0xPersona

I'd love to attend an in person version of this in London. I've long felt that we need more events like this in the city.

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.

[1] https://www.joincolossus.com/episodes/34646260/collison-grow...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_Software

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.

[1] https://www.superfluid.finance/

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.

Awesome! If you ever want to bounce ideas shoot me an email. You can find my email in the "about" section of my profile. :)

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.

[1] https://anonfriendly.com

[2] https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structure...

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.

[1] https://anonfriendly.com

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31755025

Thanks for letting me know, and in such detail. Appreciate it.

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.

These are the people I'm building for :)

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!

Employers don't have to disclose their identity, it's up to them! Many of the founders of these organizations are pseudonymous themselves.

Well it's not just your employer who knows your legal identity at work. It's potentially the entire organization, and more.

Thanks for sharing! I didn't know that. That's actually very interesting.

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.

Good question! I'd love to know the answer to this, too.

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.

You'd be surprised! Some of the best smart contract security folks in the space are pseudonymous and I imagine many organizations would work with them without needing to know their legal identity. One of those people is samczsun[1] who, amongst other things, famously prevented a potential ~$350m hack.

[1] https://www.paradigm.xyz/team/samczsun/posts

No, you're definitely right! I definitely wouldn't feel confident saying they're handling it well, because I just don't know how they're handling it! But I do hope to bring some of this info to light. I think it's an area that deserves attention and discussion :)

Yeah, I definitely agree. But I do think this philosophical debate is one worth having! I'm hoping the site will at least help kick it off or facilitate it to some degree.

Yes! And I think that's an important point to consider. Personally I think of "anon friendly" as existing on a spectrum. Organizations offer various degrees of it. Some "anon friendly lite" organizations will allow you to work pseudonymously, the entire organization doesn't need to know your legal identity, but certain personnel (like execs/HR) will. On the other end of the spectrum are organizations that offer "full anon friendly" where they don't request any information about your legal identity.

Thank you for sharing. That was a tough read. Really feel for everyone involved.

I think regardless of the type of work (anon friendly, remote, in person), we need to build systems to deal with these sorts of things gracefully, in a way that supports the people affected and doesn't bring any further suffering or pain to what is already such a tragic and difficult situation.

I wouldn't describe any of the organizations listed as "bullshit". Weird, maybe. But they actually do really interesting and valuable work!

I think you're probably right, elbigbad. I'm hoping to learn from organizations about how they're handling this, and then share, so we can create best practices. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Really means a lot.

To clarify, I don't think pseudonymous work is appropriate for all types of work. I'm not a maximalist. Much of my thinking currently is about pseudonymous work in the context that I've noticed it being done, which is largely in cryptocurrency. Of course none of the people in the scenarios you mention should be able to work those jobs.

Absolutely! I would just posit that the organizations listed on the site seem to be handling this somehow (for now). I myself would be really curious as to how.

Hey! Thank you for the kind words. Really means a lot.

You raise a valid point. I suppose you could submit a resume associated with your pseudonymous identity. I have two resumes personally, one for my legal identity, and one for work that I do under my pseudonymous identity. It does present a challenge though. It's not easy to separate the two and either one alone may not provide a holistic and accurate view of you as a candidate.

Without speculating and relying too much on buzzwords, I wonder if you could use Zero Knowledge Proofs to prove that you have certain credentials or experience, without necessarily having to share your legal/irl identity. I don't have all the answers myself but I do have many questions, hence why I built this! And thanks for the feedback about filtering, you're right. Will ship that asap :)

Could I ask if you were hired as a full time employee or as a contractor? Trying to figure out how organizations may handle the legalities/taxes for full time employees.