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Turning Down a Blockchain Job Offer

285 points by def- 9y ago

janmon18 9y ago
If working for SAP helps with keeping your integrity, you should stick with them forever.
- scandox 9y ago
  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.
- jhwang5 9y ago
  Incredibly disrespectful for no reason
- sdasd2342 9y ago
  Ass
- foo101 9y ago
  How does the fact that he works for SAP have any bearing on his moral stance regarding blockchain? Ad hominem is a fallacious argument.
- contrarian_ 9y ago
  Sure you might not like SAP's business practices but there are very few large software companies in Europe.
marcelogranja 9y ago
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."
- ttul 9y ago
  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.
  - jraines 9y ago
    It seems like nobody really knows, yet. But Ethereum is about to run a $100bn experiment to find out :)
    - stefano 9y ago
      Market cap is very different from the actual money invested in the ecosystem. I don't know the exact number, but I bet it's a lot lower than $100bn. Stupid example: I create 100bn coins. Then I sell one to myself for $1. Am I now running a $100bn experiment?
Alex3917 9y ago
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.
- solotronics 9y ago
  it puts the block on the chain or else it gets the hose again!
- tzhenghao 9y ago
  You sir, just made my day.
jurandom 9y ago
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.
- arbol 9y ago
  Any semi-valuable exchange that requires a level of trust may benefit from smart contracts.
- shawabawa3 9y ago
  More likely, they want to be able to show their investors that they're exploring blockchains so that they aren't seen as dinosaurs missing out on the hottest new tech
  - bduerst 9y ago
    For those of you doubting that this type of market signalling happens, look at Kodak: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-09/kodak-stock-surges-after-announcing-coin-to-join-crypto-craze https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-09/kodak-sto...
- kirillseva 9y ago
  You could have just said J.P. Morgan
  - jurandom 9y ago
    No
- zazpowered 9y ago
  Ethereum or another blockchain?
  - jurandom 9y ago
    I told them it will have to be Ethereum for now
jraines 9y ago
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)?
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  He didn't mention applying or interviewing; this could have been an offer more-or-less out of the blue. There usually isn't much harm in at least talking to someone who tries to pay you money for your work.
tlb 9y ago
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.
- jraines 9y ago
  mortgage & credit generally are bad comparisons, because cryptocurrency doesn't solve this. You still need a credit score or similar reputation metric associated with your real legal name/entity. In general I agree, though. Turning energy into trust is definitely worth it, and we're in a price discovery phase to find out what "it" is.
  - fastball 9y ago
    Bitcoin doesn't solve this, but there are plenty[1][2][3][4] of cryptos that realize this failing in Bitcoin and others and are trying to address it. 1. https://www.civic.com/ https://www.civic.com/ 2. https://stratisplatform.com/identity/ https://stratisplatform.com/identity/ 3. https://whycardano.com/#social-elements-of-money https://whycardano.com/#social-elements-of-money 4. https://neo.org/ https://neo.org/
- ecuzzillo 9y ago
  Is there some evidence that it would actually replace any of the existing financial system, rather than just adding yet another venue for speculation and manipulation?
- foepys 9y ago
  I will repost a comment of mine from another Bitcoin thread about a month ago regarding this comparison because the comparison is just ridiculous: Bitcoin is estimated to use about the same energy as the whole country of Denmark[1]. Denmark has over 790 million cashless transactions with "Dankort", a local debit card, per year alone[2] - excluding other payment methods. Bitcoin can handle about 2,000 transactions per block[3]. 2,000 transactions times 6 blocks per hour times 24 hours in a day times 365 days in a year equals 105,120,000 transactions per year. Congratulations, you just used the energy of the whole country of Denmark with _everything_ in it (housholds, heavy industry, etc.) to process less than a 1/7th of Denmark's cash-less transactions with a _specific_ (albeit widely used) debit card. You see, your argument is simply invalid. "Traditional" banking is more energy efficient by multiple orders of magnitude. 1: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/bitcoins-insane-energy-consumption-explained/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/bitcoins-insane-... 2: https://www.nationalbanken.dk/en/publications/Documents/2011/09/MON3Q_P1_2011_Payment%20Habits%20in%20Denmark.pdf https://www.nationalbanken.dk/en/publications/Documents/2011... (page 125) 3: https://blockchain.info/en/charts/n-transactions-per-block https://blockchain.info/en/charts/n-transactions-per-block
debt 9y ago
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.
- arbol 9y ago
  Presumably you use cash occasionally? The worldwide criminal cash markets dwarf anything related to blockchain (although they do also utilise blockchain).
fullshark 9y ago
> It seems like people already know that they want to use a blockchain even before they understand what the problem is, basically a solution in search of problems. This is the story with basically any startup in a hot space. This could be just as easily about AI / Machine Learning.
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  I hear you, but I have to point out that ML at least have already shown that can solve problems that need to be solved which had no solution before.
  - alex_duf 9y ago
    So did the blockchain Edit: not trying to defend bitcoin here, just pointing that the blockchain brought a new solution to a trust issue
    - Sangermaine 9y ago
      No, it didn't. Blockchain technology is perhaps the biggest recent example of a solution in search of a problem. It's interesting but still not clear at all what it would be useful for over what already exists: >"Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain" https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100 https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-...
      - root_axis 9y ago
        I agree that it is a solution in search of a problem, but it was able to find a problem, namely, facilitating darkmarket transactions; that's a real use-case that wasn't practical before blockchain tokens. Unfortunately, that use-case does not satisfy the enthusiasts and they have been determined to find some other use-case that has yet to materialize. The closest they've come up with are smart-contracts but those are generally useless as well because a smart-contract is only capable of enforcing rules on a blockchain and nowhere else.
arbol 9y ago
The benefits of blockchain outweigh the initial costs involved in kickstarting the ecosystem. The same initial flurry of investment happened when the internet was created. Look how that turned out.
- tonyjstark 9y ago
  Which benefits exactly? I've yet to see a problem where Blockchain is the best solution except doing ICOs which is not a problem. Also comparing the internet (having utility form the start) to blockchain (since 10 years nothing but gambling) does not make any sense...
  - kirillseva 9y ago
    not trying to assume any position here, just want to point out that you're looking at the world through the gucci glasses of someone who lives in a 1st world country with functional financial and legal systems. There are plenty of people in the world who live in countries where the legal system doesn't work, the do not have access to banks, their fiat currency gets manipulated by the corrupt government. And these people now have smartphones and Internet.
- joosters 9y ago
  Why do you think the comparison with the internet is fair? Why not compare it with the initial flurry of investment into dotcom no-hopers like pets.com and webvan.com ?
  - arbol 9y ago
    They are one and the same. There are of course plenty of "no hoper" ICOs that will cease to exist, much like the dotcom boom. The internet democratized the sharing of information. Prior to this it was quite difficult and expensive to communicate with thousands of people all over the world. With the advent of the internet, it became cheap and accessible to anyone with a connection (I am obviously skewing my world view by considering only those with connections). With cheap communication comes increased trade and we initially saw many companies trying to cash in on the new routes to market (Amazon, eBay, Pets.com, ...). However, these have more or less developed into monopolies over time. How many startup retailers could challenge Amazon? Blockchain should result in the democratization of transactions as it reduces the barrier to entry for anyone with access to a shared global computer which utilises smart contracts. It's useful to highlight this with an example: I have $1000 of gold and you have $1000. We need to exchange these items. We could just meet in the street and exchange the items but this would be considered risky as either one of us could attempt to mug the other and run off with $2000 worth of assets. Therefore, we employ the services of a mediator or escrow. Q - Is it better to pay the mediator $10 each or $100 each? -------------------- Think carefully -------------------- A - $100 This is counterintuitive as we obviously would prefer to pay $10 each and receive $990 in assets at the end of the trade. However, the incentive for the escrow to simply run off with the assets is greatly reduced if we pay them more for the trade. An escrow who takes $200 from a $2000 trade only needs to complete 10 trades before they have $2000 in assets. An escrow who takes $20 per trade would need to complete 100 trades before they have $2000 in assets. You may be wondering why I'm telling you this so I'll cut to the point. The escrow in this example is a real person. The escrow in blockchain is a smart contract that literally cannot run away with the money. It can only send funds from one account A to account B or from account B to account A when it has received both sets of assets. The cost of this smart contract is therefore (in Ethereum's case) the cost of the computation on the network, which is exceptionally low in comparison to the human escrow. Even if someone was to create a contract that took %10 per trade, someone else could copy the contract and reduce the fee. This would happen until the cost of running and maintaining escrow contracts found it's market value. In summary, the $200 fee becomes cents. These kind of operations are made available to the general public on a world computer. This approach can be applied to ANYTHING that can have it's value represented as a digital token. Take a minute to consider this - it's grand. In the short term, Monopolies like Amazon and eBay begin to lose their competitive edge. This is the democratization of trade. In the long term, we have a global interoperable platform capable of trading anything you can imagine. (For a science fiction extrapolation of this see "Whuffie" in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow).
maze-le 9y ago
>> It seems like people already know that they want to use a blockchain even before they understand what the problem is. I kind of agree with this notion, but it is not limited to blockchains or cryptocurrencies. I had discussions about using deep learning on a problem that was very ill suited for machine learning approaches (in the end it was solved by regular expressions and some simple statistics). Other overhyped technologies include: microservices, nosql-databases, rdf/sparql/semantic web and IoT-devices. Some items on this list were overhyped in the past, but have found a reasonable technological ecosystem in fields that are suited to it, like rdf. I think the same will happen with the blockchain.
togoshigekata 9y ago
BiblePay is looking for C++ Blockchain Developers, 10% of mined coins go to Charity, the project is already sponsoring 180+ orphans monthly! BiblePay is a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), no ICO, no Premine, no Instamine, and the algorithm is CPU only so anyone can mine Job Ad: https://www.reddit.com/r/BiblePay/comments/7ph4k8/hiring_c_developer/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BiblePay/comments/7ph4k8/hiring_c_d...
eplanit 9y ago
As "generous" is subjective, I'm curious what the specifics of the offer were.
jerkstate 9y ago
> Everyone who is talking positively about cryptocurrencies and making hyperbolic claims seems to have invested in them. I thought this was an interesting claim to use as a disqualifier. If you see the promise of blockchain, why wouldn't you invest in them?
- alexbeloi 9y ago
  Because investing in coins is non-productive, those coins don't generate anything besides demand. If one believes in the technology, one should be investing in companies working on expanding blockchain tech. Also blockchain != coins.
  - jerkstate 9y ago
    many of the teams working on expanding blockchain tech in the most interesting ways are only investable via coins/tokens. in this way, your statement contradicts itself.
- acdha 9y ago
  It’s not an inherent negative but it’s a huge conflict of interest which every listener needs to factor in, especially since a booster has no long term commitment to stay past the point you buy in. That doesn’t need to be a conscious attempt to defraud, either: humans are notoriously bad at seeing things accurately when not doing so is highly profitable. A lot of people really believed their house doubled in value over a couple years in the 2000s, or that selling things online was a high margin business before that.
- goblin89 9y ago
  > > Everyone who is talking positively about cryptocurrencies and making hyperbolic claims seems to have invested in them. > If you see the promise of blockchain, why wouldn't you invest in them? There’s a delicate difference between investing vs. investing and telling strangers how they could invest into the same thing. The former indicates you believe something has merit. The latter indicates you want something to appreciate in price. Perhaps those aren’t mutually exclusive, you might also believe it has merit, but others will take your words with a grain of salt because you maybe, just maybe, are trying to speculate in it short-term. (Otherwise wouldn’t you try to keep it quiet and invest more and more into it while the majority is unaware?) There’s the third case, though, and it’s the worst: you invest, frequently praise the thing you’ve invested into, and consistently forget to mention the fact that you’ve invested into that thing. This would read as: you believed into something enough to invest, you’re eager for it to go up, and you also don’t want your audience to discount your acclaim on the basis that you’re an investor. In other words, lack of investment disclosure (where it’s due) advertises a degree of insecurity about true merits of the thing someone’s endorsing, so those two cancel out, which leaves the speculation motive. The whole field seems to send this sort of a mixed signal, and it leaves an unpleasant residue. The hype is, perhaps paradoxically, discrediting the technology.
nemild 9y ago
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 work"? Go hack on various other implementations. Get angry at banks? Go figure out ways to remove custodial risk, so that we may not need as onerous financial regulations that stifle innovation. Angry about security in this space? Go find security holes and disclose them. Even for fun side hacks, there's a huge app layer that could be built on your smart contract blockchain of choice. I say this having worked at the World Bank, Gates Foundation, and a mobile payments startup in India: financial services could truly use innovation, and providing safe, secure, broad access can have huge impact, especially in countries with weak legal systems. Blockchains are a "shot on goal" of trying this, though they may also never live up to the hype. I'm all for calling bullshit on hyped trends ( https://www.nemil.com/musings/shinyandnew.html https://www.nemil.com/musings/shinyandnew.html ), but just because a space attracts snake oil salesmen, "get rich quick" schemers, and cargo culting programmers doesn't mean that there might not still be great opportunities to do good engineering and have huge impact.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  > Go figure out ways to remove custodial risk, so that we may not need as onerous financial regulations that stifle innovation. FWIW, this is the best video I've seen on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dla42bY7k90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dla42bY7k90
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  There's a surprising amount of information out there in regards to how blockchains work and how to build them, especially compared to 2013-2014 ish. They are not dark arts, there's lots of low-hanging fruit which doesn't require working for a company that you disagree with in principle (and to be fair, there's not many blockchain companies that seem to have many principles other than cha-ching).
- ChrisLomont 9y ago
cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
While turning down the job is just fine, here's what happened instead: - Someone else with similar capabilities as OP's probably took the job. - This person will make significantly more money than what OP will be making (as OP points out) - This person will have learned way more about the implication of the technology, whether it actually is as bad as what mainstream media says or if those are all coming from ignorance. Even if this whole Bitcoin thing comes crashing, accepting a job that's much higher paying, and lets you explore a new edge technology, all while being able to work remotely, all sound like a game you can't lose. p.s. All this narrative about how proof of work == global warming, and how bitcoin won't work because of such and such are mostly based on lack of deep knowledge. Sure, they say "yeah i've read the whitepaper and I totally understand how it works", but that's not enough. I've been there and now that I know more about it I feel ashamed of blabbering my mouth to people about these things because to people who actually know things, these words immediately turn on red flag and they mentally mark you as "don't know what you're saying". It's funny how most people who criticize bitcoin and blockchain for all these things actually haven't gone deep enough to have the expertise to say these things. They are basing their "opinions" on what someone else--who is most likely also less than enough informed--said. If you really want to talk shit about Bitcoin, at least spend about a month, learning everything possible. Otherwise you'll be ashamed of yourself ever saying those things (just like I did) when maybe later on in your life you learn more about the technology. [Edit] To those who are saying: "if you know so much, why don't you just show us what you've got? Prove to us that proof of work can work" or things like that, if it was that simple to explain in a single comment, would I say learn for one month? (Actually one month is not even enough. It took me a full 3 months of doing nothing but teaching myself to get even closer to understanding the landscape) Even if I did my best to explain to you here, I would fail to convince you because it not only involves technology but everything around the ecosystem. I'm not trying to be condescending. I'm saying do yourself a favor and teach yourself wth is going on so that you can make informed decisions about whether you do want to jump in or not. Don't believe what uninformed people are saying.
- betenoire 9y ago
  > accepting a job that's much higher paying, and lets you explore a new edge technology, all while being able to work remotely, all sound like a game you can't lose If that's what you want. But, the author didn't.
philipodonnell 9y ago
I don't necessarily disagree with the author here, but I would be genuinely curious if the job offer was for one of the "scammy cryptocurrency ICOs" or for one of the industry use case that seem to be destined to survive after the current round of scamminess passes.
- 282883392 9y ago
  Seems to be a critical piece of info that the author detained. A job with, for example, Google versus a job with BitGold+Plus would make a big difference in this kind of decision.
- peterkelly 9y ago
  His reasons seemed really strange to me. If I was considering such an offer, my decision would be based in large part on what exactly the company was doing in the space and whether I felt it was good or bad. It's like turning down a job with government just because governments sometimes do bad things.
  - philipodonnell 9y ago
    The last phrase about declining it because of the state of the ecosystem was what confused me. There are good parts and bad parts of every system, even when the system is majority bad parts. It seems dismissive to discard both to avoid one.
unixhero 9y ago
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.
- lcfcjs2 9y ago
  Listen to this guy / gal ^ take the money, learn as much as you can, move on when you have learnt all you can.
- goblin89 9y ago
  > 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 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.
- Jare 9y ago
  There's always a reward for becoming part of a problem.
- Asdfbla 9y ago
  Of course, if you go through the world without ethical concerns, then your plan sounds pretty good.
  - unixhero 9y ago
    It is sound. Yes. Thanks! I am advocating it [this strategy] in this instance. It's not like this is weapons/defence, private prisons, tracking or mining. It's a blockchain startup.
binaryanomaly 9y ago
Respect!
45h34jh53k4j 9y ago
99% it was just some marketing drone wanting to find any developers to cut a ECR20 for their scamtoken. You are right to avoid this. BTW if any engineers read this, treat 99% of unsolicited 'blockchain jobs' as the scam that they are. Cutting and pasting solidity smartcontracts doesn't make you a blockchain developer :-)
TomK32 9y ago
Misleading title, blockchains and coins are closely related, but you can do blockchain without any coins and PoW.
adreamingsoul 9y ago
This is refreshing to read. I share similar opinions as the author and also do not have any investments in cryptocurrencies. However, the technology itself and the original intent is still very interesting to me.
pascalxus 9y ago
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 account information or something in which case you definately want to stear clear
- danpalmer 9y ago
  The author may not have valued working remotely as highly as you do. Personally I would much rather work in a company office, and selfishly would prefer to not pay the personal cost of working with remote colleagues.
- tonyjstark 9y ago
  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.
lcfcjs2 9y ago
Why does anyone care what this particular programmer thinks about Blockchain? I would use it as an opportunity to learn everything I could about it.
danellis 9y ago
What I'm curious about is how someone without any blockchain experience gets offered a blockchain job out of the blue.
- vinniejames 9y ago
  You make it up as a sensational blog post
- michaelt 9y ago
  1. Integrate donations using a blockchain-based payments API 2. Mention on your CV that you've integrated with blockchain-based payments APIs. 3. Recruiter searches for CVs with the word 'blockchain' and finds yours.
outworlder 9y ago
Who is this guy, and why do we care about his life choices?
endorphone 9y ago
It is interesting how grievance posts have such an easy time on HN, and how willing the audience is to put aside basic cynicism (AMP is another easy target for these sorts of posts). I am going to be a little more suspicious and say that the OP never had a job offer for a "blockchain implementation", but instead posted the standard, rather empty cynical fare with the job offer justification. Lumping in all blockchain implementations and then trying to hang every possible downside is as absurd as decrying a hypothetical video handling job because pornography exploitation exists. It doesn't follow, and makes the argument asinine.
- dpc_pw 9y ago
  > say that the OP never had a job offer for a "blockchain implementation" I get at least two blockchain related job messages a week on LinkedIn right now. Started around a month or two ago. Looks to me like a gold-rush, and I totally believe anyone with remotely relevant experience could have got an offer.
  - endorphone 9y ago
    He has no relevant experience, and claims that everything about the job was dreamy ("significantly higher salary", remote, etc), but they rejected it for some absurdly vague, hand-wavy, message-board type rhetoric that sounds like the standard sort of from-the-sidelines, self-validating fiction. It is absolutely transparent, and if there weren't so many on HN looking to feel less threatened by the whole blockchain thing, or less jealous about this idea that a bunch of people are getting rich (and quick! This is facetious, obviously), this would be sitting in the basement of HN, but instead it's validated as if it has the slightest wiff of truth. It clearly doesn't. I'm not trying to be overly cynical, but when posts like this top HN I worry that it's less a "hacker" site, and more about a group trying to conjure a reality.
- draw_down 9y ago
  The author says they were offered a job in a space they considered to be filled with bad actors and dishonesty, so they turned it down. That just isn't what cynicism means, sorry. Cynical would be the opposite, working in a space that you believe to be full of bad people but not caring about any of that and focusing on just the money.
LAMike 9y ago
Bitcoin mining will spur competition for the cheapest energy in the world once there is parity with mining chips (12-18 months away). We're hitting the upper limit on what is possible in the ASIC chips. Every 10 minutes, a $200,000 bounty is given to the Bitcoin miner with the cheapest electricity + computing power. So once everyone has the same chips, what's the advantage miners can use? Cheap electricity. Bitcoin miners will do more for renewable energy than many governments around the world.
- Marazan 9y ago
  Orrrrrrrrr they'll find power without externalities priced in.
wenbin 9y ago
I'm always curious how blockchain developers make money except for holding coins or doing the one-time ICO... I started a new thread for this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16206218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16206218
madeuptempacct 9y ago
aka "A hipster makes a poor life choice for attention"
jxub 9y ago
The whole post sounds more like virtue signalling than any serious critique to me. While the hype surrounding the space may be a nuisance, especially for idealistic people like the author, it's a necessary add-on to the jumpstart of anything groundbreaking.
madmaniak 9y ago
OK great. So can you link the offer?
jondubois 9y ago
I accepted an offer to join a top cryptocurrency project recently. I worked for many companies in different industries as a software engineer in the past and this job feels more meaningful than all of them. Cryptocurrency is like banking, venture capital, social networking and religion all rolled into one. Before, startups used to get traction by joining popular accelerators like YCombinator, from now on, startups will get traction by affiliating themselves with popular cryptocurrency projects. It's funding by the people, for the people; nobody is locked out, everyone can participate.
petteralexander 9y ago
PoW is not the only algorithm option in blockchain technology.. you have PoS, PoC/PoA, ...
jakefuentes 9y ago
The crypto community is the organized religion of tech https://twitter.com/jakefuentes/status/955151552984920064 https://twitter.com/jakefuentes/status/955151552984920064
- baby 9y ago
  I don't see what this has to do with cryptography.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    Crypto = cryptocurrency. Cryptography = cryptography. We may not like it but the public has decided and there's nothing we can do to prevent it.
    - clux 9y ago
      Crypto still just means hidden or secret though. Both sides here probably ought to increase their specificity by one level. Interestingly, r/crypto is the cryptography subreddit and has https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/7jrba2/crypto_is_not_cryptocurrency/ https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/7jrba2/crypto_is_no... stickied.
primus202 9y ago
I have a friend running a cryptocurrency company and wants me to come work for him. I'd be more attracted if it weren't so far away but either way it's still just so sketchy to me.
hartator 9y ago
The issue is people like him who is right won't be rewarded. Hype and luck sometimes matter more than being right.
meri_dian 9y ago
Like this author and many here I've been dismissive of the blockchain ecosystem as it stands. Especially Bitcoin, for while I appreciate the potential of Ethereum as a platform in itself, Bitcoin seems much less flexible. However my thinking has begun to change since reading over the technical specs of the Bitcoin Lightning Network. The basic idea is that open payment channels of liquidity will be part of a payments routing scheme, directed from me to whatever address I want to deposit funds into. You can read about it here [1]. This system is still being developed but if it works it could reinvigorate Bitcoin. [1]: https://lightning.network https://lightning.network
Asdfbla 9y ago
I liked his comment about trust, it's something that always bothered me with the very radical trust model of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It is not entirely clear why you have to go all the way and do away with _all_ trust, except for niche applications such as transactions for people in repressive regimes (which are necessary but do not require us to replace conventional currencies with cryptocoins). In normally stable countries and economies, trust works great and makes everything so much more efficient. If you don't like single central banks or intransparent financial institutions - cool, good thing there are Byzantine consensus algorithms that don't require proof-of-work but simply some known identities (in blockchain lingo this would probably be permissioned blockchains). You can get much of the benefits and build an ecosystem around known, trustworthy actors and don't have to use awkward mechanisms like proof-of-work.
thr0000waay 9y ago
lol another job posting. I like these posts. HN is now LinkedIn.
maxsaltonstall 9y ago
Hi, I'm Max. I gave the talk that this article mentions, and have helped publish papers about BeyondCorp over the last few years. At Google I work in the Cloud CTO Office. I'm eager to get your feedback on what we can explain better, and answer your questions.
madinka 9y ago
An organization dedicated to hacking services, helping people recover their stolen coins, bitconnect investments, TBC, phone access, remote access to other device...look onto DarkWeb. They came through for me in great time. visit darkwebsolutions dot co for more on this
ciocan42 9y ago
Bitcoin and proof of work consensus is just the tip of the iceberg. Since then, lots of advancement happened in the field. You can easily choose from different implementations of prof stake or DAG systems. You can have a bird's eye view of most common platforms on this infographic: https://medium.com/world-of-blockchains/the-history-of-blockchain-infographic-900e940ee6ec https://medium.com/world-of-blockchains/the-history-of-block...
kristianp 9y ago
I thought there might be more depth into why this person decided to turn down the job offer. The reader can only try to infer the reason from the author's take on the space.
sabujp 9y ago
what if i told you there are blockchain companies backed by y? e.g. qsp coin

285 points by def- 9y ago

janmon18 9y ago

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

scandox 9y ago
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.
jhwang5 9y ago
Incredibly disrespectful for no reason
sdasd2342 9y ago
Ass
foo101 9y ago
How does the fact that he works for SAP have any bearing on his moral stance regarding blockchain? Ad hominem is a fallacious argument.
contrarian_ 9y ago
Sure you might not like SAP's business practices but there are very few large software companies in Europe.

marcelogranja 9y ago

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."

ttul 9y ago
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.
- jraines 9y ago
  It seems like nobody really knows, yet. But Ethereum is about to run a $100bn experiment to find out :)
  - stefano 9y ago
    Market cap is very different from the actual money invested in the ecosystem. I don't know the exact number, but I bet it's a lot lower than $100bn. Stupid example: I create 100bn coins. Then I sell one to myself for $1. Am I now running a $100bn experiment?

Alex3917 9y ago

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.

solotronics 9y ago
it puts the block on the chain or else it gets the hose again!
tzhenghao 9y ago
You sir, just made my day.

jurandom 9y ago

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.

arbol 9y ago
Any semi-valuable exchange that requires a level of trust may benefit from smart contracts.
shawabawa3 9y ago
More likely, they want to be able to show their investors that they're exploring blockchains so that they aren't seen as dinosaurs missing out on the hottest new tech
- bduerst 9y ago
  For those of you doubting that this type of market signalling happens, look at Kodak: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-09/kodak-stock-surges-after-announcing-coin-to-join-crypto-craze https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-09/kodak-sto...
kirillseva 9y ago
You could have just said J.P. Morgan
- jurandom 9y ago
  No
zazpowered 9y ago
Ethereum or another blockchain?
- jurandom 9y ago
  I told them it will have to be Ethereum for now

jraines 9y ago

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)?

pavel_lishin 9y ago
He didn't mention applying or interviewing; this could have been an offer more-or-less out of the blue. There usually isn't much harm in at least talking to someone who tries to pay you money for your work.

tlb 9y ago

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.

jraines 9y ago
mortgage & credit generally are bad comparisons, because cryptocurrency doesn't solve this. You still need a credit score or similar reputation metric associated with your real legal name/entity. In general I agree, though. Turning energy into trust is definitely worth it, and we're in a price discovery phase to find out what "it" is.
- fastball 9y ago
  Bitcoin doesn't solve this, but there are plenty[1][2][3][4] of cryptos that realize this failing in Bitcoin and others and are trying to address it. 1. https://www.civic.com/ https://www.civic.com/ 2. https://stratisplatform.com/identity/ https://stratisplatform.com/identity/ 3. https://whycardano.com/#social-elements-of-money https://whycardano.com/#social-elements-of-money 4. https://neo.org/ https://neo.org/
ecuzzillo 9y ago
Is there some evidence that it would actually replace any of the existing financial system, rather than just adding yet another venue for speculation and manipulation?
foepys 9y ago
I will repost a comment of mine from another Bitcoin thread about a month ago regarding this comparison because the comparison is just ridiculous: Bitcoin is estimated to use about the same energy as the whole country of Denmark[1]. Denmark has over 790 million cashless transactions with "Dankort", a local debit card, per year alone[2] - excluding other payment methods. Bitcoin can handle about 2,000 transactions per block[3]. 2,000 transactions times 6 blocks per hour times 24 hours in a day times 365 days in a year equals 105,120,000 transactions per year. Congratulations, you just used the energy of the whole country of Denmark with _everything_ in it (housholds, heavy industry, etc.) to process less than a 1/7th of Denmark's cash-less transactions with a _specific_ (albeit widely used) debit card. You see, your argument is simply invalid. "Traditional" banking is more energy efficient by multiple orders of magnitude. 1: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/bitcoins-insane-energy-consumption-explained/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/bitcoins-insane-... 2: https://www.nationalbanken.dk/en/publications/Documents/2011/09/MON3Q_P1_2011_Payment%20Habits%20in%20Denmark.pdf https://www.nationalbanken.dk/en/publications/Documents/2011... (page 125) 3: https://blockchain.info/en/charts/n-transactions-per-block https://blockchain.info/en/charts/n-transactions-per-block

debt 9y ago

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.

arbol 9y ago
Presumably you use cash occasionally? The worldwide criminal cash markets dwarf anything related to blockchain (although they do also utilise blockchain).

fullshark 9y ago

> It seems like people already know that they want to use a blockchain even before they understand what the problem is, basically a solution in search of problems. This is the story with basically any startup in a hot space. This could be just as easily about AI / Machine Learning.

fwdpropaganda 9y ago
I hear you, but I have to point out that ML at least have already shown that can solve problems that need to be solved which had no solution before.
- alex_duf 9y ago
  So did the blockchain Edit: not trying to defend bitcoin here, just pointing that the blockchain brought a new solution to a trust issue
  - Sangermaine 9y ago
    No, it didn't. Blockchain technology is perhaps the biggest recent example of a solution in search of a problem. It's interesting but still not clear at all what it would be useful for over what already exists: >"Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain" https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100 https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-...
    - root_axis 9y ago
      I agree that it is a solution in search of a problem, but it was able to find a problem, namely, facilitating darkmarket transactions; that's a real use-case that wasn't practical before blockchain tokens. Unfortunately, that use-case does not satisfy the enthusiasts and they have been determined to find some other use-case that has yet to materialize. The closest they've come up with are smart-contracts but those are generally useless as well because a smart-contract is only capable of enforcing rules on a blockchain and nowhere else.

arbol 9y ago

The benefits of blockchain outweigh the initial costs involved in kickstarting the ecosystem. The same initial flurry of investment happened when the internet was created. Look how that turned out.

tonyjstark 9y ago
Which benefits exactly? I've yet to see a problem where Blockchain is the best solution except doing ICOs which is not a problem. Also comparing the internet (having utility form the start) to blockchain (since 10 years nothing but gambling) does not make any sense...
- kirillseva 9y ago
  not trying to assume any position here, just want to point out that you're looking at the world through the gucci glasses of someone who lives in a 1st world country with functional financial and legal systems. There are plenty of people in the world who live in countries where the legal system doesn't work, the do not have access to banks, their fiat currency gets manipulated by the corrupt government. And these people now have smartphones and Internet.
joosters 9y ago
Why do you think the comparison with the internet is fair? Why not compare it with the initial flurry of investment into dotcom no-hopers like pets.com and webvan.com ?
- arbol 9y ago
  They are one and the same. There are of course plenty of "no hoper" ICOs that will cease to exist, much like the dotcom boom. The internet democratized the sharing of information. Prior to this it was quite difficult and expensive to communicate with thousands of people all over the world. With the advent of the internet, it became cheap and accessible to anyone with a connection (I am obviously skewing my world view by considering only those with connections). With cheap communication comes increased trade and we initially saw many companies trying to cash in on the new routes to market (Amazon, eBay, Pets.com, ...). However, these have more or less developed into monopolies over time. How many startup retailers could challenge Amazon? Blockchain should result in the democratization of transactions as it reduces the barrier to entry for anyone with access to a shared global computer which utilises smart contracts. It's useful to highlight this with an example: I have $1000 of gold and you have $1000. We need to exchange these items. We could just meet in the street and exchange the items but this would be considered risky as either one of us could attempt to mug the other and run off with $2000 worth of assets. Therefore, we employ the services of a mediator or escrow. Q - Is it better to pay the mediator $10 each or $100 each? -------------------- Think carefully -------------------- A - $100 This is counterintuitive as we obviously would prefer to pay $10 each and receive $990 in assets at the end of the trade. However, the incentive for the escrow to simply run off with the assets is greatly reduced if we pay them more for the trade. An escrow who takes $200 from a $2000 trade only needs to complete 10 trades before they have $2000 in assets. An escrow who takes $20 per trade would need to complete 100 trades before they have $2000 in assets. You may be wondering why I'm telling you this so I'll cut to the point. The escrow in this example is a real person. The escrow in blockchain is a smart contract that literally cannot run away with the money. It can only send funds from one account A to account B or from account B to account A when it has received both sets of assets. The cost of this smart contract is therefore (in Ethereum's case) the cost of the computation on the network, which is exceptionally low in comparison to the human escrow. Even if someone was to create a contract that took %10 per trade, someone else could copy the contract and reduce the fee. This would happen until the cost of running and maintaining escrow contracts found it's market value. In summary, the $200 fee becomes cents. These kind of operations are made available to the general public on a world computer. This approach can be applied to ANYTHING that can have it's value represented as a digital token. Take a minute to consider this - it's grand. In the short term, Monopolies like Amazon and eBay begin to lose their competitive edge. This is the democratization of trade. In the long term, we have a global interoperable platform capable of trading anything you can imagine. (For a science fiction extrapolation of this see "Whuffie" in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow).

maze-le 9y ago

>> It seems like people already know that they want to use a blockchain even before they understand what the problem is. I kind of agree with this notion, but it is not limited to blockchains or cryptocurrencies. I had discussions about using deep learning on a problem that was very ill suited for machine learning approaches (in the end it was solved by regular expressions and some simple statistics). Other overhyped technologies include: microservices, nosql-databases, rdf/sparql/semantic web and IoT-devices. Some items on this list were overhyped in the past, but have found a reasonable technological ecosystem in fields that are suited to it, like rdf. I think the same will happen with the blockchain.

togoshigekata 9y ago

BiblePay is looking for C++ Blockchain Developers, 10% of mined coins go to Charity, the project is already sponsoring 180+ orphans monthly! BiblePay is a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), no ICO, no Premine, no Instamine, and the algorithm is CPU only so anyone can mine Job Ad: https://www.reddit.com/r/BiblePay/comments/7ph4k8/hiring_c_developer/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BiblePay/comments/7ph4k8/hiring_c_d...

eplanit 9y ago

As "generous" is subjective, I'm curious what the specifics of the offer were.

jerkstate 9y ago

> Everyone who is talking positively about cryptocurrencies and making hyperbolic claims seems to have invested in them. I thought this was an interesting claim to use as a disqualifier. If you see the promise of blockchain, why wouldn't you invest in them?

alexbeloi 9y ago
Because investing in coins is non-productive, those coins don't generate anything besides demand. If one believes in the technology, one should be investing in companies working on expanding blockchain tech. Also blockchain != coins.
- jerkstate 9y ago
  many of the teams working on expanding blockchain tech in the most interesting ways are only investable via coins/tokens. in this way, your statement contradicts itself.
acdha 9y ago
It’s not an inherent negative but it’s a huge conflict of interest which every listener needs to factor in, especially since a booster has no long term commitment to stay past the point you buy in. That doesn’t need to be a conscious attempt to defraud, either: humans are notoriously bad at seeing things accurately when not doing so is highly profitable. A lot of people really believed their house doubled in value over a couple years in the 2000s, or that selling things online was a high margin business before that.
goblin89 9y ago
> > Everyone who is talking positively about cryptocurrencies and making hyperbolic claims seems to have invested in them. > If you see the promise of blockchain, why wouldn't you invest in them? There’s a delicate difference between investing vs. investing and telling strangers how they could invest into the same thing. The former indicates you believe something has merit. The latter indicates you want something to appreciate in price. Perhaps those aren’t mutually exclusive, you might also believe it has merit, but others will take your words with a grain of salt because you maybe, just maybe, are trying to speculate in it short-term. (Otherwise wouldn’t you try to keep it quiet and invest more and more into it while the majority is unaware?) There’s the third case, though, and it’s the worst: you invest, frequently praise the thing you’ve invested into, and consistently forget to mention the fact that you’ve invested into that thing. This would read as: you believed into something enough to invest, you’re eager for it to go up, and you also don’t want your audience to discount your acclaim on the basis that you’re an investor. In other words, lack of investment disclosure (where it’s due) advertises a degree of insecurity about true merits of the thing someone’s endorsing, so those two cancel out, which leaves the speculation motive. The whole field seems to send this sort of a mixed signal, and it leaves an unpleasant residue. The hype is, perhaps paradoxically, discrediting the technology.

nemild 9y ago

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 work"? Go hack on various other implementations. Get angry at banks? Go figure out ways to remove custodial risk, so that we may not need as onerous financial regulations that stifle innovation. Angry about security in this space? Go find security holes and disclose them. Even for fun side hacks, there's a huge app layer that could be built on your smart contract blockchain of choice. I say this having worked at the World Bank, Gates Foundation, and a mobile payments startup in India: financial services could truly use innovation, and providing safe, secure, broad access can have huge impact, especially in countries with weak legal systems. Blockchains are a "shot on goal" of trying this, though they may also never live up to the hype. I'm all for calling bullshit on hyped trends ( https://www.nemil.com/musings/shinyandnew.html https://www.nemil.com/musings/shinyandnew.html ), but just because a space attracts snake oil salesmen, "get rich quick" schemers, and cargo culting programmers doesn't mean that there might not still be great opportunities to do good engineering and have huge impact.

Alex3917 9y ago
> Go figure out ways to remove custodial risk, so that we may not need as onerous financial regulations that stifle innovation. FWIW, this is the best video I've seen on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dla42bY7k90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dla42bY7k90
aaron-lebo 9y ago
There's a surprising amount of information out there in regards to how blockchains work and how to build them, especially compared to 2013-2014 ish. They are not dark arts, there's lots of low-hanging fruit which doesn't require working for a company that you disagree with in principle (and to be fair, there's not many blockchain companies that seem to have many principles other than cha-ching).
ChrisLomont 9y ago

cocktailpeanuts 9y ago

While turning down the job is just fine, here's what happened instead: - Someone else with similar capabilities as OP's probably took the job. - This person will make significantly more money than what OP will be making (as OP points out) - This person will have learned way more about the implication of the technology, whether it actually is as bad as what mainstream media says or if those are all coming from ignorance. Even if this whole Bitcoin thing comes crashing, accepting a job that's much higher paying, and lets you explore a new edge technology, all while being able to work remotely, all sound like a game you can't lose. p.s. All this narrative about how proof of work == global warming, and how bitcoin won't work because of such and such are mostly based on lack of deep knowledge. Sure, they say "yeah i've read the whitepaper and I totally understand how it works", but that's not enough. I've been there and now that I know more about it I feel ashamed of blabbering my mouth to people about these things because to people who actually know things, these words immediately turn on red flag and they mentally mark you as "don't know what you're saying". It's funny how most people who criticize bitcoin and blockchain for all these things actually haven't gone deep enough to have the expertise to say these things. They are basing their "opinions" on what someone else--who is most likely also less than enough informed--said. If you really want to talk shit about Bitcoin, at least spend about a month, learning everything possible. Otherwise you'll be ashamed of yourself ever saying those things (just like I did) when maybe later on in your life you learn more about the technology. [Edit] To those who are saying: "if you know so much, why don't you just show us what you've got? Prove to us that proof of work can work" or things like that, if it was that simple to explain in a single comment, would I say learn for one month? (Actually one month is not even enough. It took me a full 3 months of doing nothing but teaching myself to get even closer to understanding the landscape) Even if I did my best to explain to you here, I would fail to convince you because it not only involves technology but everything around the ecosystem. I'm not trying to be condescending. I'm saying do yourself a favor and teach yourself wth is going on so that you can make informed decisions about whether you do want to jump in or not. Don't believe what uninformed people are saying.

betenoire 9y ago
> accepting a job that's much higher paying, and lets you explore a new edge technology, all while being able to work remotely, all sound like a game you can't lose If that's what you want. But, the author didn't.

philipodonnell 9y ago

I don't necessarily disagree with the author here, but I would be genuinely curious if the job offer was for one of the "scammy cryptocurrency ICOs" or for one of the industry use case that seem to be destined to survive after the current round of scamminess passes.

282883392 9y ago
Seems to be a critical piece of info that the author detained. A job with, for example, Google versus a job with BitGold+Plus would make a big difference in this kind of decision.
peterkelly 9y ago
His reasons seemed really strange to me. If I was considering such an offer, my decision would be based in large part on what exactly the company was doing in the space and whether I felt it was good or bad. It's like turning down a job with government just because governments sometimes do bad things.
- philipodonnell 9y ago
  The last phrase about declining it because of the state of the ecosystem was what confused me. There are good parts and bad parts of every system, even when the system is majority bad parts. It seems dismissive to discard both to avoid one.

unixhero 9y ago

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.

lcfcjs2 9y ago
Listen to this guy / gal ^ take the money, learn as much as you can, move on when you have learnt all you can.
goblin89 9y ago
> 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 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.
Jare 9y ago
There's always a reward for becoming part of a problem.
Asdfbla 9y ago
Of course, if you go through the world without ethical concerns, then your plan sounds pretty good.
- unixhero 9y ago
  It is sound. Yes. Thanks! I am advocating it [this strategy] in this instance. It's not like this is weapons/defence, private prisons, tracking or mining. It's a blockchain startup.

binaryanomaly 9y ago

Respect!

45h34jh53k4j 9y ago

99% it was just some marketing drone wanting to find any developers to cut a ECR20 for their scamtoken. You are right to avoid this. BTW if any engineers read this, treat 99% of unsolicited 'blockchain jobs' as the scam that they are. Cutting and pasting solidity smartcontracts doesn't make you a blockchain developer :-)

TomK32 9y ago

Misleading title, blockchains and coins are closely related, but you can do blockchain without any coins and PoW.

adreamingsoul 9y ago

This is refreshing to read. I share similar opinions as the author and also do not have any investments in cryptocurrencies. However, the technology itself and the original intent is still very interesting to me.

pascalxus 9y ago

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 account information or something in which case you definately want to stear clear

danpalmer 9y ago
The author may not have valued working remotely as highly as you do. Personally I would much rather work in a company office, and selfishly would prefer to not pay the personal cost of working with remote colleagues.
tonyjstark 9y ago
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.

lcfcjs2 9y ago

Why does anyone care what this particular programmer thinks about Blockchain? I would use it as an opportunity to learn everything I could about it.

danellis 9y ago

What I'm curious about is how someone without any blockchain experience gets offered a blockchain job out of the blue.

vinniejames 9y ago
You make it up as a sensational blog post
michaelt 9y ago
1. Integrate donations using a blockchain-based payments API 2. Mention on your CV that you've integrated with blockchain-based payments APIs. 3. Recruiter searches for CVs with the word 'blockchain' and finds yours.

outworlder 9y ago

Who is this guy, and why do we care about his life choices?

endorphone 9y ago

It is interesting how grievance posts have such an easy time on HN, and how willing the audience is to put aside basic cynicism (AMP is another easy target for these sorts of posts). I am going to be a little more suspicious and say that the OP never had a job offer for a "blockchain implementation", but instead posted the standard, rather empty cynical fare with the job offer justification. Lumping in all blockchain implementations and then trying to hang every possible downside is as absurd as decrying a hypothetical video handling job because pornography exploitation exists. It doesn't follow, and makes the argument asinine.

dpc_pw 9y ago
> say that the OP never had a job offer for a "blockchain implementation" I get at least two blockchain related job messages a week on LinkedIn right now. Started around a month or two ago. Looks to me like a gold-rush, and I totally believe anyone with remotely relevant experience could have got an offer.
- endorphone 9y ago
  He has no relevant experience, and claims that everything about the job was dreamy ("significantly higher salary", remote, etc), but they rejected it for some absurdly vague, hand-wavy, message-board type rhetoric that sounds like the standard sort of from-the-sidelines, self-validating fiction. It is absolutely transparent, and if there weren't so many on HN looking to feel less threatened by the whole blockchain thing, or less jealous about this idea that a bunch of people are getting rich (and quick! This is facetious, obviously), this would be sitting in the basement of HN, but instead it's validated as if it has the slightest wiff of truth. It clearly doesn't. I'm not trying to be overly cynical, but when posts like this top HN I worry that it's less a "hacker" site, and more about a group trying to conjure a reality.
draw_down 9y ago
The author says they were offered a job in a space they considered to be filled with bad actors and dishonesty, so they turned it down. That just isn't what cynicism means, sorry. Cynical would be the opposite, working in a space that you believe to be full of bad people but not caring about any of that and focusing on just the money.

LAMike 9y ago

Bitcoin mining will spur competition for the cheapest energy in the world once there is parity with mining chips (12-18 months away). We're hitting the upper limit on what is possible in the ASIC chips. Every 10 minutes, a $200,000 bounty is given to the Bitcoin miner with the cheapest electricity + computing power. So once everyone has the same chips, what's the advantage miners can use? Cheap electricity. Bitcoin miners will do more for renewable energy than many governments around the world.

Marazan 9y ago
Orrrrrrrrr they'll find power without externalities priced in.

wenbin 9y ago

I'm always curious how blockchain developers make money except for holding coins or doing the one-time ICO... I started a new thread for this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16206218 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16206218

madeuptempacct 9y ago

aka "A hipster makes a poor life choice for attention"

jxub 9y ago

The whole post sounds more like virtue signalling than any serious critique to me. While the hype surrounding the space may be a nuisance, especially for idealistic people like the author, it's a necessary add-on to the jumpstart of anything groundbreaking.

madmaniak 9y ago

OK great. So can you link the offer?

jondubois 9y ago

I accepted an offer to join a top cryptocurrency project recently. I worked for many companies in different industries as a software engineer in the past and this job feels more meaningful than all of them. Cryptocurrency is like banking, venture capital, social networking and religion all rolled into one. Before, startups used to get traction by joining popular accelerators like YCombinator, from now on, startups will get traction by affiliating themselves with popular cryptocurrency projects. It's funding by the people, for the people; nobody is locked out, everyone can participate.

petteralexander 9y ago

PoW is not the only algorithm option in blockchain technology.. you have PoS, PoC/PoA, ...

jakefuentes 9y ago

The crypto community is the organized religion of tech https://twitter.com/jakefuentes/status/955151552984920064 https://twitter.com/jakefuentes/status/955151552984920064

baby 9y ago
I don't see what this has to do with cryptography.
- Kiro 9y ago
  Crypto = cryptocurrency. Cryptography = cryptography. We may not like it but the public has decided and there's nothing we can do to prevent it.
  - clux 9y ago
    Crypto still just means hidden or secret though. Both sides here probably ought to increase their specificity by one level. Interestingly, r/crypto is the cryptography subreddit and has https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/7jrba2/crypto_is_not_cryptocurrency/ https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/comments/7jrba2/crypto_is_no... stickied.

primus202 9y ago

I have a friend running a cryptocurrency company and wants me to come work for him. I'd be more attracted if it weren't so far away but either way it's still just so sketchy to me.

hartator 9y ago

The issue is people like him who is right won't be rewarded. Hype and luck sometimes matter more than being right.

meri_dian 9y ago

Like this author and many here I've been dismissive of the blockchain ecosystem as it stands. Especially Bitcoin, for while I appreciate the potential of Ethereum as a platform in itself, Bitcoin seems much less flexible. However my thinking has begun to change since reading over the technical specs of the Bitcoin Lightning Network. The basic idea is that open payment channels of liquidity will be part of a payments routing scheme, directed from me to whatever address I want to deposit funds into. You can read about it here [1]. This system is still being developed but if it works it could reinvigorate Bitcoin. [1]: https://lightning.network https://lightning.network

Asdfbla 9y ago

I liked his comment about trust, it's something that always bothered me with the very radical trust model of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It is not entirely clear why you have to go all the way and do away with _all_ trust, except for niche applications such as transactions for people in repressive regimes (which are necessary but do not require us to replace conventional currencies with cryptocoins). In normally stable countries and economies, trust works great and makes everything so much more efficient. If you don't like single central banks or intransparent financial institutions - cool, good thing there are Byzantine consensus algorithms that don't require proof-of-work but simply some known identities (in blockchain lingo this would probably be permissioned blockchains). You can get much of the benefits and build an ecosystem around known, trustworthy actors and don't have to use awkward mechanisms like proof-of-work.

thr0000waay 9y ago

lol another job posting. I like these posts. HN is now LinkedIn.

maxsaltonstall 9y ago

Hi, I'm Max. I gave the talk that this article mentions, and have helped publish papers about BeyondCorp over the last few years. At Google I work in the Cloud CTO Office. I'm eager to get your feedback on what we can explain better, and answer your questions.

madinka 9y ago

An organization dedicated to hacking services, helping people recover their stolen coins, bitconnect investments, TBC, phone access, remote access to other device...look onto DarkWeb. They came through for me in great time. visit darkwebsolutions dot co for more on this

ciocan42 9y ago

Bitcoin and proof of work consensus is just the tip of the iceberg. Since then, lots of advancement happened in the field. You can easily choose from different implementations of prof stake or DAG systems. You can have a bird's eye view of most common platforms on this infographic: https://medium.com/world-of-blockchains/the-history-of-blockchain-infographic-900e940ee6ec https://medium.com/world-of-blockchains/the-history-of-block...

kristianp 9y ago

I thought there might be more depth into why this person decided to turn down the job offer. The reader can only try to infer the reason from the author's take on the space.

sabujp 9y ago

what if i told you there are blockchain companies backed by y? e.g. qsp coin