Looking for a Flexible Work-From-Home Opportunity? Join a DAO
DAOs present an exciting new opportunity for people seeking flexible, remote, and equitable employment.
By Molly Henderson
Imagine if, before applying for a job, you could hop into the company Slack channel and strike up a conversation with any of the employees that worked there. You could DM the head of HR, for example, and enquire about office culture. Or you could join a thread with a couple of in-house social media strategists and ask them about their digital plans for the new quarter, maybe even getting the chance to contribute some of your own. You could, in other words, get a complete picture of the company’s philosophy, brand, strategy, and team, while also being presented with an opportunity to market your skills and personality. Then, after being immersed in the ecosystem for a while, you see a job opportunity open up. Knowing all the things you do about the company, and having networked with many of its employees, you feel like you stand a pretty good chance at snagging the role, so you apply, and — shocker — you get it.
Community-first collaboration
This is sort of what applying to be a member of a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) is like. DAOs are often self-deprecatingly referred to in the crypto space as “group chats with bank accounts,” which isn’t far from the truth. (Then again, all companies are simply groups with bank accounts. Governments, private corporations, non-profits — they’re all coalitions of people organized around a pool of money, trying to figure out how best to allocate it and generate more of it.)
The difference with DAOs is that they sprung from the internet. And since the internet has always been about communities — discovering them, building them — so too are DAOs. Although they can sometimes elude definition, there is one underlying element that is undeniably true about DAOs: they are community-first (as opposed to function-first) organizations. In other words, while DAOs are certainly organized around a common purpose or function, this purpose is often equal (or secondary) to the primary one, which is to establish and nurture a community.
If an organization’s primary purpose is to create and expand community, it follows that all DAOs must as a rule be open to new recruits, all of the time. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like, where you live, or what your skill set is — there will be space for you in the DAO.
This community-first ethos is great news for modern workers in three major ways. First, as previously stated, it makes finding a job a lot easier. You can basically hop into any DAO’s Discord server (which serves as, for all intents and purposes, the organization’s office) and strike up a conversation with anyone involved with the DAO, from founding members to newbies like yourself. All you really have to show is that you’re passionate and curious, and if any paying opportunities open up within the organization, you’ll be well-positioned to snag them.
Second, the thing about DAOs is that each one of them is connected to at least ten more — DAOs are often referred to as “nodes within a network” — so once you join one, you’ve opened up a portal to dozens of other opportunities.
Third, a community-first mindset creates a general ethos, within all DAOs, of openness, acceptance, and creativity. (There are exceptions, of course, but we won’t drop any names.) This kind of mindset is pervasive across the ecosystem, and it’s a gamechanger for employee well-being.
The latest iteration in human collaboration
As workplaces become increasingly automated and workers (rightfully) shy away from low-paying labor jobs, DAOs present an exciting new opportunity for people seeking flexible, remote, and equitable employment. You can be a developer, a writer, an artist, a strategist, or just a curious person — no matter your disposition or skill set, there’s something for you. (Incidentally, here are some DAOs that are hiring right now.) And if working from home is your thing? There’s virtually zero chance — excuse the pun — that you’ll ever have to go back into the (physical) office. ;)
Longtail Financial is a collective of token engineers and creators accelerating the transition to the decentralized web. If currency diversification and wealth democratization sound like a good time to you, hop into our Discord, check us out on LinkedIn, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter!