Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#1

Post by def- » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer
hookrace.net

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#2

Post by janmon18 » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

If working for SAP helps with keeping your integrity, you should stick with them forever.

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#3

Post by marcelogranja » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

I disagree, although the ecosystem is filled with scams, and evangelists have financial interests in promoting their believes, there are some promising advantages.

Also the energy requirements for PoW systems are cheap compared to its gains as pointed out by Nick Szabo: "We need more socially scalable ways to securely count nodes, or to put it another way to with as much robustness against corruption as possible, assess contributions to securing the integrity of a blockchain. That is what proof-of-work and broadcast-replication are about: greatly sacrificing computational scalability in order to improve social scalability. That is Satoshi’s brilliant tradeoff. It is brilliant because humans are far more expensive than computers and that gap widens further each year. And it is brilliant because it allows one to seamlessly and securely work across human trust boundaries (e.g. national borders), in contrast to “call-the-cop” architectures like PayPal and Visa that continually depend on expensive, error-prone, and sometimes corruptible bureaucracies to function with a reasonable amount of integrity."

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#4

Post by scandox » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

janmon18 wrote: post #2

If working for SAP helps with keeping your integrity, you should stick with them forever.

Everyone has the right to make their own determinations about the moral quality of different choices. Just because you believe that his decision to work with SAP represents some kind of moral failure (I'd be fascinated to hear your reasoning) it doesn't preclude him from both disagreeing with you and at the same time taking a moral stance on another issue.

The factors at play in such choices are extremely complex for every individual, but we can't just say "Hey you hypocrite you work for a major multinational so you can never ever take a moral position on anything ever again". That's not sensible.

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#5

Post by Alex3917 » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

The space really is getting pretty crazy. I feel like my biggest fear these days is getting kidnapped by a van full of venture capitalists and forced to develop cryptocurrencies.

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#6

Post by jurandom » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

I just accepted a generous blockchain job offer with a fortune 500 company. But they are not interested in building a new blockchain implementation, but rather exploring smart contracts and their possible relevance to their business.

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#7

Post by jraines » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

He's probably trying to not offend the company by not being more specific, but given the information offered -- why even apply/interview for a blockchain job if these are his objections (too much hype, PoW is bad)?

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#8

Post by tlb » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

In the US, the financial system is about 10% of GDP. (The number depends on your definitions of financial system, US, GDP, and "is"). It also consumes vast amounts of resources ranging from gasoline to drive mortgage brokers to and from work, to the cost of mailing out free low-introductory rate credit cards.

It's a fair criticism of Bitcoin that it uses a lot of energy, but it's hard to predict whether it will ultimately use more or less than the existing system as a percentage of value created.

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#9

Post by debt » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

It does suck because blockchain technology does seem intriguing and cool, but there's so much dirty money floating around the ecosystem right now I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#10

Post by ttul » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 5:15 PM UTC

marcelogranja wrote: post #3

I disagree, although the ecosystem is filled with scams, and evangelists have financial interests in promoting their believes, there are some promising advantages. Also the energy requirements for PoW systems are cheap compared to its gains as pointed out by Nick Szabo: "We need more socially scalable ways to securely count nodes, or to put it another way to with as much robustness against corruption as possible, ass…

Yeah but... the crypto algorithm chosen for Bitcoin is about as energy intensive as they come. Other algorithms which are more equipment intensive - scrypt etc - provide the same benefits but without the same disgusting externality of power consumption.

I wish I grasped proof of stake better. I’m not yet convinced it can be made to work as well as PoW.