The Reliable Jobs

Let me add some color to this spicy tweet because I suspect some folks have interpreted this as "leave Web3." In 2020-2022 (before FTX crash), Solidity was legitimately easy money. Deploy a few "advanced" contracts, get a six-figure remote job. Report "function is reentrant" on code4rena and make $3,000. There was also an insane amount of money flying around due to the money printer working overtime and almost nobody knowing about Web3 dev. People were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for monkey jpegs in case you forgot your history. It's no secret that 80% of the industry is essentially a casino -- and people only go the casino when they have extra money to gamble, and numbers are generally up only. That's been less and less the case as we move away from the pandemic years. Since then, the Web3 industry has been steadily contracting, while the supply of engineering talent has steadily increased to arbitrage the relatively easy money that Web3 offers. So, there is no more easy money career-wise in Web3. -- Now let me offer some nuance: 1) If you are born in a country with unfair advantages, and you think $1,000 / mo for a remote job is a great salary, then there are still opportunities for you -- if you can think on your feet. The market is too harsh to just follow a roadmap and get a steady job, but the opportunities are there. However, it won't be a "sip cocktails on the beach" kind of job. Even companies that are "doing okay" now have all the cards when it comes to job negotiation. 2) If your benchmark for a good salary is $100,000 per year ($8,333 / mo) remote, then you are smoking crack if you think that salary is achievable within a year of grinding, given the current conditions. It used to be. It's not anymore. If you have an exceptional background (i.e., you won math or programming competitions), then Web3 might have some advantages for you relative to other industries, as web3 is still somewhat merit-based. If you have a cryptography or distributed systems background, then you have the necessary edge. You can make $100k in Web3, but not if you are starting fresh. You need some kind of an advantage going into it. I personally had a huge advantage -- I already had decades of technical writing experience + leadership experience at big tech. RareSkills didn't succeed only because I tried hard. There is no such thing as a junior solidity dev or junior auditor anymore. What anyone calls a "junior" today would have been "senior" two years ago. -- Keep in mind, I actually have a financial incentive to tell you "OMG YOU CAN MAKE $100,000 IN WEB3 DEV/AUDITING" -- I run a web3-oriented bootcamp and recruitment company for crying out loud. In fact, even if you don't take our bootcamps or use @RareTalent_xyz, the more people who are (at least attempting) to do something related to Web3 dev/auditing benefits me because I can show more numbers on the RareSkills website and cut bigger deals with other companies. So no, I still want you in this industry -- if anything -- for selfish reasons. So am I just trying to scare people away? Well, I am trying to scare away the people who ought to be scared away. And I'm doing them a favor. They'll be disillusioned when they find out that the messaging they repeatedly got that "entry-level jobs pay well and are relatively easy to obtain" isn't true. Those are the sort of people who will leave crypto and never come back. We don't want that. -- Now let's zoom out. In most countries, it requires at least six years of schooling to get "six-figure jobs" like accounting, medicine, law, architecture, etc. Six years to six figures. Has a nice ring to it, and it's what most industries seem to converge to. If you can grind in Web3 for six years, I guarantee you will succeed. RareSkills hasn't even been around that long. Heck, Solana is barely six years old. But if you're willing to grind for six years, why not just do one of those traditional jobs? One valid answer is that you live in a country that doesn't offer them. Fair. But can you sustain grinding for six years, let alone three? Objectively -- most people cannot, whether due to personality traits or circumstances. Your decision should be conditioned on those time horizons. In fact, there was once a time I made the RareSkills Solidity bootcamp 5-6 months long. The very long duration was to scare away people who weren't willing to invest in self-development for long periods. I saw many disciplined people join with the right intentions, but life still got in their way. So if someone I judge to be disciplined commits to a five-month program and pays several thousand dollars to join, but life still gets in the way, what does that tell you about how tough the journey into web3 is? It says most are not going to complete the journey even if the stars aligned at one point. So I shortened the bootcamps to a max of 1-3 months because life can be unpredictable for most people on longer time horizons. This has nothing to do with "lack of discipline" or "not sticking to goals." Life happens. -- Here's my advice: Only do Web3 because you honest-to-goodness love it. That's the only way you can grind for so long. I've mentored hundreds of people. The ones that made it 1) genuinely enjoyed the subject and 2) came in with at least some kind of an edge. If you "enjoy" web3 because you think it will get you a good salary someday, you are in for a rude awakening. I've seen this play out several times. Even if you get lucky and land a job, you'll not genuinely enjoy what you do. Then you will coast, then the job market goes south, then you are toast. Opportunism either makes it out early or gets washed out eventually. I've seen that play out over and over. If you know deep down inside you are opportunistic, then I suggest making a quick buck on AI agents while you still can. The attitude of "making a quick/easy buck" actually keeps you poor. The "easy money attitude" keeps you staring at charts, hoping for the lucky trade that never comes. The "easy money attitude" keeps you passively consuming technical content like a dummy thinking that doing so brings you closer to your dream job. The "easy money attitude" keeps you spending more energy thinking about the future than making the future happen. Have an edge. Choose long-term. Choose fun.

We’re hiring a Head of Marketing at 0xPPL! You’ll be a great fit if: – you understand how attention moves on CT + onchain – you’re obsessed with narratives, not just campaigns – you’re early to new crypto products and have strong opinions on what works – you think in distribution loops, not one-off launches If this sounds like you, apply here 👇 forms.gle/uP1ZQ2vLdRxPGU7t5