ETHDay - Working in Web3 - Lenka Hudakova, Maria Magenes & Ryan Coordinator

uh so we can kick things off with a a very short introduction um and then we'll just jump into some questions and the topic is working in web 3. come on link okay hello i'm lenka i've been occupying the stages twice already i have talked about being part of a dao with with our ryan here i'm happy he's joining us and yeah i have another friend here my maria that i used to work at the foundation with in the marcoms i've been talking mostly about how people can get the job in this space even shape it so that was super exciting and also talking about the tao exciting aspects but working in web 3 or crypto or whatever you call it that's also like the larger domain so happy to share with you here yeah i'm maria and as linka said we were together at maker foundation and now i work for different projects and so what i will speak about will be about working in a how web free allows you to work in a different projects at the same time without getting crazy i am a bit crazy but still man manageable so that's that's me i work for oasis.up now which is the front end of the maker protocol i saw some beanies there ah chris and and for balancer too so that's that's and also i'm now organizing an event in spaghetti in milan so join guys if you are around after defcon i'm intrigued by whoa i'm intrigued by your suggestion that you have a method by which insanity can be forestalled i i want i want to believe you yeah i'm like delirious up here i'm ryan ryan coordinator i'm with developer dow i help coordinate as we train web 3 builders and and build public goods i'm a full-time dow worker how many people here are working full-time for a dao nobody one i see one and a half link i think single digits i did terrible introduction to myself sorry also at our country go ahead how many people are working full time in web 3. hey okay that's most of the room how many have worked for one dowel or more oh yeah wow i'm loyal that's like half yeah how many feel their sanity slipping away day by day and are here trying to this talk's for you well well let's hopefully we can convince some of these people to start working more or make the jump to full full time and the first question i have for you is what do you see is the biggest benefit of working in web 3 and dows let's actually focus gotta be the authenticity i it's i can actually be myself at work i get to bring my whole self to work um there's no like uh wacky corporate norm about how i'm not allowed to discuss memes or something i think the best thing is that things are fast so i get bored very very easily and i never have never get bored in this space never so you can change project but also within the same project things are like changing and evolving very fast you have an idea after two days this idea could be implemented while before when i worked for the corporate like you had an idea and after two years you were you were making the slides the presentation on powerpoint about the idea and then you basically you die before the idea gets implemented so that's the the fast i have one question about the speed though is the pace like good or sometimes is it too much like how do you deal with that yeah it's too much sometimes but you have to like like you have to you can deal with it you organize your own time you you know it's a you need to a bit uh understand that you are uh a part of the puzzle but that there's a word outside you so you don't go you then you don't need to go at the same path of everyone else every you know every project you you just take your time and you do your your job in a good way because burnout is something that arms you and the project so not just you but the environment around so it doesn't make sense so some really cool points already made being yourself actually not having to hide anything being aligned with what you work with with fitting in that project or initiative or a dao whatever it is that's really awesome and empowering uh seeing the value of your contribution actually reflect not just being stuck at the slides and maybe a keg after two years friends as we always mention it you are actually part of a very global community you get to travel you get to meet many different interesting people online but also in real life it's amazing and also another thing is that you yeah you are never the smart smartest people in the room never like you have always somebody who can teach teach you something so this is another very like good like yeah it's it's something that uh makes you always like learn and be in touch with your like inner sense of you know strident i don't know so it's uh that's yeah web 3 is definitely a brain magnet and the talent attraction point and people are fleeing their traditional big tech jobs and other corporates because they want to explore this new paradigm so you get a lot of super excited people with amazing experience behind them throwing themselves into something very novel innovative and looking for solutions so all kinds of different domains blend and interact here so you get to learn and explore and try out and get to know the people so there are many advantages sorry there's not just one i wanna i wanna comment on the speed thing so in many traditional environments there are frameworks that make just getting anything done impossible and in the dow world where all of those things have been like eliminated or never constructed things are really are each of our individual responsibility and so like i will complain that i like overwork myself but like no no one's telling me to do that yeah exactly you manage your own like you are there's a chain and every ring is has the same importance right so you are adding you need to like everybody understands if you are working or you are not working because if you are not working enough the project the chain will will break but in the same time everyone else should should work so you don't have to over like well overwhelm yourself or like work too much you understand what is your like limit and you can you don't have any boss like i have a boss is there but but in general the environment also if you don't work for adult but for a company which i do web free in general is an environment where you are free and you just have to work and be efficient they just spell it wrong web free what what free free web free yeah this is a good marketing you know yeah version well obviously we've mentioned the speed but what are some of the other problems or or kind of risks involved with working in web three and with dows that you think people should maybe be aware of so i i think i think we're talking about like a spectrum of opportunities where i'm maybe talking about like the most extreme high risk opportunity where i'm like being paid in volatile tokens and uh i report directly to voters um you represent a more a more balanced perspective where you there's still a boss and a product [Laughter] it's important to take breaks so lenka answer the question uh the biggest disadvantages or like the risks or the yeah the the the the not so big things they're not so good things about what was that three like you've mentioned speed burnout what are some of the other i think that the self managing is could be a disadvantage because if you are not able there are a lot of risks involved like you don't work enough because you're free so nobody is watching you you don't work enough after five days you're fired basically because everybody knows that you're not working second is that you can burn out because you work too much so the equilibrium is not easy to reach you know i know i don't know if you know but probably you know and and it's not easy and this is could be a disadvantage because we when we have frameworks and bureaucracy you have like eight hours that's it but we we don't work eight hours i'm sure only 16 most days it's it's double-edged swords everything is a double-edged sword you're juggling a bunch of double edges time you can take your own like i i i can walk the dog when i want you know i can work from sardinia i can you know it's it's and just being able to uh set some limits and boundaries and then uh yeah but it's risky this is risky and i guess like if um so one of the questions from the audience is what kind of like job platforms would you if you're kind of entering the space where would you go and i guess also how do you go about starting to get involved in web 3 projects or in dows themselves because yeah it could be quite intimidating on discord we've all seen it right there is so much going on in some of these channels it's like whoa so i feel like i've stole half an hour of everyone's time talking about how to get a job in crypto so i hope the slides will be available for people to explore and look at the different links i've been adding them as people who are giving me suggestions so that's one way to actually create your own job by making a footprint in the community you want to be part of and get rewarded but there of course are different one-offs if you want to just try it you can take bounties you can take small small grants to do some research etc um you don't have to jump into it all the way i know that we are talking about web but in my opinion the best way is to join in person stuff like events this is really like we are talking about web but we are all here we are all happy that this event season has started again and it's very like the only way to get to get in touch really with people with their projects with their passion because this is all about passion and you don't get the passion via a screen probably old telegram yes so especially in my like maybe technical figures yes but me link i mean we are uh people people uh person so we we can't do it uh via vr computer the the passion is a lot easier to get in person too and that's a big reason of why developer dao is focused on flying people out to events like this um but uh one of the things that i do at developer dao is every single weekday i have a call where the focus is on dreams and values in the world you want to live in and so to anyone saying like how do i get in i would say like ask yourself what you really want like do you want a job anyone can give you a job but like probably if you think about it you want to do something that speaks to your core values like for me i really deeply care about education and democracy and so that's what i'm working on and the infrastructure to make that happen and maybe you really care about feeding the hungry or medicine if you look if you like really sit with it and you figure out what impact you want to have on the world then once once you're comfortable with that you can find an opportunity to apply that so uh my web 3d working journey started i i really wanted to work with uh proof of humanity and ubi because i really deeply cared about uh digital democracy and that project was not able to hire or pay me um but that didn't mean i gave up on my values it just meant that i moved on to a different uh project and i ended up at get coin so uh start with yourself and then you find the opportunities that will fit you yeah i always used to say when people ask like about crypto and stuff i was like just take what you're passionate about be that tennis or whatever and type that and then crypto or blockchain and google and you'll find something it's a good start um so as i want to focus on the audience here i think i'm going to just ask some of the questions that have come through so there was one which is this ecosys clearly has too much wasp testosterone in it how would you advise a cultural balance in a web 3 worker community and a gender one too take that as you will but i'm happy that this is a 50 50 balance in terms of gender on this panel so so we are talking about gender gap yeah the gender gap and i guess cultural gaps that exist within the web 3 community because i get like ultimately this is global right so i hate and love this topic if i must because i mean in my opinion the gender gap is here just because this space is very it seems very very hard to under very technical very complicated and females are uh scared uh about it that's it and we the only thing but i never have never never ever been like mistreated anyhow in this space i i have always been treated really well by everyone so even when i started then they didn't know anything i was asking everything nobody made me feel stupid or you know unprepared or whatever and this is something that happened in this space more than in my previous job so this is not a problem of the space i think we need as as females we need to share more of our positive experience because we have we have positive experience so we need to like share share share telling our girlfriends hey this is not that complicated because when i talk to my non crypto girlfriends they are like i don't understand oh no stop talking about it i don't understand so i mean you you need to let them know that this is not too complicated for anyone you know yeah well there's one question here that says i'm a female and i'm put off by the crypt of bro culture i just wanted to add that i met maria at slash in helsinki in 18. she was like first day on job i was there and i was like okay you're working crypto we don't have enough ladies come here ask me questions yeah i will tell you everything yeah so we get more ladies in and it's not in the sense that hey we need more women it's just like no exact make it welcoming share the knowledge it doesn't make sense maria was like we got her to make her whoever asked that question find them afterwards i'm sure it'll be fine yeah and and just to add to this i'm uh also like part of this project called crypto women we started in copenhagen just like three uh three girls but you know it never was about that this is just ladies only or ladies in a display or something like it was just to create this platform where people would feel like okay comfortable to ask questions that might be considered stupid otherwise yeah we welcomed all genders and we really just like didn't care what's your background and i think like the ladies in the space it should be their achievements not their gender that's big for them so please don't put us on a panel just to meet the quota talk to you also you know yeah also the female-based panel what what does it mean like no thank you i'm not allowed to say it yeah what does female b the females in the crypto well what what's but what is this about this is for everyone if we should build it well we might as well like combine ourselves we should not be just one uniform cookie cutter person building this like we need different opinions we need different people different people yeah we don't care i mean you can you can come this space is very open you know when i joined i used to uh working up for example in a space where you every conference was a suit hills and you know so i first slash i i came like well like i usually dress for events you know and i was there with my like heels etc and everybody was in pyjama so i was there but nobody cared like i was in my ears and nobody cared you know yeah like you can call my meals pajamas you can be you male female we don't care you know that's just yeah just come with the right mindset contribute show your worth just add value and let's see it yeah well that's you want to say one thing on this i would like to may i yes um so uh it's about it's about people it's about accepting all people and making space for all people you asked an institutional level question developer dow's answer has been that we focus on bringing in underrepresented groups and not historically underrepresented groups but underrepresented groups today and so i mean my focus is economically underrepresented groups but any justification for an underrepresented groups we've set aside hundreds of fellowships for people who can't otherwise get in and we expect most of those in the early days to go to women so uh while it is all about making space for people uh today the categories that are underrepresented are geographic demographic and economic um so someone in the audience is asking about you know obviously there's developer and coding jobs what about the other types of jobs that are also applicable in web3 and where do you see the most value being outside of developers the other 80 of jobs exactly exactly guys we need marketing people because otherwise outside and nobody will understand anything of what we are doing here so business people marketing people educators project managers yes so people who can explain your grandma no maybe you're not your grandma your father what we are doing and someone else is also saying which i don't disagree with but we mentioned burning out earlier but someone said that 80 of people in this ecosystem are burning out you know that there is an overload that's capitalism that's not crypto specifically a large percentage of people in our society are burning out um and combating that is a real problem that that crypto technologies can make a point of addressing um but it's like definitely a much larger problem than just uh us being in control of our own schedules and having really big ambitions but do you think they could be more done within this ecosystem to combat that or like is it really up to um as you were saying earlier about it it's actually your own responsibility and you can tap out and say enough's enough whenever members of my teams have come forward and said you know i'm on the edge of burnout and i need to take some time off i've found that we've been extremely supportive our many many of the cultures that we come from have this uh i don't have the exact words but this like uh fetishization of overwork and self-sacrifice for a sort of a corporate ideal and we like our self-worth gets tied up and it's quite difficult to untangle um and that that we bring that with us and so um there's a lot of self-work that needs to be done on this and many other topics yeah a lot of discipline a lot of focus on actual value contributed when you're effective and when you're not not forcing yourself just to sit those hours and also i mean giving yourself the time you need it's better for everyone like the project and you bring more value when you yeah when you yeah but i think it's up to people to first make that decision and then also for the employer to be accepting of it and if they're not yeah and and even like internally within the team um you should have some sort of audits where you actually check back and um and assess how was the quarter how did you do and how should you plan better for the next one and i think it applies for many other projects not just our core unit in the dao and we actually realized like yeah this is uh this is a marathon not sprint and we have tried to achieve too many things in one quarter so we also adjust for that yeah sometimes we have to pace ourselves even forcefully so that it's a good time is there a chance that you and your people ops group might be interested in yeah i got the socks and now i'm inviting ryan to the telegram chat and tomorrow at ggg global governance summit we have a workshop i can't remember the time but uh please come talk to us and you're invited as well i'll be there please yeah new member it's all doubt do you [Laughter] [Music] i think i'm participating in the dow star one workshop nice cool well um there are also some other questions there's one in particular about immigration so please i think you're probably best speaking to ryan so do find him afterwards maybe that's the best i got um but thank you so much to three of you for this panel thank you and uh thanks a lot everyone [Music] you