentiate firms is the team, the founders, the funders. My company is backed by Point72 / Steve Cohen which does a lot more due diligence than most other firms. YMMV however - I myself would never work for adtech given my distaste. But a lot of HNers love certain FAANGs that data mine you and your children to sell you crap you don’t need. But many choose to disregard their morals and dismount their high horse when $$$ is involved.

Mhm. My bias is not exclusive to Crypto. I need the value prop to be obvious. I’ve worked for a company where it wasn’t and nothing makes a job more miserable than pivoting every four months because everyone’s just playing startup and nobody has any clue where to aim.

Totally fair - my company has high revenues (unlike 99% of crypto) and we are essentially a digital Pokémon card company, and we resell our Pokémon card factory to others white label. It is a very straight forwards and logical business model.

Always good to be selling shovels in a gold rush than chasing the gold.

As far as crypto nonsense goes that's unusually smart

You surely realize that in the US or Canadian tech cultures, Steven Cohen is only slightly better than being backed by a billionaire Russian oligarch. Cohen is certainly extraordinarily rich and well connected, his reputation isn't going to be positive for techies generally however. That is to say, tech workers are far more likely to be turned off by your pointing that investor out than the other way around (but hey, maybe it does some screening re potential applicants).

To work in crypto at a sophisticated firm like Coinbase, Gemini, Circle (my former company) or my own co, it would be a given you believe in markets and the experimental nature of digital assets given… that is the whole reason to work here!

I am a libertarian, free thinker, capitalist, etc. which is the standard profile in this industry. I have recruited engineers out of Amazon and Google who said they needed a change of pace from the “moralizing” (use your own judgement). It is a very open discussion, open inquiry industry.

So if working for a Cohen company is against your morals, easy to ignore. If that doesn’t bother you, then you passed the first question! Steve is a genius - but not everyone likes Wall Street.

Sounds like, "Move fast and break ,[habitually other people's] piggy banks." SAC is totemic in a industry founded by other people's money and the carry without any equivalent downside. Speaking as a former prop trader, of cutting edge products including those I've designed as principal, when you're touching the wider economy a entirely different set of rules either applies or someone's gotta be responsible. I don't believe that anyone's understood what "the buck stops here" means for two generations.

> the value proposition

You're selling a get rich quick fantasy.

The people - the intersection of finance and tech attracts some of the most spectacular international-level pro scumbags I've had the misfortune to meet. Then there's about 5% of everyone in the entire space that understands the technology, the rest are just bullshit peddlers along for the ride who can smell a quick buck and an industry ripe for abuse because so few understand what it actually is.

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