[HN Gopher] Show HN: I made a site that shows jobs where you can...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: I made a site that shows jobs where you can work
pseudonymously
Author : 0xPersona
Score : 252 points
Date : 2022-06-15 16:00 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (anonfriendly.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (anonfriendly.com)
| persiankat wrote:
| how does this work within the us where employers need to have
| your tax identification?
| papito wrote:
| Typical Web 3.0 bullshit. Bold claims of freedom and fairness,
| but you dig deeper, and it's garbage all the way down. It's
| libertarian anarchy "paradise".
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| That sounds like rugpulls waiting to happen.
| pphysch wrote:
| Looking forward to giving audit-level access to my systems to a
| anon "Senior Security Auditor".
| 0xPersona wrote:
| You'd be surprised! Some of the best smart contract security
| folks in the space are pseudonymous and I imagine many
| organizations would work with them without needing to know
| their legal identity. One of those people is samczsun[1] who,
| amongst other things, famously prevented a potential ~$350m
| hack.
|
| [1] https://www.paradigm.xyz/team/samczsun/posts
| 0des wrote:
| theyre all cryptoasset related jobs :/ bummer
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Do you know of any non-crypto anon friendly jobs? I'd be happy
| to list them! These are just the jobs I've personally been able
| to find thus far.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Anyone know if security firms already do this by default? For
| example, if you work for the NSA, do your co-workers even know
| what your real name is?
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Good question! I'd love to know the answer to this, too.
| happyopossum wrote:
| That's going to depend more on what your role and assignment is
| than just the fact that you work for the NSA. In general
| though, working for the NSA isn't an anonymous act.
| ghaff wrote:
| Sample size of one. Bay back when I had an offer from a three-
| letter agency, I wouldn't have been pseudonymous but I would
| have been officially working for some other government
| organization. I also had to book my own travel and they paid my
| expenses in cash on the spot.
| dboreham wrote:
| Nowhere sane?
| swatcoder wrote:
| Aren't employers in most jurisdictions required to verify work
| eligibility and report income?
|
| 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)
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I would suspect you would not be considered an employee but a
| contractor. I am not sure how they much they're required to
| report about their vendors.
| [deleted]
| PeterisP wrote:
| It's not an arbitrary choice whether to treat a particular
| interaction as an employee or as a contractor - the nuances
| are a bit tricky, but in general it's prohibited to treat it
| as contracting if it isn't actual contracting but if someone
| is working what we'd call a standard full time job at a
| company.
|
| 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.
| cma wrote:
| Just to underline non-anonymously:
| https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2021/02/04/the-end-of-the-
| an...
|
| Owners can no longer hide their identity with a shell
| company after a recent law.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > It's not an arbitrary choice whether to treat a
| particular interaction as an employee or as a contractor -
| the nuances are a bit tricky, but in general it's
| prohibited to treat it as contracting if it isn't actual
| contracting but if someone is working what we'd call a
| standard full time job at a company.
|
| Yea, but I suspect these are all going to be remote jobs
| with people in other countries at which point they're all
| contractors. It's only people in the same country as the
| company since generally the thing they're trying to avoid
| is tax evasion and they don't care if they can't tax you.
| wongarsu wrote:
| In Europe you'd get issues with accounting, both in terms of
| figuring out value added tax, in terms of your local tax
| authority asking uncomfortable questions why you have
| expenses without valid invoices (and yes, an invoice has to
| show who is invoicing). The first probably isn't an issue in
| the US, I'm not sure about the second.
|
| 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).
| swatcoder wrote:
| In the US and comparable jurisdictions, the concept of
| employee and contractor are not interchangeable and imply
| differences in things like autonomy and expectations. This is
| as much to make sure that workers have appropriate
| protections and that contractors have appropriate freedom as
| it is about tax reporting or whatever.
|
| 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.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| It's highly debatable and jurisdiction dependant.
|
| Plenty of contractors are basically employees paying less
| taxes and not having holidays.
|
| (not that I'm complaining, I'm glad there is a legal way to
| minimise how much the government steals from me)
|
| States are a bit trickier because healthcare is so
| ridiculously overpriced and therefore people value health
| insurance provided by an employer. I never even bothered to
| sign up for the private health insurance I had in the UK
| and just either user the crappy public one or paid out of
| pocket, finding the best doctor for the job (instead of
| what my insurance would have offered).
| coderintherye wrote:
| In the U.S. at least, you are still legally required to
| report the legal identity of any contractor to the IRS and
| must ask them to fill out an I-9 form:
| https://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/complete-and-correct-
| form-...
|
| 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.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| (not from the article) but from a quick google search...
|
| "businesses that contract with S Corps do not need to issue
| them a Form 1099-MISC"
|
| I'm an s-corp, and yet I still have people 1099ing me. It's
| more annoying than anything because I get all my tax stuff
| done quickly, and someone will send out a late 1099 with
| slightly different numbers (typically error on their end)
| and... I've just given up caring about that.
|
| "You don't send 1099s to your landscaping service, or your
| office supply store purchases, or the energy company, but
| you've contracted services with them." "Oh, but you're a
| person"... with an s-corp registered for 10+ years and a
| separate employer TIN.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| You are required to solicit the taxpayer identification of
| anyone for whom you are required to file a 1099-NEC form--
| this is normally done on Form W-9.
|
| If the contractor fails to furnish a TIN, you are not
| required to cease business with them, however you will
| likely have to respond to the IRS and show that they
| refused to tell you when you file the 1099s each year.
|
| The IRS can assess a $50 civil penalty against the
| contractor (doubt they bother due to low amount set in
| statute), but more importantly the employer must withhold
| 30% backup withholding due to the failure to provide TIN.
| The employer will have to report the income and withholding
| on their tax return, which will likely be held up while the
| IRS verifies the match.
|
| I-9/E-Verify is for employees of your entity only and is
| not completed for independent contractors, nor for
| temp/contract labor who is employed by a different company
| (they do the form).
| pc86 wrote:
| Half of what you said supports the comment you're
| replying to, and half of it is irrelevant.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| The part about I-9 compliance directly contradicts the
| parent comment which stated, "any contractor . . . and
| must ask them to fill out an I-9 form."
|
| The part about the 1099 reporting does agree with the
| parent comment, however, added some additional context
| about what happens if the contractor refuses and what
| exactly the business's responsibility is, which I thought
| was relevant to this discussion.
| varsketiz wrote:
| Thats interesting. I have contracted with multiple entities
| in the US for many years and they never asked for anything
| like that.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| I think what they meant to say is the legal _entity_ ,
| rather than identity; a LLC or other business formation
| should suffice for most reporting requirements. There may
| be some exceptions in some areas, but I've contracted
| with with thousands of entities and never once had to
| verify the identity of their employees unless it was for
| individual access (passes/badges, etc.).
| whynotkeithberg wrote:
| So basically any real job?
| shrubble wrote:
| If you are located outside of the USA then they are not
| required to gather this info.
|
| However if they believe you are a USA citizen or reside
| in the USA while doing the work, then they are supposed
| to.
| Canada wrote:
| How ridiculous is this? Do you really have a right to free
| association if you have to file a report if you pay someone
| $600 to do something for you?
| vel0city wrote:
| I have a lot of people I associate with that I've never
| paid >$600 to do labor for me.
|
| Being able to associate != hiring someone for a job
|
| If you need to pay your friends >$600 to hang out with
| you, you should probably re-evaluate your life.
| Canada wrote:
| I'm not suggesting it's necessary to pay any person you
| associate with. It just seems a really intrusive
| restriction to legally report on anyone you pay.
|
| To me, it seems as absurd as having to file a report with
| the government on anyone you meet. I can see
| justification in narrow cases, but requiring it
| universally seems ridiculous to me.
| vel0city wrote:
| > you really have a right to free association if you have
| to file a report if you pay someone $600 to do something
| for you?
|
| > I'm not suggesting it's necessary to pay any person you
| associate with.
|
| So you agree the right to free association is orthogonal
| to the idea of hiring people to do a paid job then,
| right? In which case, how is having labor hiring laws a
| violation of free association, when you agree you can
| still freely associate with people? In which case,
| arguing "free association" in terms of arguing that labor
| hiring laws being unjust isn't really a valid argument
| then, huh?
|
| Like, I can go down to a park with a group of friends and
| not have to tell the government about it. I can attend a
| church and practice and not have to tell the government
| about it. I can have a dinner party at my home with my
| friends and not have to tell the government about it. I
| can freely associate with whoever I want, that's not a
| crime.
|
| I can't hire a bunch of people who are not legally
| allowed to work in this country, as currently the
| government wants to disincentive unrestricted immigration
| and have made this action of paying people for labor they
| deem improper illegal. This is an immigration policy, not
| a free association policy. FWIW, I'm one to argue we
| should relax some hiring practices and reduce barriers to
| immigration in many ways, but this really isn't a "free
| association" kind of issue.
| bombcar wrote:
| You can even give hundreds or thousands of dollars to
| people as gifts without reporting requirements.
|
| The requirements kick in when people are trying to avoid
| paying social security tax, basically, or paying for work
| under the table.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Do you really have a right to free association if you
| have to file a report if you pay someone $600 to do
| something for you?
|
| Yes, you do.
| Canada wrote:
| How much is that worth if you aren't legally allowed to
| give anyone any money?
| klyrs wrote:
| No rights are absolute, they all have limitations when
| they impede on other rights. A history of unfair labor
| practices has established a precedent of limitations on
| "free association." Even the right to life has
| limitations in the US, if a judge finds you sufficiently
| heinous.
| Canada wrote:
| I'm not trying to advocate for some absolute freedom of
| action here. I'm saying it is, in my view, unreasonable
| that anyone who pays someone else a grand to do something
| suddenly has an obligation to report that to the
| government.
|
| To me, it seems excessive, and incompatible with the
| principles of a generally free society. I'm not convinced
| that any history of unfair labor practice justifies such
| reporting obligations, which imply some obligation to
| refuse to accept payment in exchange for performing some
| perfectly legal work. It seems to be that the purpose of
| this requirement is the convenience of enforcement of tax
| compliance and nothing more.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > I'm saying it is, in my view, unreasonable that anyone
| who pays someone else a grand to do something suddenly
| has an obligation to report that to the government.
|
| _Anyone_ doesn 't have to do this; _businesses_ have to
| do this, and only for certain kinds of services and
| business relationships with individuals or partnerships.
| (e.g., my publisher has to send a 1099 to me, one of
| their authors, but doesn 't need to send a 1099 to
| Ingram, their printing company.)
|
| > It seems to be that the purpose of this requirement is
| the convenience of enforcement of tax compliance
|
| I don't think anyone's made any (plausible) claim that
| _any_ IRS reporting requirement is somehow related to the
| history of unfair labor practice? The IRS is interested
| in finding out how much tax they 're owed; it's not like
| they're being provided the data to make some kind of
| judgement about whether contractors are being paid
| fairly.
| chias wrote:
| I also have some more questions, such as:
|
| * 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?
| [deleted]
| Canada wrote:
| The buyer of your labor could pay your health insurance
| directly, or reimburse you for it. For the purposes of
| anything official, you are unemployed. You would not get any
| retirement options. Your earnings would not be reported to
| the IRS.
|
| Your government could say it's illegal to receive money under
| these circumstances, and they basically do. But think about
| what that means.
| cguess wrote:
| > Your government could say it's illegal to receive money
| under these circumstances, and they basically do. But think
| about what that means.
|
| That you're committing tax fraud and will probably spend a
| non-trivial amount of time in prison for tax avoidance as
| well as having a significant portion of property seized to
| pay back taxes?
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| If you report the income and pay the tax, there isn't tax
| fraud afaict. Eligibility verification if the work is in
| the US might be a different matter.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > For the purposes of anything official, you are
| unemployed. You would not get any retirement options. Your
| earnings would not be reported to the IRS.
|
| That's called "job fraud," and it's a crime in most
| countries.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| I don't know how these companies actually do it, but I reckon
| the easiest way to set this up is if you register locally as
| an independent freelancer or equivalent. That way you take
| care of all that yourself.
|
| 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.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| I notice most of the jobs listed involve cryptocurrency,
| sometimes called "prosecution futures" by skeptics ;).
| HenriTEL wrote:
| I'm not saying those jobs are scams, but what a
| coincidence.
| slowmotiony wrote:
| Also: How do I sign an NDA?
| morley wrote:
| I remember reading in the last year about one of the crypto
| companies that hired an anonymous employee. (Maybe it was the
| Zcash Foundation? I can't for the life of me find the article
| about what they did.)
|
| 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.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Yes! And I think that's an important point to consider.
| Personally I think of "anon friendly" as existing on a
| spectrum. Organizations offer various degrees of it. Some
| "anon friendly lite" organizations will allow you to work
| pseudonymously, the entire organization doesn't need to know
| your legal identity, but certain personnel (like execs/HR)
| will. On the other end of the spectrum are organizations that
| offer "full anon friendly" where they don't request any
| information about your legal identity.
| gnulinux wrote:
| > On the other end of the spectrum are organizations that
| offer "full anon friendly" where they don't request any
| information about your legal identity.
|
| I don't think that'd be legal in the US. Employer has to at
| least verify that the person is allowed to work in the US
| (i.e. a citizen, permanent resident, or a legal alien with
| some work visa) which requires revealing employee's true
| identity to HR. Or do you think there is a way to perform
| this (and other tax regulations) without HR knowing the
| identity of the person?
| bombcar wrote:
| Do it as business to business - IBM hires Proglonox to do
| whatever, and Proglonox verifies the required documents
| and reports income as necessary for the employee.
|
| The employee happens to be the sole owner of Proglonox,
| but IBM never needs to know the details about that.
|
| In _general_ if the government gets their cut, they don
| 't care about shell games. It's only when using them to
| hide from _them_ that they get interested.
| pilsetnieks wrote:
| Shell corporation and contracts instead of employment.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| I think in the past decade there has been some crackdown
| on shell corporations in the US. It is still very easy
| and cheap to start a corporation in some states but there
| has to be ownership disclosure. OTOH, money moves around
| without a lot of prior documentation and it's the
| recipient's responsibility to report the income.
|
| I can say I was nervous enough about the whole picture to
| decline some work some years back, because the person
| wanted to pay in crypto and I felt like it would get me
| in for tax complications even though I was willing to do
| all necessary reporting. The person was outside the US,
| so some parts of US employment rules wouldn't have
| applied. I didn't know the other person's name and I
| don't think he knew mine. Neither one of us was being
| cloak and dagger afaict, but we had met online and the
| question simply didn't come up.
| michaelt wrote:
| If you were a normal business then sure, you might well
| be officially incorporated in America.
|
| But what if you were intending to build something more
| like Silk Road - a business, but with no identifiable
| legal entities involved? And avoiding prosecution not by
| following the law, but by being unidentifiable?
| gnulinux wrote:
| Hmm, I guess this is merely semantics and some would
| disagree with me, but I suppose I wouldn't consider that
| "employment". I don't say this as a value judgement,
| merely as a legal status. The same way someone would be
| "single" if they're not married (even though they live
| with a partner), if they work for an organization that do
| not report to respective country's sovereign authorities,
| that doesn't sound like an "employment".
| judge2020 wrote:
| > On the other end of the spectrum are organizations that
| offer "full anon friendly" where they don't request any
| information about your legal identity.
|
| Have an example, besides jobs that are completely in-person
| and pay is done in cash/without government reporting?
| [deleted]
| astoor wrote:
| _> I remember reading in the last year about one of the
| crypto companies that hired an anonymous employee._
|
| Maybe "Sifu" of DeFi protocol Wonderland[0], or
| "UmbralUpsilon" of Indexed Finance[1], to take just a couple
| of examples.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30120762
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31478795
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Do offshoring / outsourcing companies need to report
| India/whereever worker IDs?
| bencollier49 wrote:
| No, but if the endpoint worker was from the source country
| (not the outsourced country), then the arrangement would fall
| foul of anti-tax-evasion legislation in most countries.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Certainly in the UK you're required to do both, and in most
| cases that will involve your passport or biometric residence
| permit.
|
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even for small freelance jobs in the US, I've always had to
| provide a social security number to get paid. Sure, as an
| individual, I could pay you some amount of cash under the
| table but a company can't really legitimately do that.
|
| 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.
| duxup wrote:
| >using your legal identity at work is unnecessary, and puts your
| safety, security, and privacy, at risk.
|
| 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.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Admittedly, that sentence might be a tad hyperbolic right now,
| but I do think increasingly it will be the case.
|
| 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.
| boredumb wrote:
| While I partly agree on asserting they're suitable for a job,
| actually employing them is entirely different. If someone has
| access to proprietary information/IP/Assets/etc, I don't want
| a pseudonym and a bitcoin transaction receipt when any of
| those go missing or an employee used my infrastructure to
| commit crimes and the feds are now asking me questions and my
| only answer is 0xPersona that I met on anon.com whom I pay
| with crypto.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Absolutely! I would just posit that the organizations
| listed on the site seem to be handling this somehow (for
| now). I myself would be really curious as to how.
| swatcoder wrote:
| As a general tip:
|
| Trusting that someone doing something markedly unusual is
| "handling it somehow" is a great way to get some ugly
| surprises later. Companies do things wrong all the time
| and in many cases you can find yourself liable for their
| mistakes/abuses in some way or another. Sometimes at
| great cost. Obviously, you need to trust every
| employer/client to some degree, but you'll benefit
| yourself by developing a sense for what smells fishy.
|
| Unregistered, anonymous work in a world of borders,
| worker protections, and taxes smells like the dumpster
| behind a Red Lobster. You don't have to rule out an
| opportunity that interests you, but do be careful!
| 0xPersona wrote:
| No, you're definitely right! I definitely wouldn't feel
| confident saying they're handling it well, because I just
| don't know how they're handling it! But I do hope to
| bring some of this info to light. I think it's an area
| that deserves attention and discussion :)
| ghaff wrote:
| Paying an anonymous person in crypto doesn't sound much
| different from slipping that same person an envelope of
| unmarked bills to do some work. Which is something people
| with fiduciary responsibility at a company are not going
| to generally sign off on.
| bombcar wrote:
| The bills are much _less_ traceable and petty cash exists
| for a reason, but the point stands.
| 300bps wrote:
| _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._
|
| 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.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| No employee should be able to have the opportunity to steal
| 3.2M, especially if that's money that has been extorted
| under threat of imprisonment from honest working people.
|
| Sure, people may want to voluntarily pool money for some
| reason or another; I would recommend smart contracts to
| manage this in a safe way, but there may be a point where
| trust is required.
|
| Offering a service based on trust means having a
| reputation-based system (third party reviews, third party
| audits, third party certifications) of competing people
| offering the service.
|
| The reputation could be based on a pseudonym but an address
| is be needed for a potential court case.
|
| There are plenty of services where this is not relevant
| though.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| To clarify, I don't think pseudonymous work is appropriate
| for all types of work. I'm not a maximalist. Much of my
| thinking currently is about pseudonymous work in the
| context that I've noticed it being done, which is largely
| in cryptocurrency. Of course none of the people in the
| scenarios you mention should be able to work those jobs.
| 300bps wrote:
| _Much of my thinking currently is about pseudonymous work
| in the context that I 've noticed it being done, which is
| largely in cryptocurrency._
|
| Would you want to hire a pseudonymous cryptocurrency
| programmer who purposely created a security flaw at his
| last employer and then exploited his own flaw himself to
| drain all of his employer's wallets? How is that any
| better?
| 0xPersona wrote:
| No. Which is why I would ask them to submit a resume,
| interview them, do reference calls, check their Github,
| check their social media, etc.
|
| I would hire a pseudonymous programmer. I probably would
| not hire a pseudonymous programmer with zero history or
| reputation accrued to their pseudonymous identity.
| giaour wrote:
| How do you prevent someone from buying a new identity? In
| the future you describe, there will surely be a market
| for an internet profile corresponding to a mid-level
| programmer. If everything is based on task work, a
| competent developer could farm multiple identities
| simultaneously, then use each to pull off a different
| crime or scam.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Regardless of the philosophical debate of whether this should
| be the case or not, it is definitely not true in most places
| simply for existing legal reasons.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Yeah, I definitely agree. But I do think this philosophical
| debate is one worth having! I'm hoping the site will at
| least help kick it off or facilitate it to some degree.
| klyrs wrote:
| Hilarious, isn't it? Bitcoin isn't remotely anonymous.
| ev1 wrote:
| For crypto, this is actually somewhat reasonable. I'm sure this
| sounds "dumb" to traditional users, but if you are a community
| manager of a cryptocurrency, you will probably have near
| continuous 7x24 attacks on you in an attempt to take over
| accounts or other similar BS. They frequently try exponentially
| harder on the non technical members because of the assumption
| that the people working on the tech are more likely to have 2FA
| etc, while "community manager" will probably have to click any
| link they get.
|
| That being said, all of the entries on this site are for
| cryptocurrency/NFT/whatever, so that sounds about right.
| duxup wrote:
| It's interesting how this plays out with crypto and not
| exactly the same / intensity with traditional finance
| employees.
| nightpool wrote:
| No, it's not really a surprise when you step back and think
| about it--the core purpose of cryptocurrencies is to
| provide for immutable, "trustless" transactions that cannot
| be refunded or disputed. Instead, these transactions are
| based only on technical constructs (passwords, private
| keys), rather than social constructs (signatures, invoices,
| remittances). Additionally, the internal controls that are
| designed to prevent one rogue employee from doing anything
| are much more extensive and mature in the finance industry,
| since it's had longer to develop them and doesn't have to
| rely on purely "automatic" technical factors.
| "Compromising" a traditional finance employee's account
| might be embarrassing for their employer, and may result in
| the leaking of trade secrets or other sensitive
| information, but the actual financial loss is going to be
| very minimal.
| ev1 wrote:
| My assumption is that traditional finance money is often a
| lot more refundable.
|
| FWIW, different industry, but I did a few months as a
| contractor at two AAA game devs and my god the amount of
| shit you have to deal with, having a staff flagged forum
| account with 0 posts, people would go through the member
| list, send hundreds of DMs begging for free shit, try to
| find your email to harass you for free beta keys or cash
| shop items, friends IRL would be like "haha does that mean
| you can edit my character to be max level"
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, the majority of the financial world has reversible
| transactions (in fact, it's so rare that they are NOT
| that it becomes news when it happens:
| https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1019909860) and the
| places where they are NOT access is limited or double-
| checked (think stock trades).
| barneygale wrote:
| They're all cryptocurrency jobs? Figures.
| yunwal wrote:
| While I'm not a huge fan of this idea or cryptocurrency in
| general, "illegitimate" industries are often the spawning point
| for good new ideas (see: porn industry).
| barneygale wrote:
| Could you elaborate on the porn industry example?
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| Don't exploit brokers like Zerodium already operate under these
| kinds of parameters?
| belial1971 wrote:
| How do they pay the check?
| https://intelibilia.substack.com/p/18-crypto-wages-day
| banteg wrote:
| we just stream stablecoins every second https://llamapay.io
| outside1234 wrote:
| Seems pretty illegal in most countries
| vasco wrote:
| > soon most work will be done pseudonymously
|
| 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.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| That's such a "think of the children!" argument. Yes I was
| there for that thread and it was sad when it happened, but such
| is life. Privacy is more important than whatever this is.
| madrox wrote:
| Soon(tm)
|
| 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Even the UK can't do it, the US never will. We implemented
| metric where it made sense, but forcing consumers into new
| units just because we think it would be cool if the whole
| world used the same measurements... well, that's a hard sell.
| madrox wrote:
| And yet we think we'll get all phones on USB-C before too
| long
| astoor wrote:
| Also, how do you trust anonymous employees not to steal?
|
| 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
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30346251
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31478795
| harikb wrote:
| +1
|
| 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?
| jjice wrote:
| I feel like HN has split crowds on this. I personally enjoy
| having a connection with my coworkers. I spend a lot of time in
| my week with them, and if I enjoy being around them, I consider
| that a win.
|
| 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.
| towaway15463 wrote:
| I have a lot of pseudonymous friends that I speak to on a
| regular basis. Anonymity doesn't preclude friendship.
| jjice wrote:
| True. Another personal preference. That one is definitely a
| bit of a spectrum. I know my coworkers and if they have
| kids, but I don't interact with them on social media.
| There's a lot of variance in there, but to each their own.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I think it's a great setup. I don't understand why I'm supposed
| to think it's a bad setup other than that Pete's wife didn't
| have enough information to pick up his pay without going
| through support, but that's Pete's fault.
|
| Any story about a friendly person dying is sad. His employer
| not having documentation on him is the _least_ sad thing about
| the story.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| It's an example of using edge-case scenarios that are pretty
| much orthogonal to the issue at hand as an argument against
| people having the right to work and purchase things in such a
| way that their privacy is still maintained.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| At first sight it is a great setup. And yet to take the
| argument to the extreme and considering unregistered work, at
| first it seems a good deal for workers, less paperwork and
| less taxes etc. But it only works until workers try to make
| use of their rights, get sick or similar, then it can turn
| out to be really bad.
|
| I think overall it's fixing the right problem (complex
| paperwork, privacy issues) but not in a sustainable way.
| maxbond wrote:
| Thanks for sharing stranger, that was a powerful piece.
| FastMonkey wrote:
| I wonder what the correlation is between people who think this
| is a good idea, and people who feel anxious and lonely. Not
| saying this is the only cause, but if you make decisions like
| this you'll end up isolating yourself from some pretty great
| support networks. Isolation and separateness is not a great
| long term environment for mental health.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Thanks, this spurred me to ask my spouse what she'd do if I got
| in an accident. Her first response was "I have no idea" then
| unlock my phone and try looking for familiar names.
| samstave wrote:
| Doesnt this model only appeal to the use in "one-time, short-
| term, mostly-illegal" constructs?
|
| "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"
| rgbrgb wrote:
| I'd guess that interaction is very common and not illegal
| anywhere I'm aware of.
| happyopossum wrote:
| You're explicitly contracting to rip off another app, and
| doing so by paying under the table with no taxes
| paid/collected on either end, and you think that's totally
| legit?
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Ripping off another app is not illegal in most countries,
| unless you copy their name or logo.
| samstave wrote:
| This is exactly what I was describing, you did a better
| job.
| nightpool wrote:
| In most jurisdictions, it is illegal to contract with
| someone for goods or services over a certain amount if you
| don't have their tax information. Otherwise, tax avoidance
| would be trivial. In the US specifically, you're required
| to file Form 1099 for any contracts over $600, which
| requires the other party's SSN, EIN, or another foreign tax
| identifier.
| jrumbut wrote:
| Some of the companies with job postings on that site seem
| to be headed by people in the US.
|
| I'm not a lawyer but I think they're taking a serious
| risk.
| ghaff wrote:
| Admittedly, in the US, they could probably set up an
| entity for tax purposes. Their real identity would still
| be somewhere in the chain but not necessarily easily
| discoverable by the person you're doing work for.
|
| ADDED: As others have noted, there are probably legal
| issues with that entity effectively acting a full-time
| employee. And, of course, the entity doing the work can't
| get any employee benefits.
| nightpool wrote:
| Business registration is a matter of public record, as
| far as I'm aware. Any entity you might set up for tax
| purposes would need at least to have a registered public
| agent, and probably a public list of directors and
| shareholders. However, it would mean that the business
| you're contracting with to no longer needs to file a
| 1099, at least.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yes. Having a business entity doesn't necessarily keep
| someone from tracking down your identity. But, depending
| upon how complex you want to make things (and presumably
| how much money you're willing to spend), you can probably
| obfuscate your identity from being casually revealed to
| everyone. Really depends what you're trying to
| accomplish.
| samstave wrote:
| A very interesting market for such is the Elderly Fraud
| call industry out of Tel_aviv...
|
| Its a BILLION dollar industry calling elderly US
| population from call centers in Tel Aviv, which may or
| may not have also ties to Niger.
|
| its BIG.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Wouldn't it still be possible to do contracts for $599,
| but like... one for each jira ticket/github issue or
| something? You could hypothetically set things up to not
| know who was resolving tickets, right?
|
| I mean it seems like a ridiculous way of getting work
| done, but fundamentally possible.
| shortstuffsushi wrote:
| No, if you (as a contractor or employee) make more than
| $600 from the same person/business, you'd be obligated to
| report it, which would in turn make them obligated to
| report it, even if they didn't realize you had done more
| than a single contract for them. For this to work, you'd
| have to have independent shell corps make each chunk of
| work as well, which .. is probably also illegal.
|
| What could work is a middle man (ala upwork), but then
| you'd have to accept the middle man knowing you.
| bee_rider wrote:
| That makes sense -- I'm assuming the company is going to
| follow the letter of the law, because they are a known
| entity, but the anonymous/pseudonymous individual is
| trying to break it.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| you'd have to spin up an LLC for each engagement to do
| this, 1099 forms are based on your entire (contractor)
| relationship with the company for the tax year.
| moralestapia wrote:
| I DO think it's a great setup, this kind of thing obliterates
| nepotism and favors meritocracy, that's a win on my book!
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Thank you for sharing. That was a tough read. Really feel for
| everyone involved.
|
| 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.
| Animats wrote:
| You get paid anonymously, in your choice of LUNA or APE.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Interesting to note: HN sometimes upvotes articles just because
| they want to shit on an idea. I'm not disagreeing here actually,
| the statement:
|
| > don't doxx yourself for work
|
| could (was?) generated by a Markov chain.
| zichy wrote:
| Every single job posting is from a weird crypto bullshit company.
| Great.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| I wouldn't describe any of the organizations listed as
| "bullshit". Weird, maybe. But they actually do really
| interesting and valuable work!
| jfk13 wrote:
| > interesting and valuable work
|
| I suspect we may not share the same idea of what's
| "valuable".
| jrsj wrote:
| Alternatively they could be from non-crypto tech startups, 90%
| of which are working on stuff that is just as bullshit and
| never would have been funded in the first place if not for post
| 2008 monetary policy. Crypto isn't special in being bullshit,
| this whole industry is full of a lot of bullshit.
| zichy wrote:
| The fact that there are many bullshit companies out there
| does not change the fact that all web3/blockchain companies
| are bullshit.
| moneywoes wrote:
| On the bright side it increased engineering salaries
| waspight wrote:
| So what is doxxing anyway? Is the concern that anyone googling
| you will find you phone number or address? Why is that so bad in
| general? As long as you are not in some unique position like a
| famous person or something.
| syzygyhack wrote:
| Bit of a myopic take, don't you think? Everyone but the most
| extreme recluse is probably going to have run-ins with less-
| than-savory characters at some point in their lives no matter
| what they do or how they act. Your personal information does
| not belong on Google.
| ljp_206 wrote:
| I would be happy to start from a definition of doxxing and
| explain why it is not a good thing, but I am curious as to why
| you might not find the prospect of your address and phone
| number being revealed disturbing. Very boring, non-unique
| people get death threats all the time online. Even though the
| rate of online threats turning to violence against random users
| is demonstrably low, would you not be troubled to know your
| location was known to unknown potential harassers? Even
| disregarding physical assault, a potential attacker could make
| life online very difficult if they understood a few things
| about one's identity.
|
| 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..."
| tgv wrote:
| The first line on that page is literally "don't doxx yourself
| for work". You are only informing your employer of a few
| vital stats. The employer keeps that information private.
| There's no death threat involved.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Well it's not just your employer who knows your legal
| identity at work. It's potentially the entire organization,
| and more.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| I think the vast majority of people greatly overestimate how
| difficult it would be to find someone's address.
|
| 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.
| xwdv wrote:
| It is very dangerous for a blockchain engineer to reveal their
| line of work.
| JusticeJuice wrote:
| Isn't that a little concerning?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| It seems less concerning and more BS. I have no idea who
| would target blockchain engineers or why.
|
| I do understand why "we are fighting the system, this is
| dangerous" would be a selling point used by employers.
| jrsj wrote:
| threatening someone who has the ability to intentionally
| introduce a vulnerability into even a relatively small
| cryptocurrency probably has the potential to be insanely
| profitable, and the odds of it even being investigated are
| far lower than any other form of fraud (for now).
|
| There's plenty of good reasons to go after some _specific_
| blockchain engineers who could do this, but otherwise yeah
| it seems kind of silly and over dramatic.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| If the oversight on your project is so weak that an
| engineer can add code that steals money without being
| noticed, all you do is change who profits from the
| inevitable theft. In fact, if you allow the code to be
| delivered anonymously, you practically guarantee that
| smart people will add the vulnerability and steal the
| money.
| nzach wrote:
| Do you mind explaining why that is the case ? I don't know
| anything about blockchains so I couldn't come up with any
| reason for this.
| AngeloR wrote:
| I think at the moment blockchain is synonymous with "crypto".
|
| 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.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| How does this work given that the company needs to record who
| they are making payment too (even if it's just a W-2 contractor).
|
| (I'm speaking from a US lens here)
| warkdarrior wrote:
| So employees can work pseudonymously, but employers have to
| disclose their identity? Why not make it fully pseudonymous for
| both sides?
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Employers don't have to disclose their identity, it's up to
| them! Many of the founders of these organizations are
| pseudonymous themselves.
| mind-blight wrote:
| In most countries, there are a ton of legal protections and
| mandated benefits for workers. In the US, unemployment, workers
| comp, and social security stand out as the big ones. Beyond just
| tax, it's important that the government knows where you work so
| that you can effectively file complaints or for benefits of you
| happen to be working for an abusive employer, get laid off, or
| want to get paid during retirement
| cs137 wrote:
| This sounds like a good thing, but I'm not sure it is.
|
| 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).
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I'm a very "out" antifascist, and I've lost jobs due to my
| public not-liking-fascists
|
| That kind of statement makes me curious. What kind of behavior
| do you exhibit that has cost you jobs?
| titanomachy wrote:
| I'm also interested.
|
| 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.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Another solution is UBI.
| dml2135 wrote:
| How do these companies address tax reporting requirements?
| heretogetout wrote:
| I'd like to have a unique token I can give to my employer that
| allows filings from their EIN (and only their EIN).
| elbigbad wrote:
| 1099 contractors handle all their own taxes iirc, but I guess
| you can't be anonymous and receive a 1099? Guessing most of
| these actually pay in cryptocurrencies which puts the onus on
| the individual I guess, but if the individual is not paying
| taxes in the US that's illegal. Will one get caught? Maybe, who
| knows, the IRS is fearsome.
|
| 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.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| I think you're probably right, elbigbad. I'm hoping to learn
| from organizations about how they're handling this, and then
| share, so we can create best practices. Thanks for sharing
| your thoughts. Really means a lot.
| duxup wrote:
| Looking at the jobs I wonder if many just aren't reporting...
| others seem to promise a lot that would make being pseudonymous
| impossible.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| There are legislations and use cases where contractors
| themselves are responsible for reporting their taxes.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| I think this is probably the way most are going about it
| right now. Though it is one of the questions I'm most eager
| to get an answer for. And I have been reaching out :)
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Hey! Good question. I wish I could give you a better answer but
| the truth is I don't know (yet). That's one of the reasons I
| built this. I want to learn how organizations deal with things
| like that, and share that knowledge so we can create best
| practices. I promise that soon as I know the answer, I'll
| circle back!
| lajamerr wrote:
| Maybe your company/service can be the middle-man. Offer
| varying levels of checks that are optional for the employer
| to require or the Contractor to fill out.
|
| 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.
| giaour wrote:
| At that point, you're like 95% of the way to reinventing
| temp agencies.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Thank you so much for your suggestions, lajamerr. Really
| means a lot to me. Those are all brilliant ideas.
|
| That's actually the direction I'm hoping to take it.
| Ultimately, the goal is to accelerate the advent of the
| pseudonymous economy. And one aspect of that involves
| creating the necessary tools/ecosystem for employers to
| accurately verify/assess pseudonymous talent. I'd thought
| about verifying skills but your suggestion of verifying
| things like "This person is authorized to work for U.S.
| Companies" is even more interesting to me.
|
| Thanks again. You've really encouraged me. Your comment has
| made my day!
| warkdarrior wrote:
| > Maybe your company/service can be the middle-man. Offer
| varying levels of checks that are optional for the employer
| to require or the Contractor to fill out.
|
| > Identity as a service.
|
| This is a great idea. I know people who would pay good
| money for a pseudoidentity that presents them as authorized
| to work in US, with expertise in some key technical areas
| (cryptography, robotics, real-time monitoring and response,
| etc.). There is a huge opportunity here.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Thank you so much for your affirmation of that idea,
| warkdarrior. Your comment is really encouraging.
|
| Forgive me if this is too bold but is there any way you
| could connect me with those people? Or perhaps let me
| know where I should be looking for the people with that
| need e.g. any communities online.
|
| These are the people I'm building for :)
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| Make the max job size $600 and the contracting company
| technically won't need to send a 1099...
| reustle wrote:
| If they're in the US*
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| > using your legal identity at work is unnecessary, and puts your
| safety, security, and privacy, at risk.
|
| 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.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Lots of other comments around the dubious legality of this, at
| least in the US.
|
| 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.
| titanomachy wrote:
| "Largely downside unless you are an anti-government
| absolutist..."
|
| 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.
| sbarbarian wrote:
| I can see wanting to keep my job secret from my peers, but not
| from my employer. How can you build trust with whomever you're
| working with? I can't imagine feeling comfortable sending
| anything in writing in a work environment to a colleague who has
| no reputational accountability (both within / outside the firm).
| whynotkeithberg wrote:
| Holy shit and I won't even attempt to say this with any tact or
| grace... You're quite a few years to late to take advantage of
| the talent you did without any actual plan to pay them for their
| work. The greater fool concept only works for so long.
| Mo3 wrote:
| ... yeah not going to happen. There's benefits to non-anonymous
| employment and the benefits of pseudonymous employment seem to
| mostly apply to illegal or grey area ventures.
|
| If you work as a blockchain engineer these days I can definitely
| see why you would want to remain anonymous.
| katz_ wrote:
| giaour wrote:
| Most work today requires some level of exposure to sensitive data
| of some kind, be it related to business strategy, company
| financials, or customer data. You're not getting access to that
| as some anonymous internet rando.
| olalonde wrote:
| Might want to look at adult industry jobs, a lot of them offer
| remote work with minimal identity verification. Ironically,
| that's how I got my first development job when I was still in
| high school (the employer didn't know nor ask my age). It would
| have been a lot more difficult to get a similar job at a
| "regular" employer who knew my age.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! I didn't know that. That's actually very
| interesting.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Just FYI this will get you into a decent amount of hot water,
| and the company into a _lot_ of hot water, for all kinds of
| labor law and IRS reasons.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Seems to me that _of all employers_ it would be most important
| for the adult industry to verify people's age.
| Darmody wrote:
| Sounds like a good idea if you want to launder money.
|
| Anyway, I don't think that's legal anywhere in Europe.
| happyopossum wrote:
| This sounds like a great way to work multiple jobs at once, under
| the table, then stiff your employers. Oh, and all without you as
| an employee having any of the employment protections and benefits
| provided by your government.
|
| I just don't see this taking off in any significant way for
| legitimate work.
| badrabbit wrote:
| How can you be pseudonymous if you work in person like this post:
| https://anonfriendly.com/jobs/62a278494d70510878922082
|
| It will be very weird if people call me badrabbit in person.
| giaour wrote:
| You must also report to work daily in a rabbit mask. Welcome to
| the future.
| jrsj wrote:
| Most of this stuff is in crypto/smart contract/DeFi space...which
| is currently imploding.
|
| 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.
| nightpool wrote:
| Most salaried 9-5 jobs have conflict of interest clauses that
| prevent you from concurrently working for other employers
| without agreement from your first employer anyway (From a legal
| standpoint, this is generally regarded as part of the
| difference between salaried and hourly labor)
| ollien wrote:
| I'm an hourly software engineer and fairly certain I'm
| forbidden from the same.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't think most of this is legal, at least in the United
| States. In the US, your employer is required to collect certain
| basic facts about you for tax and compliance purposes: your legal
| name and your legal status are the most basic ones, followed by
| your working location/residence (for local tax purposes). An
| employer who fails to collect _and retain_ this information is
| effectively indistinguishable from a sweatshop owner.
|
| 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.
| londons_explore wrote:
| In most places, being employed anonymously is illegal for both
| the individual and the company.
|
| 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.
| mellosouls wrote:
| I don't know generally the use case for this though I remember
| seeing the most brilliant person I've ever encountered (a forum
| long ago) enquiring if a job enabled people to work anonymously;
| he was very cautious with his identity.
|
| 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.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! I do think adoption could be driven by
| talent. I could imagine the best candidates preferring
| pseudonymous work, causing employers to accommodate in order to
| remain competitive.
|
| 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.
| duxup wrote:
| I wonder how that works as far as risk goes.
|
| 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 ...
| rpmisms wrote:
| This is awesome. I would be much more comfortable working on my
| political side projects if employment was pseudonymous.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Thank you! Yeah I think pseudonymous work is really liberating
| in that sense. It could allow people to be more authentic,
| without worrying about their livelihoods being put at risk.
| dev-3892 wrote:
| I'm not sure how I guarantee that I'm not getting exploited if
| I'm working without my employer knowing who I am. How do I have a
| reasonable expectation of legal protection in this scenario?
| gorbachev wrote:
| The first time one of these companies hire someone from Iran,
| Syria, North Korea, Cuba or any of the other countries under
| sanctions practically everywhere and et hit by multi-million
| dollar penalties and severe restrictions on how they can operate
| in the future, this thing will stop being a thing.
|
| 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.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Yup. Feels like if this ever started to suceed in gathering
| traction, OFAC would shut it down.
| InefficientRed wrote:
| Might not even get there. It's almost all defi which is
| imploding ATM.
|
| 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.
| katz4 wrote:
| katz7nfnfnfnfn wrote:
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Hey, thanks for commenting! Are the LooksRare job postings
| responding with a 404? Their application involves sending an
| email, when you click "apply" it launches your email client.
| It's working for me. Am I missing something? Thank you :)
| InefficientRed wrote:
| The site lists links to tweets from the company, which
| point to their website, which 404:
|
| https://twitter.com/LooksRare/status/1521564976112369664
|
| etc. which point to these links (all 404):
|
| https://docs.looksrare.org/about/hiring/frontend-engineer
|
| https://docs.looksrare.org/about/hiring/backend-engineer
|
| https://docs.looksrare.org/about/hiring/backend-engineer-
| ind...
|
| https://docs.looksrare.org/about/hiring/ux-specialist
| katz8dnmdmdndm wrote:
| katz0000 wrote:
| katz_ wrote:
| katz01 wrote:
| kayz90 wrote:
| katz8889 wrote:
| abdel_nasser wrote:
| katz9999 wrote:
| latz777 wrote:
| flaggerz wrote:
| flaggerz wrote:
| Stevvo wrote:
| One of the hiring entities is not a company, at-least in the
| legal sense.
|
| 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?
| cortesoft wrote:
| Investigators would figure out who owns the blockchain
| addresses.
| rgbrgb wrote:
| What if the employer is a smart contract with no owner?
|
| Or you're saying that the freelancer would be liable for
| corporate taxes of the smart contract?
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| haha, you got me. Guess this is completely legal after
| all
| soared wrote:
| I hope 100% of the people in the org have flawless infosec
| that's not vulnerable to nation states.
| [deleted]
| jmspring wrote:
| "using your legal identity at work is unnecessary"
|
| 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?
| InefficientRed wrote:
| _> using your legal identity at work is unnecessary, and puts
| your safety, security, and privacy, at risk._
|
| How is it even possible to employ someone in the US without
| knowing their legal identity?
| abdel_nasser wrote:
| jjcon wrote:
| Anyone else find it odd that the two jobs that list salaries are
| in the junior dev/first job range?
| TekMol wrote:
| Here is a question I have often wondered about:
|
| 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?
| [deleted]
| renewiltord wrote:
| Anti money laundering would get in the way, right?
| DangerousPie wrote:
| Do they provide an invoice that fulfils the accounting
| requirements of your country? I suspect not, so you wouldn't be
| able to deduct it.
| TekMol wrote:
| Is that true? The you cannot deduct expenses in absense of an
| invoice?
|
| 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.
| 7steps2much wrote:
| I am not sure if it is still handled that way, but in my
| experience these are not supposed to be used to create new
| receipts, but to replace receipts that were lost or
| document things that occured but couldn't be put on
| receipts for whatever reason.
|
| While it might be possible to use them this way they might
| be scrutinized and the additional work of justifying them
| might not be worth using a service that doesn't provide
| receipts.
|
| Also, there is this section:
|
| > Soll die Ausgabe vom Finanzamt anerkannt werden, muss
| dies ein Ausnahmefall bleiben.
|
| Meaning, roughly "Even if accepted by the authorities, it
| is to be treated as an exception"
|
| So i assume that they would not be a fan of you trying to
| use this too liberally within your accounting.
| [deleted]
| JusticeJuice wrote:
| > 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.
| TekMol wrote:
| So this is a yes + yes from you. I also tend to think that I
| could use the service _and_ be able to deduct the expense
| from my earnings.
|
| 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.
| JusticeJuice wrote:
| > So this is a yes + yes from you.
|
| No - it's a yes + no. To get the VAT portion of your tax
| bill back/decreased back, you need to be a VAT registered
| business, trading with another VAT registered business, and
| you need invoices to prove this trade. Its not like the tax
| departments check every invoice, but if you got audited and
| you didn't have them, you'd be done for tax fraud.
|
| > I also tend to think that I could use the service and be
| able to deduct the expense from my earnings.
|
| That's not like a tax break to be clear, that's just not
| being a profitable business.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| My accountant has always said, so long as I get a
| receipt/invoice that corresponds to the transaction, and the
| company/country isn't _knowingly_ sanctioned, and the services
| rendered were licit and bonafide, its all good.
|
| This is my US-based accountant for my US-based corporation, but
| I'm sure it translates well.
| ejb999 wrote:
| Yep, all you really want is plausible deniability if you ever
| get audited - you may in fact still have a deduction not
| allowed by the IRS, but as long as you did it in good faith,
| you shouldn't be liable for any criminal offense.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| On a related note, anyone know if there's a site that shows you
| (decent) part-time coding jobs?
| GTP wrote:
| I'm a bit scared to ask but... How do you stipulate a contract if
| you're pseudonymous? Or maybe you are supposed to work without a
| contract and accept monthly payments using a cryptocurrency?
| soulofmischief wrote:
| This is a wonderful idea, but the first listing I clicked claimed
| being anon-friendly while also asking for a mandatory resume.
|
| 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.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Hey! Thank you for the kind words. Really means a lot.
|
| 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.
| cupofpython wrote:
| What's the point in hiding your name if you submit a job
| history which narrows the scope of your anonymity?
|
| 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.
| jkaplan wrote:
| It's interesting to see all these ideas built around the idea
| that "more anonymity is better."
|
| 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).
| somenameforme wrote:
| You can observe plenty of people acting like the worst
| imaginable human being on Facebook or Twitter - all under their
| own name. I think you're spot on about the issue, but I'd argue
| the reason is simply scale.
|
| 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.
| jkaplan wrote:
| Oh for sure! I'm not saying using real names automatically
| creates real relationships and trust, just that it helps. I
| just generally want to see the internet moving toward deeper,
| more meaningful interactions, which, like you say, is a big
| challenge, and almost certainly means some form of making
| things "smaller." But making things more anonymous strikes me
| as the wrong direction.
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Completely appreciate the points you laid out in both of
| your comments, thanks for sharing!
|
| One counter-point, just from my own personal experience,
| but adopting a pseudonym online has actually allowed me to
| be more authentic and more sociable. I've made a lot of
| awesome friends that I don't think I'd have made had it not
| been for being pseudonymous. It can be quite liberating and
| reduces the fear/impact of trying new things, speaking to
| new people, and more.
| jkaplan wrote:
| That's a fair point. I guess there are contexts where
| pseudonymity can be useful and enable types of
| interactions that otherwise might not be possible.
| Especially in online contexts where you're interacting
| with people you don't know anyway, so using your real
| name doesn't add much value in terms of trust.
|
| I'm still skeptical that work is a context where I'd
| want/need this. But it's a thought-provoking idea!
| phailhaus wrote:
| A common refrain is that "crypto is speedrunning the history of
| finance." I think this is destined for the same outcome: we're
| going to hear stories coming out of pseudonymous work that remind
| us why the rules are in place today.
|
| 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.
| biztos wrote:
| I am generally in favor of more privacy, but it's hard picture
| the real-world use of this for anything other than overlapping
| jobs ("J2") and evading sanctions.
|
| What else is it for?
| yunwal wrote:
| I could see it being useful for jobs that make you a political
| target maybe? Security contracting, intelligence, or
| journalism?
| 0xPersona wrote:
| Or even working in countries with generally higher crime or
| weaker rule of law. I spent years living in a country where
| even saying/posting something seemingly innocuous could put
| your life at risk.
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