DAOs and “The Great Resignation” Era
Did you know that twenty-one million Americans quit their 9–5 jobs in 2021, and one in five workers reported an intent to follow suit and quit their jobs in 2022?
Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence of Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) Dr Nataliya Ilyushina and Dr Trent Macdonald are drawing links between this trend and the growing rate of people taking up work in decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs).
What is a DAO?
A DAO is a new form of organisational structure which offers an alternative to corporations. For workers, the most significant differences to working a traditional 9–5 job include choosing your own working hours, how much time you dedicate to working, voting, or participating in these operations, and the horizontal business structure which omits a formal hierarchy so that every member is a boss and a worker.
What are the benefits of working for a DAO?
This hybrid revolutionary type of employment is attracting mainly 30–45 year old workers, the same age demographic spearheading the “great resignation” era. In August 2022, 3.4 million DAO members were recorded, with a growth of 140,000 members since July alone. Nataliya and Trent relate this back to the flexibility of DAO working conditions amongst young adults who have grown accustomed to the remote work-life balance that was adopted during the pandemic.
In an article for the Cointelegraph Magazine, Nataliya and Trent detail a case study which identifies worker motivations for joining DAOs, finding that despite hefty remuneration being a big drawcard, the real motivation to join this type of workforce is the appeal of no longer working for a boss, and instead being a part of a community that promotes teamwork and transparency of the organisation.
The downside of DAO work
Of course, the flexibility of working for a DAO also comes with downsides, including job insecurity and a lack of employment entitlements, as well as irregular payments and untraditional payment methods.
How would you go working for a DAO?
