Executives at tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon are leaving to work in the buzzy world of cryptocurrency, leaving lucrative positions to join Web3 and cryptocurrency startups.
Ryan Wyatt left YouTube earlier this month to lead Polygon’s new gaming studio. Wyatt joined the Google-owned video site in 2014 to spearhead an expansion into video game content and to compete more aggressively with Amazon’s Twitch platform. He compared Web3 to when he first joined YouTube gaming seven years ago saying that nobody imagined it would grow to become YouTube’s second-largest vertical.
The excitement surrounding Web3 has attracted some of the most brilliant minds in technology. The Web3 movement proposes remaking the internet in such a way that popular online services are moved to decentralized technologies such as blockchain.
Meta began developing its Novi crypto wallet in 2019, and it is rumored that it is considering releasing new tools for non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.
Sherice Torres, the former chief marketing officer of Facebook’s crypto and payments unit, Novi, is another Silicon Valley talent who has jumped ship for crypto. Circle hired her in January of this year.
Pravjit Tiwana, a former Amazon cloud executive, has left the company to become the chief technology officer of cryptocurrency exchange Gemini.
Novi’s former CEO, David Marcus, resigned late last year. While Marcus has yet to reveal his next move, he has been praising Web3 on Twitter.
Another factor attracting talent from Big Tech firms to Web3 is money.
According to Blind, a social network for technology professionals, bitcoin exchange Coinbase pays up to $900,000 per year for software engineers.
Investment in crypto companies has increased, which means they have more money to spend on lucrative compensation packages for high-level hires.
According to CB Insight data, blockchain startups raised a record $25 billion in venture capital last year.
Stock option schemes are also common in tech start-ups, which allow employees to own a portion of the company.
With private crypto company valuations skyrocketing, early employees could be in line for a large payout in the event of a takeover or initial public offering.
Platforms could, in theory, reward users for their posts with blockchain-native tokens, effectively flipping the advertising-fueled model of services like Facebook and YouTube on its head.
However, Web3 has been chastised by a number of prominent Silicon Valley figures.
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey believes it is overly centralized and controlled by a small group of venture capitalists, whereas Tesla CEO Elon Musk believes it is more of a “marketing buzzword” than reality.
