In the past year, we have been in contact with many professionals from traditional fields such as financial technology, payment industry, and data services.
Among them, there are back-end developers who are deeply involved in front-line coding, as well as senior engineers who coordinate architecture design; there are product managers who promote business implementation, and technical leaders responsible for system iteration.
Most of them have accumulated many years of experience in their original fields, but at a certain stage of their career development, they began to become interested in "Web3", a new industry that was once far away - not out of passion, nor blindly following the trend, but because the existing track is gradually narrowing, and Web3 seems to provide another imagination space.
1 Transforming to Web3 is becoming the choice of more and more young people
In the past two years, Web3 has gradually moved from "industry concept" to "real job demand". As the number of recruitments increases, clearer talent portraits and more concrete employment needs have also emerged.
On the one hand, the advancement of policies and industries is accelerating. Hong Kong continues to issue virtual asset service provider (VASP) licenses to accelerate the compliance of virtual assets; leading companies such as Alibaba and JD.com have successively tried new tracks such as stablecoins and RWA (real world assets); more and more domestic technical teams have chosen to "go overseas" and set up Web3 project entities in Singapore, Dubai and other places to connect with global markets and financing resources. These changes have released a large number of recruitment opportunities for technical positions, product positions, compliance positions, and market positions in the Web3 industry, and have also turned "transforming Web3" from a concept into action.
On the other hand, in traditional industries such as third-party payment, financial technology, and data services, a group of qualified and experienced professionals are facing a "career transformation window period." Some people feel the uncertainty brought about by technology iteration and platform strategy adjustments; some people gradually lose enthusiasm for repeated product forms and business models; and some people are thinking about how to rebalance between income growth, lifestyle, and technology accumulation.
"Decentralization", "remote work", "currency-based income", "high degree of freedom"... These expressions that seemed niche in the past are now beginning to appear in the browsing records of more programmers, developers, and product managers.
The Web3 industry is indeed providing another career path. But for you, is it a window to the wind outlet or a door to unknown risks?
2. Should I take the product manager position with a monthly salary of 90,000?
Some time ago, a friend who was planning to transform Web3 found me and asked me to help him analyze an opportunity.
He is currently working as a product manager at a medium-sized payment company in Hangzhou, with an annual salary of about 500,000, and has been working for nearly ten years. In the past few years, he was mainly responsible for the product design of the payment link and clearing platform. He has connected with WeChat Pay, UnionPay, foreign card acquiring and other channels. He has also worked on some industry solutions, such as designing foreign card settlement interfaces for cross-border e-commerce platforms and providing aggregated cashier solutions for chain restaurants.
"To be honest, the current business is already very stable." He said, "Our team has basically been doing rule configuration, system reconstruction, clearing and settlement reconciliation process combing, or upgrading the cashier components of several old systems in the past two years. It has been a long time since I encountered the opportunity to build a payment chain from 0 to 1."
Most of his colleagues are stuck on the same floor. They have enough experience and good ability, but there is no room for further advancement. The company itself is also shrinking, and there are fewer and fewer internal innovation projects.
Against this background, he received a headhunting invitation from a Web3 exchange. The position is "Transaction Product Manager", with a monthly salary of 90,000, U settlement, the platform is located in Singapore, the work mode is remote office, and the collaboration method is mainly through TG, Slack and Google Docs.
According to the interview feedback, the main responsibility of this position is to lead the product design of the matching engine, order management system, clearing rules, and transaction risk control logic. From the language stack to the underlying structure, it is very similar to the system he has worked on before, still using Go and Java.
"It does sound good." He hesitated and said, "But I always feel a little uneasy."
"Is this kind of platform legal in China?"
"I am in Hangzhou, and my company is overseas. Will I be at risk if something goes wrong?"
3 Workplace anxiety in all walks of life
Like the product manager above, in the past two years, we have come into contact with many professionals from financial technology, payment systems, Internet brokers, bank IT and other backgrounds.
Their resumes are not bad: they have been working in large systems for many years, have stable technical and product capabilities, and have long been accustomed to multi-department collaboration, cross-border docking, and process stress testing. But in the current industry cycle, many people are beginning to feel a kind of "structural stagnation."
Projects tend to be repetitive, and work content is gradually standardized; promotion paths are limited, and high-level mobility is extremely low; organizations begin to shift from expansion to contraction, and performance evaluations become more conservative... On one hand, there is the accumulated experience and ability, and on the other hand, there is the reality of stagnation. Many people are unwilling to continue to roll inward, but they can't find a fulcrum to jump out for a while.
Web3 was originally just an unfamiliar word, and it slowly appeared on recruitment platforms, WeChat Moments, and calls from headhunters.
Some people started searching for "programmers' way out" after a performance talk, some people saw a remote job recruitment post and clicked on the keyword "Web3 job search" for the first time, and some people started to understand what this industry is doing after their friends said "your background is very suitable."
But their starting points are not the same.
Some people are just over 30 and start to worry about the stability of mid-level positions; some people are tired of the process-oriented work rhythm and hope to have more say and participation; others are eager for a new lifestyle brought by free, remote, and global projects.
For independent developers, the motivation for such transformation is more straightforward: there are many projects in the Web3 field, new technology selection, clear task boundaries, and you can participate in multiple collaborations at the same time, exchanging U or Token with code quality - this is almost unimaginable freedom in traditional industries.
But before really starting the "transformation to Web3", almost everyone will be stuck on several key issues:
"How can I enter the market without industry experience?"
"Are currency-based salaries and remote collaboration really the way I want to work?"
"Can I wait a few more years for this industry, or is now the best opportunity?"
They are not sure, and they also want to hear how people who know this industry better judge.
4 What issues need to be considered before transformation?
Take programmers as an example. Before truly entering Web3, there are several basic questions that cannot be avoided:
Can my past technical skills be transferred?
Do I need to supplement the basic skills of on-chain development, such as Solidity, wallet interaction, and contract deployment?
Official documents are all in English. Can I speak the language competently?
The main body of the project is overseas, and the salary is settled in U or Token. How can I receive the payment safely? Will it touch the domestic regulatory red line?
In fact, many people have considered these issues when making career choices. But the real hidden are those legal risks that you are not aware of.
I once represented a case of "opening a casino". The client was a backend development engineer who worked as a core technical position in a Web3 trading platform and had just been promoted to a technical management position before the incident.
During the meeting in the detention center, he said to me: "Our platform is located overseas, and the server is also abroad. It is not for mainland Chinese users. I should not be responsible, right?"
I asked him: "Have you done KYC? Can you see user information in the background?"
He said: "You can only see the IP address of the user's login, nothing else."
I asked again: "What if the user logs in with a VPN?"
He was stunned for a moment: "This cannot identify (whether it is a mainland Chinese user)."
I continued to ask him if he understood the platform's promotion method, and he replied: "We have basically no communication between technology and operations, so I am not very clear."
The problem lies here -
5 Conclusion
The Web3 industry does provide different opportunities: a freer way of working and a higher income ceiling. It attracts some developers who are tired of the traditional workplace rhythm, and also inspires the willingness of many product managers, architects, and independent developers who are sensitive to new technologies and new models to make the transition.
But at the same time, the fast pace, unclear rules, and blurred boundaries of responsibility are also two sides of the same coin.
Before taking this step, perhaps you can ask yourself:
Am I really ready to face the unknown?
Jasper
Aaron
Hui Xin
Kikyo
Alex
YouQuan
Brian