Crypto companies tempt top talent away from Big Tech to build ‘Web3’

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YouTube, Face­book, Insta­gram and What­sApp apps dis­played on a smartphone.

Flo­ri­an Gaert­ner | Pho­tothek | Get­ty Images

Exec­u­tives at tech giants like Google, Face­book and Ama­zon are quit­ting to take jobs in the buzzy world of crypto.

Blockchain plat­forms such as Poly­gon and Cir­cle have hired top tal­ent from Big Tech firms late­ly, entic­ing them with the pitch of work­ing on the next “big thing” in tech — Web 3.0, or Web3.

Ryan Wyatt left YouTube ear­li­er this month to lead a new gam­ing stu­dio from Poly­gon. Wyatt had joined the Google-owned video site back in 2014 to head up a push into video games con­tent and com­pete more aggres­sive­ly with Ama­zon’s Twitch platform. 

“When I start­ed at YouTube Gam­ing almost eight years ago, I was the first per­son there,” Wyatt told CNBC in an inter­view. “We did­n’t have a team. Peo­ple were real­ly start­ing to show inter­est in gam­ing video.”

“I look at this oppor­tu­ni­ty very much the same way,” he added, describ­ing the cur­rent stage of blockchain devel­op­ment as “ear­ly” and “excit­ing.”

The buzz sur­round­ing Web3 has attract­ed some of the bright­est minds in tech. The Web3 move­ment pro­pos­es over­haul­ing the inter­net in a way that would move pop­u­lar online ser­vices over to decen­tral­ized tech­nolo­gies like blockchain.

The list of Sil­i­con Val­ley tal­ent jump­ing ship for cryp­to also includes Sherice Tor­res, the for­mer chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer of Face­book’s cryp­to and pay­ments unit, Novi. She was hired by Cir­cle in Jan­u­ary. And Ama­zon cloud exec Pravjit Tiwana fled to join cryp­to exchange Gem­i­ni as its chief tech­nol­o­gy officer.

David Mar­cus, the for­mer head of Novi, resigned late last year. While he’s yet to unveil his next move, Mar­cus has been singing the prais­es of Web3 on Twitter.

“I’ve nev­er felt this con­nect­ed to a com­mu­ni­ty of builders like the crypto/web3 one,” Mar­cus tweet­ed last month.

Experts say tech exec­u­tives are being drawn to the bur­geon­ing indus­try in part due to its rapid growth.

“Nat­u­ral­ly, peo­ple will want to work on what they view as the most excit­ing and inno­v­a­tive devel­op­ments in the tech­nol­o­gy space, and cur­rent­ly, that is cryp­to and Web3,” Alex Bouaz­iz, CEO and co-founder of pay­roll soft­ware firm Deel, told CNBC.

“Many are see­ing it as the future of the tech indus­try, in the same way that Face­book and Ama­zon were attrac­tive in the past.”

Potentially lucrative career move

There’s anoth­er thing that’s attract­ing tal­ent at Big Tech com­pa­nies to Web3: money.

Accord­ing to data from Blind, a social net­work for tech pro­fes­sion­als, bit­coin exchange Coin­base offers as much as $900,000 a year for soft­ware engineers.

Invest­ment into cryp­to com­pa­nies has surged, mean­ing they’ve got much more cash to spare on lucra­tive com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages for big hires. Blockchain start-ups raised a record $25 bil­lion in ven­ture cap­i­tal last year, accord­ing to CB Insight figures.

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Tech start-ups also typ­i­cal­ly let staff own a piece of their com­pa­ny through stock option schemes. With val­u­a­tions for pri­vate cryp­to com­pa­nies soar­ing, that means ear­ly employ­ees could be in line for a big pay­out in the event of a takeover or ini­tial pub­lic offering.

And the trend does­n’t just apply to the U.S.

Recruit­ment firm Hays says it’s see­ing cryp­to com­pa­nies tar­get tal­ent from the likes of Face­book, Ama­zon and Apple in the U.K. and Ire­land, too.

“As more crypto/Web3 com­pa­nies emerge, we expect the mar­ket for tech tal­ent across all lev­els to become even more com­pet­i­tive,” James Hal­la­han, direc­tor of U.K. and Ire­land for Hays’ tech­nol­o­gy divi­sion, told CNBC.

Web3 has its skeptics

Web3 is still a loose­ly defined term. It broad­ly refers to ini­tia­tives aimed at build­ing a decen­tral­ized ver­sion of the inter­net based around cryp­to networks.

In the­o­ry, plat­forms could reward users for their posts through blockchain-native tokens, flip­ping the adver­tis­ing-fueled mod­el of ser­vices like Face­book and YouTube on its head.

But Web3 has drawn crit­i­cism from some big names in Sil­i­con Val­ley. Twit­ter co-founder Jack Dorsey argues it’s too cen­tral­ized and con­trolled by a hand­ful of ven­ture cap­i­tal­ists, while Tes­la CEO Elon Musk views it as more of a “mar­ket­ing buzz­word” than reality.

How­ev­er, Wyatt said that when he start­ed at YouTube, peo­ple were skep­ti­cal about the idea of watch­ing oth­ers play­ing video games — even “endem­ic gamers.” Now, gam­ing is the sec­ond-biggest ver­ti­cal on YouTube, accord­ing to Wyatt.

Sim­i­lar­ly, he thinks that some of the back­lash against cryp­to and Web3 will sub­side as more fleshed-out expe­ri­ences, like block­buster video games and social apps, start to get rolled out.

But don’t expect tech giants to take the chal­lenge lying down.

Meta start­ed devel­op­ing its Novi cryp­to wal­let in 2019, and is report­ed­ly con­sid­er­ing rolling out new tools for non-fun­gi­ble tokens, or NFTs.

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