- People doing the hiring at companies building Web3 told Insider what they look for in candidates.
- Experience in Web3 fields, like blockchain or cryptocurrency, is rare, but being self-taught and knowledgeable on the subject is expected.
- “If you come in saying ‘I don’t know that much about crypto,’ the interview is over,” one CEO said.
With billions of dollars pouring into fields like cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, Web3, the distributed digital ecosystem that includes them, has suddenly become a hot market for tech jobs.
The space is nascent and can be volatile, with bad actors and fraud, but many believe it is the future of the internet, and successful companies and employees have seen huge paydays for their work. For those looking to make the leap into the field, there are certain skills and traits hiring managers say will set you apart.
Pascal Gauthier, CEO of Ledger, a secure cryptocurrency wallet, said the emergence of Web3 today reminds him of the internet in the early 2000s, when he was starting out in tech just as internet companies like Amazon, Google, and Yahoo were coming up from the rubble of the Dot-com crash. He was asked then, too, what people needed to know in order to get a job in this “new economy.” His answer is still pretty much the same.
“It’s all about adapting to a new product,” Gauthier said. “It’s not fundamentally changing everything that we do.”
So, good news for anyone working in a major tech company like Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, or Amazon: Your engineering, programming, hardware and general production skills, even tech marketing and PR know-how, are likely very valuable to any company operating in Web3. And the existing shortage of skilled tech workers means you’ll be even more sought after in Web3.
“There are so few good people we really have to pitch them,” said Felix Mohr, the CEO of Crypto Fight Club, a play-to-earn gaming platform that uses NFTs.
There are some differences, however, that may mean a jump into Web3 isn’t the right move for anyone coming out of a traditional tech background. It mostly comes down to the entire ecosystem being new, unregulated, and lacking in the infrastructure needed to support the lofty ambitions of something like the blockchain.
If you are looking for a new challenge in tech, read on for some of the skills and traits people doing the hiring and recruiting in Web3 are looking for.
You should show genuine interest in exploring a new field
This may seem obvious, but executives and recruiters all cited bad experiences with candidates trying to get jobs in Web3 who at some point made clear they had no real interest in the things it represents, like the blockchain, crypto, or digital goods.
“All kinds of technical skills translate well, but the one thing I don’t want is someone who doesn’t want to be here,” said Hugo Renaudin, founder of P00LS, which creates digital tokens for creators.
Gauthier of Ledger said when he’s interviewing a candidate for a job at his company, he’s mainly looking to see if they’re a good culture fit and to suss out whether they’re in front of him because they actually want to be in crypto.
“It’s easy to discover how curious people are,” he said. “Sometimes people will come in and say ‘I don’t know that much about crypto’ and that tells me they’re not very curious and the interview is over.”
“A desire to get in and cash out is the wrong reason to come,” Gauthier added.
Teach yourself what’s already out there
Curiosity alone isn’t enough. If you want to be in Web3, you need to do your homework and learn what you can. And because the field is emerging, with few formal educational routes available, that means doing it mostly on your own time.
“If you know a program language very well, something like Solidity isn’t the hardest to pick up,” Mohr said. “But you need to study it. Read a lot and try things out on your own because you can’t get a degree in it.”
“Some of the best programmers we have dropped out of high school or university and they taught themselves at home,” he added.
Dan Portillo, founder of Sweat Equity, which invests in and recruits for many tech companies, said that anyone with a solid background in building just about any aspect of tech can get a Web3 job, so long as they’ve taken it upon themselves to learn about at least one new distributed tech, like smart contracts.
“Most of it is about reading what you can, any documentation that’s available, and getting up to speed on what’s going on,” he said. He noted that several engineers working on a few Web3-related projects Sweat Equity is involved in came over from Google. Only one had any direct work experience in crypto. It’s the same elsewhere.
“If you look at Coinbase, almost all of the engineers there were trained into it,” Portillo said.
Be flexible and comfortable in a potentially volatile environment
“Crypto is always trading, there’s always a new fire to put out,” Mohr said.
Scams and theft are a big challenge for Web3 companies. The Federal Trade Commission last year found investment scams dealing with crypto grew ten-fold between 2020 and 2021, with people losing at least $80 million from investments that turned out to be fake. Hardly a month goes by without reports of a major breach of crypto assets or massive NFT fraud.
And each time a new scandal happens, a team of engineers and programmers, not to mention marketers and managers, have to figure out a way to build trust in their communities and patch over whatever was exploited, be it by hackers or plagiarists. It’s work that won’t be easing up anytime soon. And like all new technologies, it encounters its own unique set of problems.
Even Solana, a blockchain source for apps and a crypto platform that’s among the more established and reliable, can run into issues.
“Sometimes the whole Solana network goes down and they have to call a bunch of people in to update it,” Mohr said.
Another aspect of Web3 that can be unsettling for those coming from a more traditional tech background is the roadmap of a platform or protocol that starts with a community and ends with a product to serve them. It’s the reverse of how a platform like Facebook or Google got started, Renaudin noted.
“In a tech company, let’s say building SaaS, you know the market you draw up your plan,” Renaudin said. “You try to reach milestones set out in that plan, then you get money and scale based on that plan,”
“In Web3, you first build a community and that will help you find a plan. You find the people and go from there.”
Don’t expect a comfortable 9-to-5 or the perks you’d find at a Big Tech company
With new and unexpected problems occurring in Web3 so often — not to mention an ecosystem that is still emerging — the day-to-day work can be rocky and unstable. The companies are often new and lack the polish or institution of a Google or Apple. There are few corporate campuses offering catered meals and laundry service. Multiple hiring managers told Insider that hours could be long and unpredictable.
“People are used to a Monday to Friday schedule, 9 to 5 — this is not that,” Mohr, the Crypto Fight Club CEO, said. “I’ve hired some people coming from a more traditional tech background expecting it to be, and it’s like no, not gonna happen buddy. Working a lot of 14-hour days and no weekends is not for everyone.”
The potential for the work to pay off is there, he said. A lot of the Web3 companies are offering salary competitive with the FAANGs, but the real allure is getting into a company early that will be the next breakout. Founders and early employees stand to potentially make billions if the market for crypto and digital goods gets as big as some people expect it to in the coming years. Those bullish on the market, like Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest, see the value of ether, the second largest cryptocurrency, going as high as $170,000 for a single coin and the blockchain platform it runs on being worth $20 trillion by 2030.
“We hire people from Apple, Microsoft, all the big players, because we need that talent,” Gauthier, the Ledger CEO, said. “Then we give them something new to do, new problems to solve.”
Are you an insider with insight to share? Got a tip? Contact reporter Kali Hays at khays@insider.com or through secure messaging app Signal at 949-280-0267. Reach out using a non-work device. Twitter DM at @hayskali.