🎤 Careers in web3 panel

[Applause] [Music] we will jump over to our last chat of today um so i'm assuming everybody in the crowd is excited to have lucas back as a moderator for one more panel today we're gonna go we still got high energy um so yeah this this panel is awesome i mean it's it's sort of you know earlier we did the panel about um how to take your your hack fs project and take it to the next step um in that journey through grants or accelerators or any of that but of course there's a whole other side of this which is like maybe you're just coming into this for the first time or um you're really enjoying uh the role that you have but you want to kind of explore other roles um you don't just have to start a company you can also join an existing one um so we're going to do a panel um that lucas is going to run on careers in the web 3. there are a lot of tough problems a lot of really interesting work in this space um and we are joined by ian and jenks um who are also kind of thinking a lot about uh both the problems in the space but then also like best practices and hiring and and thinking a lot about just like how web 3 is a little bit different and a little bit more interesting in environmental work and then basically anywhere else in my opinion at least so uh why don't we just start off the panel with a bunch of bias so there we go um cool so yeah excited to have you all here and i'll get out of the way and i'll let uh lucas take it over awesome thanks so much jacob um yeah um welcome again and to those who are kind of still tuned in and like jacob said i think what we're going to do we click on in this session um is you know not how you take your project further but um kind of focusing on on your personal growth and opportunities that either in parallel to building your own project um you could pursue or as an alternative right so um i just want to really broaden the aperture and like um make you guys aware of all the opportunities that may arise from this event um in in any sort of way and and shine a light on that this won't be a technical talk um but uh hopefully it will be enjoyable nonetheless i'm not sure um how many you know technical folks we have in the audience um but yeah i as we jump in like the first thing i'd like to do is kind of introduce finalists so we have jenks who's on the developer advocates team and who i'm sure you will interact with a lot over the course of the next weeks if you have um questions and and and ian from from the recruiting team of photocollabs and he's wrapping the protocol up shirt there which is great and james and ian maybe i'll i'll let you guys just kind of introduce yourselves and i i'd be curious and to for you guys to highlight a little bit what your kind of previous career steps were very quickly right like just kind of tapping onto them and then and how long you've been in in the web3 space and then we'll probably double click on on on that transition and and how you navigated it and and ultimately what kind of tips and recommendations you would would give to folks so jenks i'll and kick it over to you what was your like pre-web 3 life and and how did you make the transition and when did you make the transition thank you both for joining thank you lucas uh you you make web3 sound like a second life um but it kind of feel like that my name is james i'm a developer at k at falcon foundation for those who who don't know firecoin is decentralized a data storage network one of the world's largest decentralized one my job is to evangelize the relevant technology to the developer community on a daily basis that participate hackathons like this one look after builders engagement and work on open source projects like to help developers to become superhumans in my previous life i worked in telecommunication industry ericsson specifically a swedish company and also i worked in a sas company called xero it's the accounting software um and also i work for a tool called link tree they're powering the creator community and my webstreet life is is about five months old now over to you ian awesome uh nice to meet you all and and thanks for having me today uh yeah ian brunner joined us the head of talent here at protocol labs back in october of last year although it feels like i've been here for for 10 years so i definitely resonate with that second life comment jinx um yeah and before this uh i was basically i was at facebook for four years so basically the antithesis of web three and we can talk a little bit more about that as to sort of the reasons why i'm passionate about the space and moved into to web 3 and decentralization and prior to my four years at facebook leading teams was at a company called centro in the ad tech industry uh basically helping them build a technology completely from scratch uh but yeah i think they've rebranded his basis now but they were centro back when i worked for them uh but yeah just really happy to be here and and excited to talk to you guys today awesome thanks so much and to both of you i'd let's just like jump right in there you kind of said like um you're coming from a space that's kind of the antithesis of of what web 3 is about and i'm curious when you have now looking back or when you have conversations um with people who are still in that space like what is some of the things that they're most i guess looking for and and and and maybe you know like or in in two ways right you could look at what you're doing currently and like what are the biggest frustrations and then looking onwards like what is the thing that they're really looking for and excited to get out of and potentially next steps what would you say ian yeah yeah i can speak to that for sure so i i think one of the things that we hear constantly with any candidate coming from from web 2 or comparable industries or areas is that just the growth opportunities are just really incremental in those spaces because you have these large companies lots of different people moving towards similar goals even if their teams are smaller so just really sort of incremental growth and not a lot of sort of green field areas in some companies to really dive in and build things completely from scratch so we talked to a lot of candidates a lot of my friends i talked to they're just interested in the space because there's so much to build and so much to just create completely from scratch um that's really to me what's the most exciting thing about this this space web 3 is that there's just so much green field so much to build from scratch i say to everyone i that listens to me say it uh that i've learned more here since october than i did in four years uh at facebook and i truly mean that it's been just supercharged charging my knowledge and all these different ways that have been super super exciting so that's just a few things that i would know cool awesome thanks so much and i i think jenks you're like um one of the reasons you're one of those people that are like helping people really accelerate on that learning trajectory and i'm kind of curious like if maybe you could share an anecdote or two of of somebody you met who you interacted with on discord on you know any of in the community forums and who really like who you were helping with something and just kind of like sharing a little bit of what kind of challenges and you help them with because i'd like to basically get folks to understand what it is that you can help them with and what parts of their journey you could and basically help them accelerate yeah sure so so working in ecosystem team and with a very vibrant uh community you had you have lots of good things going on and sometimes uh there uh there are things that it's a little bit annoying but most people are building most people are building awesome projects so my job is there to help them to succeed technically um and uh and i can't i can't even mention one or two projects because i've reviewed so many hackathon projects myself and every day there is a grand submission and people paying me for uh giving them technical advice or just how to how to write a better grant and i've been how i've been helping them and seeing them getting approved getting the the fund that they needed to take their project to reality has been very satisfying i'll keep doing that um i watch the community threads um every monday it's my shift to to watch all of the stack channels i have about five or six uh it's like uh the chatting software's on my computer right now that i watch regularly um every day um so the question could be like very random a question could be technical or technically related the question could also be business related i answered them all because of my background um has uh technical stuff but also a little bit of business facing stuff as well yeah so i love the challenge it's challenging sometimes but um also i'm learning heaps from from talking to people yeah that's awesome and like diving into maybe like some of those differences right like i i guess like a lot of the ways that people interact and with each other is is kind of it's often even using web 2 tools right like you'll still be on on telegram you'll still be on discord those aren't yet decentralized services and and i'm kind of curious like and are there any ways that you know like in how we interact that is different in web3 than maybe in a in another world and in ian both from a perspective of you know roles and recruiting right maybe we double click on that and then also just like in terms of connecting with folks so like on the recruiting side i guess like i my background and maybe just to share that right like i i also come from a very kind of conventional business background where i worked at a company called bcg that does consulting and i only you know knew recruiting through linkedin and then you know at school there would be maybe a career fair or something web 3 doesn't have that really so i'm kind of curious like ian and what are the forums where you would learn about these opportunities like where where would i go to and find out what might be an interesting role and and yeah how do people learn about it yeah yeah so it's in many ways it's sort of the opposite of of web 2 or i guess industries that you're sort of referring to their lucas because a lot of times in web 2 people sort of search out opportunities like i want to be a software engineer let's see what sort of software engineer opportunities are available to me now in web 3 it's more about like figuring out what sort of projects or what sort of companies are interesting to you and then like putting your foot in the door and seeing if there's something there that you can work on that's something that's really really cool about web3 and certainly is the case of protocol labs is sure we have positions posted but we also create positions for the right people uh so there's plenty of people that we talk to where it's like you know we don't have a job posting open but like this sounds like an amazing skill set that could be influential at this spot so it's sort of really seeking out projects seeking out individuals that you admire are working on really cool things seeing what else they're working on um i know danny before this in the last talk talked a lot about trust and like it really comes down to sort of figuring out that trust or credibility with companies too because there's a lot a lot of noise in this space too unfortunately um it's like figuring out who's working on legitimate projects what's cool in the space who's partnering with really awesome companies and then sort of like working backwards from there to see what sort of opportunities there are if there isn't an opportunity listed that's like right in in your skill set like reaching out to the project teams and seeing like hey here's my skill set is there something i can work on for you guys whether it's a contract role or full-time so i think what i'm getting at as a whole here lucas is like there's a lot more flexibility in web3 and a lot more sort of looking at people's aptitude and potential uh as opposed to just making sure they 100 have you know 10 years of job experience or whatever the traditional job description for a software engineer would have um so yeah that's just a few things i would note well that's that's awesome and i actually do and know of one guy who was just contributing because all of these are open-source projects right they were just contributing and then eventually made the jump over and and so you can even live on the edge of being kind of like formally associated with the project and and not being formally associated and so i think there's even different types of being engaged that very much you know mirror whatever you feel you're most comfortable with right you don't have to drop everything and like start this job and spend 40 hours or whatever it is per week on doing it you can also kind of find like softer ways and i think that's that's something that you know in the old world maybe doesn't work as well we can say hey like i'm going to just stick or hang around in the channel for a while and kind of see what's going on and yeah what are jenks maybe like switching over to you like what are some of the um you know things that you think when you're in involved in some of these projects right like in in through one of the roles that ian was describing um or in kind of a semi-formal way where you're just contributing to the open source way what are the channels what are the forums and where people are engaging would that be github would there be discord just kind of curious like um where does the community meet and where do people find each other these days is mainly discord and we because of the falcon project history we have a very slack focus community slack channel and i think it's a it's because our project is quite technical and a lot of uh different parties will like to use slack to communicate because they're all pretty much developers that's been the major places and tru it is true that these tools are web 2 centralized very centralized tools but web 2 has its places of course and then web 3 is just starting its own right i predict if when we have a web 3 decentralized app installed in our in our phones and use it every day that's when web3 has made it we're all waiting for that moment right um anyways the i'll speak a little bit about the the experience in working in web 3 as a as someone who joined just a few few months ago compared to the previous workplaces that i have been to uh web 3 is default to open right very very very drastically different you don't need permissions to get involved uh what ian said was was great like you can get involved lucas said as well that's how we hired discordian from our team like he was just working on uh ipfs open source project he's been contributing and a caught eye of some sort of people at uh protocol labs and he got hired as a developer advocate and that's the best job according to him uh has ever had um this is this is one of the best job i've had as well there are literally hundreds of ways to to get started um i can speak on behalf of some technical audience because my development background i really recommend start following and learning about projects that you know or people who uh who follow them and then you like those people because um uh because you know them and then the projects they follow stop by getting involved in in that way just looking at community threads chat chatters um and then getting involved in their education program attend public meetings and follow them on discord target your interests project to look for opportunities that way because you really need to get excited about that project and get behind the mission to have the passion to to contribute your your working hours to it um so get involved in open source project if you're technical um you can start your own project join hackathons um propose grants applications and run with it and you'll get noticed by the project people in project uh if you're active enough in most uh most of them you don't need to like guess rubber stamp to to to get involved the same goes for product people and business people i believe there are ways to contribute other than coding um the second thing is boarding your um network that's what i did myself as well for fall coin when i was interviewing i just reach out to people in the stack channel and say hey can i have a like 15 minutes or 30 minutes to validate something with you because this is all new to me and they're open they're open everyone is open for it because they're used to working uh in open um in an open way um we're in a kind of a in in a in a funny area because we're going through microcycle right now so it it it actually helps with technic people because it gets rid of people who are looking for just hype and opportunity to make quick money um this will give us right now will give us more opportunity to meet good people who are down to earth building right now so i encourage you to get involved in your pro in projects but also boarding the network by just chatting to people awesome thanks so much i feel like i'm in one of those like um teller sales commercials so it's like hey why do you think your job is so amazing and like you know it's the best job ever and here is like i've learned so much over the past few months so that's great and you know i'm honestly like i would second that but i would also like it it also is like challenging right and it is different and it like takes a lot of adjusting to do so i'm curious like maybe to like you know like now that we understand that it's like all fantastic and fun i'm curious like what are some of the um challenges in that that somebody who is new to this space and like faced with all this abundance of opportunity and openness like what are some of the things that um you know might might make the adjustment a little harder like what are some of the things like okay like that that's actually like a little tough here or a little challenging and you can still frame it in positive terms if we want to if we want to keep this in commercial yeah just just kind of like let's let's shine a light on both sides yeah no there's there's tons of things that are challenging about the space too especially you know coming from a large company like like facebook or any company that's that's larger there's a lot of differences that can be challenging uh the first one that i think is most obvious or at least i experienced was just like the completely async nature of how projects and work get done um you know facebook i was going into an office multiple times a week and seeing people face to face and having candid conversations but here it's like you need to drive things forward with people across the world i work with people in new zealand brazil germany us everywhere so just really being able to push projects forward in a completely async manner like that is is definitely challenging if you haven't experienced that before the other thing too is just like really getting comfortable with the tools as well that need to be used async to push things forward um notion i had no exposure to prior to going to protocol labs i use it every single day multiple times now um but yeah slack discord twitter everything that that is just like really sort of central to this space that you know i didn't utilize on a regular basis uh at facebook or any of my previous companies is also uh definitely a hurdle um i'd say the other thing too or the third thing is at a company like facebook or again traditional companies there's projects have sort of like longer life cycles it's generally like okay there's three to four months of planning there's a month of like getting stakeholder buy-in for everybody involved and then finally after six months you can you can ship something um at protocol labs and i know this is the case that other companies we partner with in this space too um it's sort of the traditional startup mentality that if you're not like embarrassed by the first thing that you shipped you waited too long to ship it so it's very much like pushing things out the door and getting projects done as soon as possible to have something to work with as opposed to waiting until something is like completely polished and i think that sort of like startup mentality or like builder mentality you know if someone's worked in traditional web 2 startups are going to have that but for people like me they're coming from larger companies was definitely a learning curve but is also what supercharged my learning here like i mentioned earlier lucas it's been great to be able to jump in and sort of take on as many different projects and and the scope of things that work done has been really incredible so that's three things that that i would know well awesome thanks thanks for sharing that and and jen same question for you what a you know as a developer maybe specifically in the engineering space right like beyond kind of the the meta comment of coordination things like what are some of the um challenges in in coding with web3 technology right like one of the things that i could imagine but i'll let you speak to it is like the fact that a lot of the tools are underdeveloped or undeveloped right so you're like constantly hitting like um black spots on the map and you're like oh like i wish somebody had built this i guess not so i'm curious like what are some of the frustrations and that you encounter when you join a space that you know is growing accelerating and and you know like seeing this tremendous momentum but um is still early right so like from an engineering perspective from a developer perspective what are some of the frustrations that you see so if i if if you ask any developers frustration it will be like documentation there's no documentation about things and that's true true in what's three like um even in web 2 tools like people don't document because i used to write those documents it doesn't have everything in there um but i was warned by this before i joined so i spoke to ali which is another developer out of k who joined far coin just few months before me um and she says wow all the tools are clunky you know rusty and they're new it doesn't have everything it's not like developing in um with uh with mature tours in web3 and i know that um and one of the amazing thing in websphere is if it's missing if the equivalence is missing you can go and build it and people often give you money funding to actually build it as long as it has some real value the challenge i have is is learning right learning speed is just not enough you need to get things done thank god there's async work only like here um i don't have a lot of meetings that i reduce from like having 10 meetings a day in my previous job getting nothing done by just talking and coordinating things to like nearly like one or two meetings a day and i have a bunch of time to do focus time so my productivity has improved a lot as a developer advocate as someone in deborah but learning is this takes a lot of time um there is um there is a um i i need to contribute about one to two hours just like heads down learning about projects that i have heard in conferences and in general news uh keep following with their updates um and also learning into learning technology i'm still reading falcoin specification i haven't finished that yet and i need to know that like the back of my hand um so that's that's the challenge i have but at the same time like um in this job i've never been so well trained um after i started i had about one month of self-paced learning and then i joined the pro collabs network launchpad program which was a six weeks pretty much a full-time training program and i flew to amsterdam to have collocation week with with people who i learned together and that was those best experiences of my life um one of the books working in web streams is very unique experience work experience wise it's um i enjoyed it very much but it could be could be strange to someone there's one book um written by nadia ebbo i think that's the the last name and the book is called working in public the book was mainly talking about working open source community and how to there was a difficult or colorful developers around the world there are a lot of challenges in web 3 i think is is very similar to this um i'll close that uh at that point and uh and allow other topics to go out great great and i love that you know like while we were trying to shine a light on some of the difficulties still i heard something like what's the best experience of my life so anyways like we're doing our best i i think like one thing that i'll add is like and i come from an organization that was like very hierarchical in a way and and honestly i kind of like i liked it i didn't think like there's a lot of benefits to that right you can move fast you can make decisions fast and things just happen they might happen the wrong way but they happen and i think in web 3 you have and maybe like i'll reference these like graph structures right like you have a lot organization and you have what looks like a directed acyclic graph where one like you know a daughter of something can have multiple parents organization right so like in a jenks worker for the fire crime foundation which is a different legal entity than the legal entity that i i'm worked for still jenks and i interface a lot like you know frequently and during the week so it it that like it like adds an interesting dynamic where and people from different organizations sometimes with somewhat different cultures and different expectations and come together and need to kind of um almost like negotiate a working model and on a very frequent basis so you can't just be like hey i work at this company and i kind of know what's going on no like you're constantly renegotiating who spends their time on what and i think that's that's like one of the other and challenges that i definitely see but that are also kind of fun to work through yeah it's like a two-sided two-sided two sides of the coin and cool i i would love it it's definitely an experience to to report to someone that is outside of my organization like i've never had that before michelle is in pro collabs and um you're in protocol labs and i work with you quite a bit one of the things that uh i have a really good manager michelle lee is awesome and this is not pronouncing because she's not even in this meeting at all um it one of the things that she said to me after repetitively uh asking for permission to do stuff and she says james stop asking for permissions as long as your core target is finished you can get involved in anything i was like wow this is good i don't know about ian did you have that moment coming from a big corporation before we need to get like seven people approval to to go for a business trip 100 the basically exact same thing happened for me joining protocol labs where i was just you know refreshing to you know not have to cut through all the red tape to to get stuff done um and just like you know go and go forth and make it happen so it was really refreshing to work in the environment here cool um awesome well i i think this is i i don't know i i find it helpful i hope it's helpful for folks out there i i and i i don't think i'll keep us around much longer what i would love um to hear from from both of you is like maybe a few resources right and that can be places to go like actually go and look right like what's a website that you should go and check out what's a book that you should read what's a podcast that you should listen to and or something just like very specific next steps like after this call if i'm like yeah that does kind of sound interesting i'd like to explore some opportunities here like what are maybe two and two or three resources very specifically that you would recommend to check out after this call yeah and i'll start with you ian awesome i think the first one that i definitely want to plug jenks actually referenced which is our launchpad program here at protocol labs we have cohorts going off throughout the entire year um six-week programs supercharging people's knowledge and and web 3 and specifically our our ecosystem or network um and honestly like every single cohort we make more and more improvements to it uh more and more cool aspects to it so definitely if you're interested in that you can reach out to me we have postings on our site there's a website for it um you know hit me up on on twitter linkedin or anywhere and i'm more than happy to um to chat about it and get you in touch with the right people to potentially be considered for it but yeah that launch pad program is really awesome and it not only connects you to opportunities and protocol labs but also as you guys were talking about the collaboration of this space our whole network of companies that that build in our space so i think there's like 50 companies plugged in right now but we plug in 10 to 15 more for every single single cohort um in terms of like other resources i guess i'll call that one that i like recently have found really interesting uh a16z has a new podcast um that's like specific to blockchain web3 crypto they've had i think three episodes and each of them have been like super super informative for me to to listen to but a lot of the other ones i listen to it's like just more one-off episodes where i'll see someone on twitter post like oh this one's really informative with these two people and i'll listen to that but i guess a16z's a recent crypto podcast is one that i have really enjoyed so i'd recommend that too cool great so a podcast and and kind of like the the job sport and the launch but for maybe let me just start there if you go to hackathons.firecan.io and you go to the section that's called post technical opportunities you will find links to both information about the launchpad program as well as the job sport that ian was describing and so i encourage you to check that out and jinx over to you we already heard in the book tip for working in public and to kind of like get a get a little bit of a sense for what what's going on what are some and other resources and that you would recommend i if a big podcast listener like before i had children and now i have no time to listen to podcasts but thankfully i do fly business trips sometimes so i have plenty of time to finish audio books and stuff in while on airplane and one of the things the gateway podcast for me to crypto and web3 word is bankless um and they have now they have uh segments called rollups which which are really good it was like a flash news for uh for forward three um so from there i used to not understand eighty percent or even ninety percent of what they're talking about um and then i learned right every day you spend one or two hours uh what what's this project what does that do and where are they at and to now like i can understand probably there was only probably about 20 of things that i don't understand so that's a good way to learn apart from the working in public which is about working ways of working uh uh in in webtory the infinite machine is talking about how ethereum is funded the stories the good parts and also um the not so good parts that was good um very educating and they talked about so many projects that are very famous in the in the history of uh web 3 world and falcon has talked about as well and and very um uh very uh you know in a very impartial way um the cryptokin is another book that talks about uh coinbase and how they started and in that book they they referred to a few few projects financially related too um and and to to to close down this is uh i'm going to give you advice which is going to be the the best career advice you'll hear or you'll forget right after this panel is don't change yourself for a job but find a job that that suits you be trusy and absolutely selfish to you because um if you find a job that energizes you if you find a job that you really like um then you don't feel like working and that's what i have been feeling like for the last two jobs and including this one as well uh which is uh getting into their real uh this is a space where technical meets kind of business skills together and community skills and marketing together and i've been i've been not feeling like working for honestly like for six six six years also yeah awesome thank you thank you for both for kind of sharing those tips and and since you're both like too humble to mention yourselves i'm gonna do it right so you have ian and you have drinks and sitting right here and um you know they are available on on twitter on discord etc so and please do reach out to them same applies for me and we are here to kind of support you in whatever you know way your journey may take you right if you want to start your own company and we talked about in the opportunities around that earlier and then also you know your personal growth goals and so super exciting and to hear that and from you about those opportunities and i think and we'll we'll just kind of close out there and i have one thing that i heard earlier that um juan said which was like figure out how to accelerate your own learning and space which i think is great advice i i hadn't heard it and i think that's that's really key and and like what does it specifically mean right because ian also said that there is a lot of noise in the space like just connect with people and ask that you trust and think that they have something valid to say and they will be able to direct you right so you don't reinvent the video where there have been people who have been in this space and like trying to make sense of it for a while just reach out to them use them as signposts and and and and help them navigate through the space and with that like thanks so much ian and jenx for for joining the panel and sharing some of your perspectives on insight and i'll hand it back over to jacob thanks so much and awesome big thank you to lucas too for for leading the panel and as a moderator and uh for all the help that lucas also had and playing a role in this entire summit so i really appreciate the help there and thanks ian and jax awesome uh love your ideas and and your thoughts in the space so thank you so much for being here you bet my pleasure