ETHDay - How to create your dream job in crypto/Web3 - Lenka Hudáková (SES MakerDAO)

[Music] first off thank you ethereum foundation everyone behind devconnect crypto channel for organizing this i think it's amazing way to start this week so i'm very honored to be involved in the program and happy i i can share with you some things so let me just figure this out all right so my presentation is something that i'm really passionate about and i'm really excited i get to share with you how can you actually carve your dream job in crypto or web 3 or blockchain or dao or whatever domain of this exciting innovative space and it is targeted at people who are new to the space so if you're a newbie in this industry in this community and you want to learn more i hope i have some valuable inputs for you and if you are more seasoned person in this space maybe there's something you can reflect on or even pass it on to the others because we have a lot work to do to actually bring more people in so yeah i've been introduced but maybe it just makes sense that amlenka or lenkla either way is fine and this is it day amsterdam first day of devconnect and what we'll cover here i'll tell you a little bit about my background and how it is relevant then we'll also talk about what is it that you should actually know about this space as a prospective candidate and how does it differ and what nuances there are besides the space itself but how does it differ from other jobs for instance a lot of things are quite similar to startups but i also try to distill those points that are specific to this industry then of course you want to understand what works and what doesn't and i'll share with you a couple of resources there are many more but a good starting point and hopefully we get to [Music] ask and answer some questions because this is for you all right so being from from a non-tech background i have a background in marketing communication and culture studies i had a quite interesting path to get to crypto but looking back it's been almost eight years ago i got my first job in this space and i've changed around three different types of organizations in the meantime but as mentioned i'm also very very loyal to makerdao and really heavily involved in contributing to grow make her down so one can say looking at me from the outside what is this she never had a real job per se but i actually had quite the roles in the space i did some marketing communications community events and it's been all focused on introducing educating or bringing closer people who are new in the space be that community members be that users or even contributors right now i'm working as a part of a team we call a core unit in our vocabulary called scs that stands for sustainable ecosystem scaling and that's our mandate so we're looking at how can we grow the molds of a dow how can we remove bottlenecks and how can we do this in a sustainable and safe way i had a chance to be a project lead for some of very exciting projects in terms of scaling the dao one that i'm really proud of together with the team of awesome people some of them are here so please talk to them it's called dex x-ray and it's looking at decentralized workforce it's looking at contributors it's looking at how can people or what makes people attracted interested motivated to pursue this career what are the onboarding pretty and ugly things and how can we keep people around and happy for a long time there's this gigantic survey we did and there'll be a list of the references and the second thing that is pretty exciting now is ecosystem dashboard that creates a transparency but more relevant to this is also stuff that i do besides my work work and that is a fun group called people ops that i'm in with a couple of our people where we discuss different aspects of contributions and onboarding people and all these prospective domains and it's also a lot of fun to be able to build the community on board educate new people so crypto women or local meetups in copenhagen that i have a privilege of being co-host of and we have a couple more here from the hosts okay that was a very long introduction but i hope that the points i'm going to make resonate with you because i'm speaking from some experience and i talked with a lot of people and i tried to share this previously as well because i'm really motivated to have you in so what are the things you should know about this space about crypto web3 blockchain or even daos first off you don't have to be a blockchain expert no one was born a blockchain expert and we actually need the different profiles to add to the diversity and and bring strengths to the to the space so yes originally we started to need devs to build protocols but we need someone to market it we need someone to create partnerships to help with integrations to foster the community etc etc so don't think of it that you need to be an expert within blockchain or you need to be a technical we need all kinds of profiles differences and different backgrounds are plus but they also need to be embraced and coordinated in that way it is a fantastic way uh when you choose this career to learn something that you're not an expert in so for instance you're economist you join crypto space you learn a lot about i don't know organization theory you learn a lot about smart contracts etc so you can really explore and there's a plenty things to learn you also come across some of the brightest and most talented people from the space so you would find very valuable and insightful people in your team and teammates and they come from various backgrounds and [Music] insights that they bring in you actually can earn living working in crypto it's not just something you need to do in the night time or besides your normal job so yes it pays there's a lot of investment there are funds and projects and companies understand that to attract and retain contributors is very important so yes you can get paid and another point is you're going to be very involved actually to find solutions to the problems you come across because it's such a novel ecosystem and industry that you actually observe a lot of things you need to find solution to and if you decide to go all the way and join the dao you should be actually aware of that you are part of a or you will become uh you will be on the forefront of a completely new work paradigm there are a lot of things that are not typical as we know them and we basically need to readjust our mental models to understand and be part of them it is also not for everyone so please really make sure that you are a fit for working in a dao and also you might be surprised if you want to work in a doubt that you end up with something that doesn't resemble the traditional work contract as you know it so that goes by the the legal standing dows are in and the different versions of agreements you need to have so don't get surprised so how is it different well a lot of people are leaving silicon valley and other companies because in the big tech companies you have around 1 of the people who actually get to work with exciting and innovating staff well here the percentage is very high so you end up working with things that really you feel passionate about and are learning a lot equally you're going to get a role that has a lot of freedom on one hand but also agency maybe you have freedom and agency in other companies or they claim to have that but the thing is that you are still somehow boxed into the specific area which is your job and if you go beyond you get punished for that or you get micromanaged so here you have much more freedom more agency but you also have accountability for your work higher than than in other setups the expectation alignment both from the side of hiring manager or like person looking for a workforce and the candidate or a person looking for a job it's very important to get this right early on so if you filter out more candidates early on that just makes sense because the learning curve is steep and the onboarding is really long process until one becomes a fully control fully contributing member so it's really really good to distinguish this early and if you get the rejection or if it doesn't work out don't take it as a failure next thing is that you are gonna come across a lot of obstacles and issues so you really really really need to be dedicated to your work as mentioned previously on the panel there is some sort of risk involved in working in crypto or daos etc so you need to have some level of risk tolerance so you don't become completely anxious about your job and as mentioned before you are exploring a lot of novel areas crypto is a crossroad of extreme innovation combined squared so community community is more than anywhere else important here you need to understand it you need to listen to it you need to speak to it right and you need to show the value because community can make you or break you as a contributor it's very important to be aligned with your community and nurture it and then something that is quite unique to daos is that sometimes it's really good to start with like not very clearly defined role and responsibility because it actually allows you for a space to grow the direction you feel like it's good for you so i'm for instance very happy to be a project lead in my current role so i can work on different exciting things and as i grow or as i find something more interesting if it makes sense for the project and for my team i can relocate myself there so that's very special thing about you actually don't want super defined role now things that work genuine motivation and interest when you get to these hard moments and you need to struggle through or figure out solutions remember your why so it kind of like needs to be bigger than the task you're doing it needs to be your drive value alignment a lot of people in the space have a lot of shared values so there's a lot of mission-driven cyberpunk open source or decentralization values that resonate with the people who participate in this space this point is maybe the most important point of all you actually need to take initiatives this is the key there are many different ways you can take initiatives for instance you can be doing your own research about what companies are there in space or what projects are interesting or why these types of dials matter and you find out that there's just too many scattered resources so make a shortly share it with everyone else create the relevant resource or you're exploring different communities you're part of them you're following the conversations you join their calls well if there's a need to take notes and no one does it why don't you take initiative and maybe build it up from there or what else could i mention or just like take initiative within your work and maybe form it to another completely different focus so there are a lot of different ways you can take initiatives and of course one of them is if you see a chaos we're still kind of in a chaotic time be the structure you want to see in your project so create the structure provide benefit show your values your value to the project or to the community embracing uncertainty is a way to survive it to make it and you know a lot of different people come to this space with various backgrounds various education or levels or people they manage previously and you probably are not going to end up in this space forever working for the same project having the same competition so please towards your colleagues in the future or anyone you meet in the space be humble and be friendly because you're forming some long-term relationships that can help you in the future as well and what doesn't especially in terms of looking for the job is that don't be passive looking for this carrier that's not how it comes to you equally not all jobs that exist in this space are listed a lot of them are being snatched by someone who is faster and more takes more initiatives or are just being formed for the person that the community recognizes as very important contributor wanting to have them involved do not fake interest or motivation please that is just so much noise and distraction and we have so much more uh work to do so please if you apply for a job mean it don't try to check the boxes forcefully and finding out this is not true you because you're gonna be miserable and that's not what we want um equally if having job 9-5 and paycheck every month is your thing then maybe this is not your thing because you should actually be more invested in this i'm not saying you need to work 24 7. the jokes go that way but no you just have to be more invested and more caring about the work you do to actually make it and it's also a signal for people when they hire equally if you have some large financial [Music] debt or responsibility and you lack savings this might be extremely high risk move in terms of career change for you so please make sure you can financially sustain yourself if you make this jump because it is a little bit a jump out of the cliff but still with some parachute so just be aware that you should not be in a bad financial situation when you are entering this space or take it slowly by pace [Music] and there are a lot of old ways things are done in like corporate structures and old school hierarchies in the organizations delegations kind of below my pay grade don't have this mental models you need to have some sort of flexibility to adjust for this industry and the pace it grows in and it really doesn't work if you are not reaching out to people and are not asking questions you're never going to learn you're never going to make these connections you need to understand the industry and the best way to understand it is actually trying and using the different products and realizing what works what doesn't where you can contribute the value so please make sure to involve this in your search and first and foremost all the things i mentioned what you should do is building your credibility so don't just do everything else but that so conclusion in order to be ready for your next job in crypto web 3 blockchain or even a dow a couple things to summarize here you need to have a strong drive you need to understand your why you need to find the community you feel like is personally good fit for you you need to understand how can you be valuable for this project or community instead of trying to force the previous title you had you also need to be proactive take initiatives learn a lot ask a lot use products provide feedback and contribute i saw a talk uh by element uh at east denver where they were just talking about this random guy in a in a community in their discord who actually like kept asking gave support around the product and also uh gave a good user feedback to them and eventually became hired and part of the team very valued member because they didn't want to lose this person so that's a really cool way earning your credibility as you interact with the communities and the products and the community looking at the jobs beyond the job listings job listings are great start but please look also beyond outside of the box attend events like you just did here which is great meet the community and again very important one to stress you're not alone there are more of you out there and you are not too late we are still early so please keep that in mind don't get like stressed out don't formal into something take it at your pace so a short wrap-up is also some resources they're not all of them they're just some if you're looking for a specific community to join you're welcome to explore a couple of these i've listed i really hope that these slides could be available after a conference to you or i'm happy to share them personally or i'll tweet about them or something so there's some female communities you could join some dao specific resources where you can nerd out more developer dao my favorite ren wherever you are or build space um crypto twitter is really a thing you can learn a lot there uh crypto project community discords also very interesting place to learn forums i didn't even mention there are there are medium articles there are blogs there are online courses that you can take and also like a lot of vcs in the space have a lot of valuable knowledge that they share for free so for instance a16z has a great starting points for different areas you want to explore on the bottom there's a talk i try to introduce dows you know it's a unfinished project let me know if you have some other ways you would like to contribute to it because i hope more people can learn about it that's the one we did recently at the meet up in copenhagen with these guys as well and there's a talk i did about the x-ray research about the giant survey where we hit over 500 developers and we understood what their journey and struggles were in the space and also those that are interested there's a yeah recording and slides and page to our research with all the resources all kinds of things a great podcast is done by aaron called redefined live and this is especially relevant to people who have no code background because he basically takes uh guests that he interviews about their journey to this space and advice they would give to people so this is like a perfect resource for you there are a lot of platforms for you to learn even earn as you learn get to know the product and become a super user and there are also alternative ways you can get rewarded for participating in communities there is a rabbit hall or a coordinate you can even publish a mirror to earn that way and if you're not ready to jump into full-time job just yet you can also explore the different bounties which are like simple tasks you can do that are listed and you get rewarded for or you can get grants uh funding uh some protocols have their own grants then there's like git coin that has ground rounds where you can use a magic of quadratic funding to get started with your project or get the continued support or you can just go to a hackathon and win a hackathon so yeah those are the resources listed and with that i really hope there is a space for some questions that i could help answer [Applause] yeah i have a question um currently i'm studying my master's in strategic management and i'm looking for a top like a thesis topic and i'm i think i'm going to do it in dao's so my question is what are some interesting topics that we could research both quantitative and qualitative regarding dials yes i'm trying to make sure i heard your question did you say ambassador daos uh no i'm asking um like i want to research uh like my thesis on the endows oh sorry i'm asking you like uh what are some interesting topics i can research regarding those yes thank you thanks for repeating it uh so research in dallas well there are many different interesting domains and i think the one we mentioned in the in the dao panel was actually like we have some of the basics figured out we have some of this like show me your value get voted in and get the paid for that work but we're still lacking all these things that the traditional space has we're i don't really know your background but like that area of like how do you make this even more attractive or how do you introduce these benefits for people the perks and the kind of more certainty for them and how is it how could it be enabled in this in this space should it be another values or what should it be so that's from uh from people point of view and then yeah there are so many different things one can research about those you might also look at different verticals different areas you find interesting you can look into nfts or decentralized finance or depending what your background is what's interesting for you because about dallas when i did the presentation about maybe i can do this very quickly just give me one second when i tried to introduce daos i actually wanted to um now i'm getting oh here here i am so yeah when i tried to introduce dolls i tried to show like it's so many different areas that are overlapping so there's like technical aspects social aspects uh aspects around economics uh uh political and legal and these are like overlapping i couldn't even although i tried to dedicate like one slide to it i couldn't even like make the clear cut because they were like kind of floating between so it really depends what is it that you find interesting but i really hope that this could maybe help you get some inspiration thank you we can take one more question so everything's clear thank you for coming to speak to us um i was just wondering if you have a view on regulatory or other wise company policy challenges that might uh prevent folks or just make it more difficult to to to work in as part of a dao yes it's definitely the legal is there for a reason um some dows can actually exist outside of any legal grounding and it's a quite interesting phenomena um the problem is like even with the cryptocurrency and blockchain space on its own like how do you adjust for something that's such a paradigm shape shift and how do you make it fit for the world as we knew it before that and you know like hard forcing that doesn't work so you kind of need to find some middle ground like how can you account for it and be kind more open-minded about it but at the same time achieve the things that are more important for you as a as a someone who's responsible for nations or people etc and i think a really interesting approach hopefully i'm answered the question or at least like give an example is that in delaware and wyoming they actually like recognize daos as as a legal entity or like a legal wrapping of a dao which makes it really interesting playground and innovation and it also attracts a lot of dolls to set up there and in the in the context of uh contributors it is really hard to like ground yourself as a human being part of like some nation and citizen and at the same time be connected to this organization that doesn't have a legal ground so in some cases you need to figure out something in between in our case we for instance use a third party so our core unit actually doesn't have a legal entity and then you use a third party that receives the funds to pay for salaries or expenses and you kind of try to like bridge it in one way or another if that was helpful one last question oh thank you um i have two questions last two questions first question is um when when do you think it's the moment that adding token to that organization actually is helping the greater cause so what i'm asking is this is because okay i have um a piece of land just for example and i feel like i want to share it with a community that like like-minded and uh without i can imagine it's so great that everyone like contributed this piece of land have access to this piece of land like they can use it or they can like um fix it and make it better and just like become a forum meeting place for people but you can also do that without doubt without blockchain technology because like there's also cpo in rotterdam if you like interested that is basically saying we call own the place together and yeah that was the moment like why blockchain need to add to that so second question i have oh yeah maybe this one first okay so the question is like whether if you want to like give or share value from your piece of land with everyone that was a good way to go right and i really like that you're actually asking that question because just blindly dowing something is very dangerous they think like you need to understand why are you actually doing this and whether this form of organization or like setup or coordination animal is going to actually help you achieve that or it's just going to become a lot of burden so so it's really good you first start thinking of this because we should strain from nowadays blockchain this etc so it's a really good starting point and i think it also goes with like discussion with the people you want to have involved because if you know if they won't pick it up then it might just be an idea that is totally government like just one example actually that is uh link i think calls link dial recently there was like a group of people like trying to buy a piece of land for their golf course with the dow and then at the moment i was like thinking why we need blushing for that yes there's another strain like you want some completely everyday example and you want to apply something that we are still breaking our heads to so the best solution would be just exactly as with crypto you want people who are actual users not even feel the pain or not necessarily having to know that there's a crypto under the hood and i think you want to come up with a solution that might use a dial structure but it's like so simple and so effective to use that they actually don't even have to navigate everything so it's actually value-added rather than like something more complex and intimidating for them totally that's this web 2 web-free moment that we still need to find a compromise yeah yeah very good second question is how do you pay me amy move on yeah okay we will continue off stages i want to make sure afterwards yeah we're super grateful for everybody round of applause for lincoln for our amazing insights [Music]