John Collison explores this subject in an episode of Invest Like The Best [1]. He talks about conglomerates like LVMH and Danaher and how they often give managers of acquired companies latitude in how they operate. He also points out that no one in technology has done what is actually pretty common in the rest of the world, namely, one holding company for a whole bunch of independent businesses that are sharing expertise. A counterexample mentioned is Constellation Software [2] which owns about 500 businesses. I definitely think this style of business is underrated and will grow in popularity.
The whole episode is brilliant, full of great insights that I think about often. It's well worth a listen.
Many of the benefits of being paid in crypto are just benefits of crypto in general: decentralized, permissionless, censorship-free money.
Aside from that, there's an emerging trend that I think is both really cool and will end up being the default way most people are paid. That trend is "payment streaming". Products like Superfluid [1] let you stream cryptocurrency payments. Staff could be paid in realtime rather than waiting to receive a monthly paycheck. That will prove really compelling for prospective employees and I think that most organizations will eventually make the switch to streaming salaries. Some organizations even have public dashboards that show how much is being streamed in realtime and to whom. The transparency is super cool!
In the near future, we'll look back on the way we get paid today as unbelievably suboptimal and anachronistic.
Good question! So a candidate is sharing their name. It's just not necessarily their legal/government name. They're not anonymous. They're pseudonymous. Meaning they're just working under a different name. But there's still a name.
In many cases, the individual would operate online and work under that one pseudonym, as opposed to changing their pseudonym every day. That way, they can accrue reputation, and an employment history, and credentials, under that identity, just like they could with their legal/government identity. So if you wanted to evaluate a potential candidate, the process would look pretty similar to evaluating a candidate who has provided their legal name. With a few differences here and there.
I think it's interesting too! Thanks for saying that. You're absolutely right about including a detailed explanation on the site. Will add that for sure.
Of course, people could choose to have multiple pseudonyms too. Each would have its own reputation and history. There's a lot of interesting work going on to make it possible to port some reputation between identities without necessarily having to expose your different identities.
Good question. So many of these jobs all you to work pseudonymously but your legal identity is still shared with some members of the organization (like execs/HR/finance) for onboarding purposes. Some just pay out in cryptocurrency to a wallet address.
Congrats! I launched a job board recently too [1] specifically for Anon Friendly jobs (jobs where you can work pseudonymously). We have similar domain names :D
One thing you might want to look into is adding Structured Data [2] for job postings. Doing so "makes your job postings eligible to appear in a special user experience in Google Search results". It could help you reach more people.
Hey! A couple days ago I launched anonfriendly [1]. It's a site that shows jobs where you can work pseudonymously. You might find it useful.
I launched on HN yesterday and it went #1. You might find that discussion [2] interesting as people were discussing the feasibility of working pseudonymously.
Hey, thanks for commenting! Are the LooksRare job postings responding with a 404? Their application involves sending an email, when you click "apply" it launches your email client. It's working for me. Am I missing something? Thank you :)
Completely appreciate the points you laid out in both of your comments, thanks for sharing!
One counter-point, just from my own personal experience, but adopting a pseudonym online has actually allowed me to be more authentic and more sociable. I've made a lot of awesome friends that I don't think I'd have made had it not been for being pseudonymous. It can be quite liberating and reduces the fear/impact of trying new things, speaking to new people, and more.
Thank you so much for your affirmation of that idea, warkdarrior. Your comment is really encouraging.
Forgive me if this is too bold but is there any way you could connect me with those people? Or perhaps let me know where I should be looking for the people with that need e.g. any communities online.
Thank you so much for your suggestions, lajamerr. Really means a lot to me. Those are all brilliant ideas.
That's actually the direction I'm hoping to take it. Ultimately, the goal is to accelerate the advent of the pseudonymous economy. And one aspect of that involves creating the necessary tools/ecosystem for employers to accurately verify/assess pseudonymous talent. I'd thought about verifying skills but your suggestion of verifying things like "This person is authorized to work for U.S. Companies" is even more interesting to me.
Thanks again. You've really encouraged me. Your comment has made my day!
No. Which is why I would ask them to submit a resume, interview them, do reference calls, check their Github, check their social media, etc.
I would hire a pseudonymous programmer. I probably would not hire a pseudonymous programmer with zero history or reputation accrued to their pseudonymous identity.
Or even working in countries with generally higher crime or weaker rule of law. I spent years living in a country where even saying/posting something seemingly innocuous could put your life at risk.
Thanks for sharing! I do think adoption could be driven by talent. I could imagine the best candidates preferring pseudonymous work, causing employers to accommodate in order to remain competitive.
I think your point about pseudonymous discourse being long established online is a good one! Most of us are already pseudonymous to some degree e.g. our usernames on Twitter, HN, Github, etc.