What to Become: HR Pros — Job-Hunting Through a Prolonged Crypto Winter

The protracted crypto winter continues to challenge the entire industry, affecting both young startups and the market’s largest players that stood at its origins. Giants such as the Binance exchange regularly announce reductions not only in ordinary staff, but also top executives. According to some data, over the past year around 10% of workers in the sector have been laid off.

In the new installment of the series “What to Become,” ForkLog examined current statistics and spoke with representatives of recruitment agencies that search for staff for Web3-companies, and learned whether the job market is really as bad as it might seem.

Who are they looking for?

According to the latest исследованию by Coincub, 90,487 blockchain professionals are officially employed worldwide. Leaders in this field traditionally are countries whose governments are open to adopting new technologies: Singapore, Switzerland, Germany. 

However, employers’ interest in attracting blockchain engineers persists even in countries with crypto-unfriendly regulations, including Russia and China. The latter, however, is explained in the study by the adoption of ‘not very popular among the population CBDC’. 

As analysts note, “from 2022 to 2023, in most regions the number of jobs in blockchain fell by about 40%. The exception is Asia, which lost 20% of staff, and Australia, where there is a small growth.” Meanwhile in traditional fintech, layoffs were even higher — about 50% of employees were out of work during the period.

According to other data, about 190,000 professionals are currently employed in the crypto industry, of whom more than half work for Western companies. K33 Research analysts cite the following employment statistics across Web3 sectors:

• exchanges and brokerage services — 62,400 jobs;
• crypto-finance — 48,500;
• blockchain development, analytics and mining — 39,800;
• NFT and GameFi — 12,000;
• other — 24,800.

“Currently, employers are looking primarily for blockchain engineers and protocol programmers, zk-researchers, people with experience in HFT. Priority goes to those who work in Rust, C++, Go and Solidity,”

— IT recruiter daoHunt Valeria.

According to her, the main employers currently are small startups with teams of 15 to 40 people.

Is it easy to break into Web3 from traditional IT?

Recruitment head for digital staffing company hr me Katya notes that specialists from the fintech sector who want to try their hand in the crypto industry should be prepared for the specifics of working in small teams.

“In my view, this is a lifestyle. If a person has worked in corporations for many years, they are unlikely to be comfortable in a startup. First, it’s a different team status, different workflows, everything is different,” warns the recruiter.

Valeria, in turn, points to three key differences between the Web3 industry and “traditional” fintech. First, the specific requirements that companies place on applicants. 

“We are often approached with requests for highly specialised specialists. Employers want to see candidates with existing experience in the crypto sphere,” says the recruiter.

The second difference is the employment format. In her experience, “Web3 has less bureaucracy than classic IT.” Finally, the third difference is the pay format. In Web3 startups you will almost certainly be paid in cryptocurrencies, primarily in stablecoins.

What about money?

“In 2022 salaries swung in different directions: some fell sharply, others rose sharply,” Valeria says. “Seniors did better because companies cling to them, while mids and juniors are somewhat worse off. In recent months salaries have stabilised, but it remains an individual matter, dependent on many factors: the level of the company, its status, and popularity.”

These words are borne out by data from Web3 Jobs. The project team notes sharp changes in compensation on the market. Thus, salaries for blockchain developers peaked in January 2023, when the average annual salary for the sector was about $400,000. Yet by February this figure fell sharply to about $185,000, and by September 2023 stood at about $167,000.

Experts polled by ForkLog report the following monthly salaries for Web3 sector employees, current at the moment:

• developers (senior) — $6,000–9,000;
• devops — $3,000–6,000;
• QA — also around $6,000;
• Director of Marketing — up to $7,000;
• Product managers — from $2,000;
• Head of SMM — $1,500–2,000;
• copywriters — $500.

According to Web3 Jobs, the highest salaries are offered by companies registered in Uruguay, where developers earn on average about $135,000 per year. Following are Croatia (~$110,000) and Switzerland (~$102,000). Finland, Kuwait, Georgia, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Portugal (all around $100,000) also make the top ten.

In 21st place Armenia (~$90,000), 26th Belarus (~$82,000), 27th Latvia (~$80,000), 41st Estonia (~$70,000), 49th Azerbaijan (~$60,000), 52nd Ukraine (~$60,000), 58th Lithuania (~$50,000), 71st Kazakhstan (~$40,000).

Indonesia closes the ranking, where blockchain developers earn on average about $15,000 per year.

Are juniors in demand?

“Right now all of my clients have cut marketing recruitment budgets — it has become too expensive for them,” Katya says. “People are still needed, but employers are not willing to spend on line-level highly qualified specialists. Employers expect interest in the market and at least a basic understanding of terminology. This affects the entire industry, but, for example, there are plenty of hiring orders for those working in betting and gambling.”

Her colleague from daoHunt believes that IT newcomers are also “much easier now than in 2022.” In Web3, as a rule, applicants who are tired of corporate life are currently applying. 

She adds: despite Web3 being associated primarily with flexibility and innovation, candidate age usually does not matter.

“People come of different ages. You can be set in your ways at 25, and in your 60s you can be in fashion. Of course, a C++ programmer who learned about crypto just yesterday from a grandchild will be watched carefully to see how comfortable they will be working in a startup,” says Valeria.

Among other advantages of moving into the Web3 sphere, experts point to the possibility of remote work from anywhere in the world, as well as a large number of industry conferences and other venues for exchanging experience. Our interviewees also believe that, despite the prolonged crypto winter, the market for digital currencies remains a promising field.

“If it doesn’t work out or you want corporate structure, you can always move to fintech corporations. All the guys from crypto I speak with are very modern, very digital and flexible people. That kind of profile is exactly what those places need,” concludes Katya.