Does "pseudonymously" just mean that they these employers commit to supporting your alternative identity when engaging with the public, the way publishers might handle a pen name?
Or is this something different?
I'm probably not the only person who will wonder about this, so it might help to put the answer as text on the site. (Maybe it's explained in the video, but a 30 minute video is a big ask)
* how do you provide me with health insurance and other governmental benefits?
* for the purposes of anything official, am I as an individual technically unemployed?
* how do you provide me with retirement options such as a 401k?
* how do you report on my earnings to the IRS?
I understood this as "you do work, we pay you, each of us handles our legal concerns in our respective countries".
That does, of course, leave the question of how to actually get paid anonymously, as there are plenty of accounting requirements for businesses that aren’t compatible with anonymity here either.
Your government could say it's illegal to receive money under these circumstances, and they basically do. But think about what that means.
Basically, they kept as low as possible the number of people who knew their real identity. That person or persons would verify employment and file the appropriate paperwork.
Maybe "Sifu" of DeFi protocol Wonderland[0], or "UmbralUpsilon" of Indexed Finance[1], to take just a couple of examples.
I have trouble seeing why a company would contract with a party they can't sue in the event of non-performance, unless they're a much cheaper/better option.
As others have said, that doesn't mean you can't go by a "pen name" if you like assuming the company is reasonably flexible with email addresses, employee directories, etc.
Any contractor making >= $600 have to fill the payment and they receive a 1099.
There are very few exceptions to that and they are listed in the article.
Far more likely is that these companies aren't well-footed legally and don't realize that they'll only be able to stay under the radar while small. Which is common, but puts a cap on how high-profile they can grow. They'll need to sort things out before they can scale or get involved in regulated industries.
The obvious way (mentioned elsewhere here) is that you can reasonably provide services as a business - non-anonymously, non-pseudonymously, disclosing the exact legal identity of your shell company instead of your personal details.
You could try to set up a company to hide your identity, but how well that works depends on the jurisdiction (in many places it's trivial to figure out the director of a company).
Eyebrow raised very high
81 days this article was discussed in HN: https://www.sofuckingagile.com/blog/mourning-loss-as-a-remot...
In it, among other things, we learn a team member who was not even anonymous passed away, and the company only found out when the person's wife created a support ticket because they didn't know basic facts about them.
If after reading that article, you walk away thinking it's a great setup, I'm thinking you're likely very different from anyone I've ever met.
Any story about a friendly person dying is sad. His employer not having documentation on him is the least sad thing about the story.
I think overall it's fixing the right problem (complex paperwork, privacy issues) but not in a sustainable way.
Other people want as little to do with their coworkers as possible. Not saying either of these is bad or the "right mindset", but there is a difference in preferences here.
Pretty extreme example, but just look at the cryptocurrency space which is filled with stories of theft by anonymous founders or employees, e.g. "Sifu" of DeFi protocol Wonderland was actually Michael Patryn of Quadriga infamy[0] (who in turn was actually Omar Dhanani who had previously served 18 months for identity theft[1]), the "UmbralUpsilon" contributor to Indexed Finance used inside information to "steal" $11.9M in tokens[2], etc. etc.
Now if it were charities doing good work with no money involved (either received from donors or paid to employees), then I can just about imagine a case for anonymous philanthropy or whatever, but money and anonymous individuals do not safely mix. Even if they don't initially set out to steal, they might be tempted if they find they can get away with it - opportunity makes a thief.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30120762
Not only nefarious entities, but the "social/twitter world" has shown us that people tend to be careless and at their worst behavior when anonymous.
If one could program ones code to brick the phones/computers of those they consider political enemies, and could get away with it anonymously and start a new job under a "new identity", who wouldn't be tempted?
I'm reminded of a slide show on the metric system I watched in science class in the 80s. I have a vivid memory of hearing it say "soon everything in the US will be on the metric system" with a picture of a woman standing next to a speed limit sign in mph.
"Hey Mr. RockStar Dev, I want you to make me an app to rip of [THING]"
"Sure, my @wallet is here and my skillset is listed here"
I think regardless of the type of work (anon friendly, remote, in person), we need to build systems to deal with these sorts of things gracefully, in a way that supports the people affected and doesn't bring any further suffering or pain to what is already such a tragic and difficult situation.
Identity as a service.
Have things like "This person is authorized to work for U.S. Companies", "This person is certified in x."
Your company would check the verification and make sure it's valid but then delete the supporting documentation or anything identifying.
Never give any of the supporting documentation to the companies, just give them access to see basically checkmarks that show they fulfill x arbritrary requirements.
But only if the applicant actually applies to the job, to prevent metadata scraping.
I love the idea though, was reading the Delfillama one and sounds very intriguing, aside from the fact that the pay is minuscule for full time work, seems like pay is in crypto, and all the onus would be on the worker to deal with taxes and figuring that out, but maybe that’s not more than a 1099? I love the ideas here in general though.
It is?
I want this?
I tried watching a bit of the video but it kinda lost me with the bitcoin stuff as I don't really think of bitcoin and my relationship with my employer ... have anything to do with each other.
That being said, all of the entries on this site are for cryptocurrency/NFT/whatever, so that sounds about right.
I do think there's no inherit reason why we need to know peoples' legal/irl identities in order to assert that they're suitable for a job. I can even imagine using Zero Knowledge Proofs to prove that candidates reside in certain territories, if that's a requirement that your job might have.
Respectfully, are you extremely young?
Someone near me was recently convicted of embezzling $3.2 million from our local government. Should she be able to work as a city controller at another local government when she gets out of jail?
I could bring up another certain population applying for jobs at childcare centers but hopefully I am just misunderstanding your position because it seems so ludicrous.
Say I am running a business in Europe. And one day I need to translate some text from German to English. I go to Google and enter "German to English translation service".
Up comes a website that says "We translate one page of text for ₿0.000048". The website does not tell you where it is operated or who operates it. They state that where they are, they are not obliged to tell you where they are. Just send the coins (via Lightning Network) and your text will be translated.
Would I be allowed to use that service? Can I deduct the expense from my taxes?
Slightly different in every country but in general, theres two parts to this question.
The first bit is just the fact as it's an expense, it affects your business' profit, and therefore how much you're taxed on. Anything you spend money on means a lower tax bill.
What your probably thinking of is GST / VAT / sales tax etc. A tax at point of sale, which consumers normally pay, but can be claimed back for business to business trade. The idea being by making b2b cheaper, economy moves faster.
To work with these systems you usually need a registered business, and get a VAT/GST number.I assume this anon service isn't VAT/GST registered, as doing so would kinda defeat the point. They also, might not be collecting this tax to pay on their side anyway.
So no you can't claim that back, unless they get a VAT number.
In the scenario I imagine, there is now VAT involved. The website does not even provide an invoice or anything.
I can very well imagine this becoming a real scenario. At the latest when DAOs and AI are combined to provide services that completely live in the digital realm. Without any location at all.
Any links to back that up?
What I find around the net seems to point in the opposite direction. For example the German "Eigenbeleg":
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenbeleg
The Wikipedia page says that to deduct expenses from earnings, the expense has to be "belegt" which means "documented". But it seems the documentation does not have to be done by the seller. It seems it can also also be done by the buyer.
This is my US-based accountant for my US-based corporation, but I'm sure it translates well.
How would they even know, if a competitor got hired to work for them?
This might possibly be a good thing for workers, but there's so much risk involved for the employer, any competent legal expert would strongly advice against it.
All of the LooksRare job postings 404.
The rest have application instructions which amount to "engage with our social media", which makes me wonder if the jobs ever existed or if it's exclusively a way to generate leads and the appearance of buy-in. The beauty of anon hiring is that we'll never know.
How would one hope to enforce "multi-million dollar penalties" on an organisation whose members are all anonymous and manifest only as code and Blockchain transactions?
I suspect we may not share the same idea of what's "valuable".
Capital wins under the current system because the bad guys control your reputation and career, but capital will win under a pseudonymous work system too because careers will cease to exist (or, in any case, will be difficult to assemble) and the commoditization of labor will be complete.
I'm a very "out" antifascist, and I've lost jobs due to my public not-liking-fascists, so I'm sympathetic to people who'd benefit from pseudonymous work, but fiverrization is not the way forward.
The solution is to have aggressive right-to-forget, anti-blacklisting, and anti-discrimination laws, and not only to enforce them vigorously but to go forward on the presumption of employee innocence (that is, innocent until proven guilty).
That kind of statement makes me curious. What kind of behavior do you exhibit that has cost you jobs?
If I'm running a company that has to do business with ordinary people, I want to avoid hiring someone who vocally and publicly espouses radical political views that many people would react to negatively. Even if they are "pseudonymous", since it could still become known later on that they are associated with the company.
Different people define "fascism" so differently that being "antifascist" could mean anything from protesting against the KKK, to actively working to bring down the capitalist world order (which happens to be the framework in which most companies have to operate.)
If I have radical political views, that's the part of my life that I'm keeping pseudonymous.
I also exposed some illegal/unethical hiring and fundraising practices, and made enemies of some high-profile VCs. I don't talk to the press these days (don't trust 'em) but my reputation in the startup world is ruined. I'm enough of a whistleblower that my name will have negative value in Silicon Valley for the rest of my life (which is fine, because fuck Silicon Valley).
It probably doesn't hurt at this point, but certainly doesn't help, that I have PTSD and, in the past--say, 10 years ago--I was not as good at controlling it, recognizing when I was sufficiently impaired to need to pull back from the internet, and doing so.
I also ask this as someone who is skeptical of the prospect of anonymous employment, so I acknowledge there is certainly a spectrum of perspective on this issue.
"As long as you are not in some unique position..." is reasoning that is very close to "as long as you have nothing to hide..."
If you either own property or vote in the US, its usually trivial to find you via the county GIS/tax database and the state voter records. At least it is here in NC. If you rent and don't vote, it's a bit harder, but still lots of data brokers and other sources to look to.
Imagine you fell for a ponzi scheme. Now imagine you knew where the person who ran that ponzi scheme was.
The remark is a bit flippant (and feels grammatically incorrect) but the sentiment remains.
Lots of people view crypto as a get-rick-quick scheme on both sides. Even after warnings of "don't put any money in that you aren't comfortable losing" people put in money that they aren't comfortable losing. Coupled with the fact that most of these crypto projects maintain very high levels of community involvement (normally through discord/twitter). Sometimes when people lose a lot of money they lash out at the systems they lost money through. So they turn on the devs of whatever chain/token they gambled on.
I do understand why "we are fighting the system, this is dangerous" would be a selling point used by employers.
That being said I do like the idea of anon friendly work. Not even for the anonymity, but for being full async. I’ve tried looking for opportunities for work outside of my 9-5 in the past and it surprised me how difficult it was to find anything. Ultimately I gave up and cut some expenses instead.
I assumed these would mostly be merit-based positions, how do these two concepts harmonize? I have gotten anon roles before and they did not require a resume.
Also, it would be useful to filter by part-time/full-time/contract positions.
You raise a valid point. I suppose you could submit a resume associated with your pseudonymous identity. I have two resumes personally, one for my legal identity, and one for work that I do under my pseudonymous identity. It does present a challenge though. It's not easy to separate the two and either one alone may not provide a holistic and accurate view of you as a candidate.
Without speculating and relying too much on buzzwords, I wonder if you could use Zero Knowledge Proofs to prove that you have certain credentials or experience, without necessarily having to share your legal/irl identity. I don't have all the answers myself but I do have many questions, hence why I built this! And thanks for the feedback about filtering, you're right. Will ship that asap :)
Could I ask if you were hired as a full time employee or as a contractor? Trying to figure out how organizations may handle the legalities/taxes for full time employees.
how do you verify the contents of said resume without having enough information to identify them?
I could just take anyone's github profile and say that it's me and you would have no idea.
I do think it makes sense in this day and age - with pseudonymous discourse long established online - for people to be able to work anonymously within reason (constrained by accountability and transparency when applicable).
The site is interesting but perhaps a little gung-ho with some of its statements.
The employers asking for folks to work anonymous, could it be that there's a lot more risk with them for other issues compared any non anonymous employers?
I know a dude who is a big believer that every employer is trying to scam him / squeeze out ever last drop of productivity / life out of him. So he plays the same game trying to squeeze out every last bit of money / bouncing from employer to employer looking for the next extra dollar. There's no relationship there with him, his employer, most of his coworkers.
He's managed to jump from big corp (the natural place you find looking to maximize income) to big corp and run into a lot more bad situations than I ever have ...
I think your point about pseudonymous discourse being long established online is a good one! Most of us are already pseudonymous to some degree e.g. our usernames on Twitter, HN, Github, etc.
What else is it for?
I think the opposite is usually (not always) true, and that many of the issues we see in today’s internet stem from the fact that we have completely lost a human connection to the people on the other end of our interactions. (You can even go further and connect this to the larger loss-of-community trends across modern society.) Developing a real relationship with someone increases empathy and trust; it leads to healthier, clearer, and more productive communication; and it generally is good for everyone’s mental health and happiness.
Personally, I want a less anonymous and more communal internet (and society).
When you have only 5 people in your vicinity you're going to form deep relationships with them, whether or not you want to - or whether or not you like them. It will simply happen due to the fact you're going to be around these people day in, day out. 500? Well that gets more difficult. It'll require some degree of mutual effort to form relationships, but it's still very doable especially as you'll be still somewhat regularly bumping into the same people.
5,000,000? You will, in all probability, never see the same person twice. And even if you do, you probably won't remember them among the jungle of faces. You will never form any sort of a relationship unless you aggressively go out of your way to do so. And whoa, who's this random guy trying to be so aggressively buddy buddy with me? This dude is weird. Let me smile, nod, and find the nearest exit. And in the internet, you're around hundreds of millions to billions.
I'd like to comment, though, on the fact that the majority of these jobs are in the crypto/defi space. I'm also not alone in commenting on this, and this fact alone is obviously not surprising, but I'd like to point out that the central idea of crypto that you can somehow "escape the government's control of finance" by using crypto is as much of a fever dream as that you can feasibly work anonymously for a company.
At the end of the day, the vast majority of people need the services of society and government to function. Crypto advocates have long crowed "look how great it is that we have gotten monetary supply out of the control of government", but you only need to look at the current environment to see how ridiculous this is. At the end of the day people expect to be able to exchange money for goods, and not go to jail for doing so, and that is something government's aren't willing to give up, regardless of the medium of exchange.
As it related to this case, the biggest question folks have is "what benefit to I get for working for a company pseudonymously". On reflection it's largely downside for the vast majority of people unless you are an anti-government absolutist, or are working in something like the drug trade or a hit man that is shady to begin with.
Or, the public persona associated with your real identity is so visibly antisocial/radioactive that nobody would hire you if they knew who you were.
It will be very weird if people call me badrabbit in person.
For example: can't file lawsuits against your employer for labor violations if you're trying to stay anonymous! So they really don't have a great incentive to treat you well.
If you work as a blockchain engineer these days I can definitely see why you would want to remain anonymous.
How is it even possible to employ someone in the US without knowing their legal identity?
On the other hand, "pseudonymously" might really just mean that the company collects that information, and doesn't forcefully disclose any of it to your coworkers. Which seems...not particularly abnormal? I've worked with over a dozen people over the years whose "official" name, residence, &c. was never disclosed to me.
Anyway, I don't think that's legal anywhere in Europe.
Yes. And that's a good thing. You are at risk of being fired if you are a white supremacist neo-nazi gay-bashing woman-hating trans-denying animal-abusing child-molesting felonious douchebag in your private life. And you're more likely to be caught doing insider trading or some other illegal/anti-competitive act. An identity is part of regulating a culture and maintaining the law. The risk is a feature, not a bug.
The really funny thing is that this whole website is now an easy way to find people who are looking to be pseudonymous and any employers that are skirting laws. Should've kept it on the dark web.
I could imagine that even if you were paying taxes, you might be prosecuted simply because you could not prove to a tax authority that the other party had paid their taxes.
Apart from that, you're probably going to miss out on a lot of government and private schemes that require proof of employment - mortgages and credit being a big one.
I just don't see this taking off in any significant way for legitimate work.
I would look at the US CISA guidance[1] on North Korean hacker MOs and consider the possibility that the person you hire might be using the opportunity to drain your company of finances, IP, or to sabotage your infrastructure. They may not work for North Korea, but consider the possibility they might abuse your trust in a similar way.
Uh, employers in the US are required to verify employment eligibility. One submits an i9 form.
For contractors / etc, you still need to submit information for 1099.
What am I missing here - if considering the US?
> don't doxx yourself for work
could (was?) generated by a Markov chain.
Yes, health care and stability and proper tax payments are the mark of civilized life. And guess what First Worlders ? more people around you are falling into despair than you realize, because they wont say it.
(I'm speaking from a US lens here)
That’s a pretty cynical and paranoid outlook on life.
I fell into it out of necessity because formal legal contracts are often not feasible to enforce when you are paying some guy, who lives halfway around the world, a few hundred or a few thousand dollars.
As long as everyone pays their taxes, in some cases this can be a very reasonable method of working with contractors. However, this approach tends to make dispute resolution in a court of law unfeasible.
Specifically, for software development I use obfuscation instead of the threat of adjudication to protect myself. Essentially I indicate to the contractor, "Here, build this thing for me. I'm not going to tell you how I'm going to use it. Also, I'm not giving you my real name; I don't need your real name. I'll pay you weekly or even daily so that you don't need to worry much about being unpaid."
This is an ancient concept, but the internet makes it much more efficient. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach but, frankly, it is, wellll, ummmm, kind of weird and very unfriendly because each party is implicitly and constantly indicating, "I don't trust you" to one another.
On the plus side, ending relationships is typically extremely quick and easy. "What's that? You refuse to do what I want? I see. Goodbye and good luck." No muss, no fuss, no drama, and no fear of reprisals. I detest arguing with, for example, recalcitrant or incompetent contractors.
From my perspective, the ending “relationships part” is super-duper great. I detest becoming enmeshed in sticky personal disputes with contractors whom I have engaged.
I need contractors to provide me with deliverables. I strive to prevent them from discussing their personal lives with me. Why? I have found that once contractors start discussing their personal lives with me, they will invariably use my knowledge of their problems as means to justify their excuses for failing to deliver on time and/or on budget.
Regardless of their reasons, if they are unable to deliver high quality work on time and on budget, then I need to find another contractor who will.
