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Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

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Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#61

Post by ChrisLomont »

nemild wrote: post #24

The danger in a space like this is throwing the baby out with the bath water. - Yes, there are an insane amount of scams, and lots of dumb money flowing in - Yes, many use cases of blockchains should really be databases - Yes, many blockchain job posts are just PR initiatives for companies who want to differentiate themselves That said, it's an early time to have a tremendous amount of impact. Don't like "proof of wo…

>Get angry at banks?

I've found in many fields that are as complex as finance, that when I think something in that field is stupid, unnecessary, or onerous, it is I that am wrong because I simply didn't understand the why of how that thing came about.

So I find it fascinating how many people/groups in history have gotten mad at banks/finance, tried to make a "better" product, gotten stung or robbed others, only to eventually re-invent many of the things safe, efficient banking requires.

>I'm all for calling bullshit on hyped trends ... doesn't mean that there might not still be great opportunities to do good engineering and have huge impact

The problem is that as a field gets flooded with bullshit and scams, smart money (and people) turn their talents to other areas the world can be improved, avoiding the crap.

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#63

Post by tonyjstark »

pascalxus wrote: post #47

He turned down a much higher salary AND "REMOTE WORK!" just because he didn't want to be "associated" with the current state of bitcoin. Remote work possibilities are extremely rare, especially high paying ones. My advice would be, take the job and enjoy it while it lasts. He didn't say much about the company. But, just watch out for scams. If it's not a real company, they might just be trying to get your bank accoun…

Or maybe listen to your conscience and stay away if it does not feel right. Working in tech is not completely detached from the rest of the world, so when some people decide not to work for a company with connections to military, maybe you could also stay away from Blockchain jobs if you see more harm than benefit for the world in it.

Blockchain right now is a mix out of super hot and interesting and absolutely shady, so maybe it's not that bad to be cautious about being associated with it.

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#64

Post by jnbiche »

philipodonnell wrote: post #22
ttul wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The investment in energy-intensive GPUs will also serve as a disincentive for any change to Bitcoin that does not require energy-intensive GPUs, which will lock us into this paradigm until something drastic happens. EDIT: I stand corrected as to the terminology, but if you replace [GPUs] with [POW hardware], the disincentive will remain.

No one has seriously mined Bitcoin using GPUs since like 2013. By 2014, everyone was using FPGAs or ASICs. Now, only ASICs are used.

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#65

Post by lcfcjs2 »

unixhero wrote: post #33

I don't understand the high horse. Accept the offer, rake in the cash, move on. Whether or not the company eventually becomes a success does not affect the money you have raked in. Be greedy, the investors are. If you're an engineer, you're the needed fuel they need for their fire.

Listen to this guy / gal ^ take the money, learn as much as you can, move on when you have learnt all you can.

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#66

Post by Sangermaine »

nemild wrote: post #24

The danger in a space like this is throwing the baby out with the bath water. - Yes, there are an insane amount of scams, and lots of dumb money flowing in - Yes, many use cases of blockchains should really be databases - Yes, many blockchain job posts are just PR initiatives for companies who want to differentiate themselves That said, it's an early time to have a tremendous amount of impact. Don't like "proof of wo…

>Go figure out ways to remove custodial risk, so that we may not need as onerous financial regulations that stifle innovation.

Demonstrating the value of, and rationale for, those "onerous financial regulations" has been the one actual good result of this blockchain nonsense. The endless tsunami of scams and fraud that has been the blockchain space has been useful in wiping away the original idiot libertarian impulses that drove the scene.

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#67

Post by goblin89 »

unixhero wrote: post #33

I don't understand the high horse. Accept the offer, rake in the cash, move on. Whether or not the company eventually becomes a success does not affect the money you have raked in. Be greedy, the investors are. If you're an engineer, you're the needed fuel they need for their fire.

> I don't understand the high horse.

> Accept the offer, rake in the cash, move on.

The closing part of this video sums it up perhaps: https://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc?t=524

It’s for a fairly old talk called “Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us”. In short, for work requiring cognitive skills, best performers don’t really get motivated by financial incentives (unless they have money troubles). Watch from the beginning for all that background and references.

FWIW I share OP’s feelings. I get really easily demotivated, I can’t bring myself to work on something uninteresting, let alone something I have a bad feeling about.

Re: Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

#68

Post by aaron-lebo »

tonyjstark wrote: post #54
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…

If electricity and environment-pollution would not cost anything this would be maybe true and since mining is done mostly in large pools and the blockchain is already quite big (regarding having the whole bc on disk) the social scalability is not really there. And the computing power you need does not really sink because of the adaption of the network so that the hash-rate is kinda stable, so it does not get cheaper.…

Not only is mining centralized, but the big holders are fairly centralized.

How robust is this thing really if the authoritarian government the pools run in decides to shut it down? Value would go way down and the network would be in a very weird unsecured state. It's entirely possible the network is at the whims of some bureaucrat deciding that should happen, which is one of the weird things about cryptos.

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