When the bearishness of the crypto market seemed to be at its peak during the Terra, 3AC, and Celsius debacles, a host of crypto companies cut down staff to tread through the rough patch. However, the trend gradually started changing a couple of months back.
As highlighted in a recent article, prominent names from the space—right from Binance, FTX, and Kraken to Ripple, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority [FINRA]—were all looking to expand their respective teams.
Read More: Crypto Layoffs Pushed Hiring Process in These Companies
Polygon jumps onto the hiring bandwagon
On Thursday, Polygon revealed that it planned to encash the adversity of other companies by expanding its overall headcount by more than 40% this year. Talking to Bloomberg in an interview, Bhumika Srivastava—Human Resources Head—said that the company intended to add around 200 people to teams that operate from remote locations around the world.
Per Srivastava, Polygon sees the crypto bear market as a rare hiring opportunity. However, she admitted that the same ain’t that easy, and added that developers for so-called Web3 projects “remain hard to come by” and command “high salaries.” She also said,
“Overall tech talent is difficult to hire even if it is a Web2 organization… It is difficult to hire the quality talent you want, especially as Web3 skills is something that’s still getting built.”
Notably, some of the new hires will join its ranks of roughly 500 full-time employees. On the other hand, the remaining will be working on projects related to the wider Polygon ecosystem on a contractual basis. Furthermore, the company is hiring managers, engineers, and staff to be in charge of partnerships.
The India-founded, but Dubai-based company went on to lure 30 developers from One Planet—an NFT launchpad that moved to Polygon post the Terra mishap. Per Srivastava, the company is in talks to migrate 60 different projects from Terra to its own ecosystem.
Alongside, it also hired people from large technology firms like YouTube, Amazon, and Electronic Arts. Here it is worth recalling that YouTube’s Head of Gaming—Ryan Wyatt—left the online social media and video-sharing platform to join Polygon Studios at the beginning of this year.
Read More: Youtube’s Ryan Wyatt takes over Polygon Studios; NFT sales on Polygon reaches ATH
Web3 job trend
A recent survey conducted by crypto exchange KuCoin revealed that approximately 64% of its respondents—comprising 3,608 internet users across Twitter and LinkedIn who were aware of Web3—were interested in exploring Web3 career opportunities.
With respect to demographics, Web3 careers were seen as more appealing to younger people. Notably, 59% of those working in the space were below 30 years old. Parallelly, more than half of the respondents answered that they were “pleased” with their careers within the Web3 space, for it gave them benefits including “space for growth and innovation as well as work flexibility.”
Furthermore, the survey revealed,
“Web3 employment is flexible, where full-time jobs seem to only take up a relatively small portion of the job market. Only 24% of surveyed Web3 professionals have worked full-time in the industry.”