Show HN: I made a site that shows jobs where you can work pseudonymously

Aren&#x27;t employers in most jurisdictions required to verify work eligibility and report income?<p>Does &quot;pseudonymously&quot; 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?<p>Or is this something different?<p>I&#x27;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&#x27;s explained in the video, but a 30 minute video is a big ask)

Lots of other comments around the dubious legality of this, at least in the US.<p>I&#x27;d like to comment, though, on the fact that the majority of these jobs are in the crypto&#x2F;defi space. I&#x27;m also not alone in commenting on this, and this fact alone is obviously not surprising, <i>but</i> I&#x27;d like to point out that the central idea of crypto that you can somehow &quot;escape the government&#x27;s control of finance&quot; by using crypto is as much of a fever dream as that you can feasibly work anonymously for a company.<p>At the end of the day, the <i>vast</i> majority of people need the services of society and government to function. Crypto advocates have long crowed &quot;look how great it is that we have gotten monetary supply out of the control of government&quot;, 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&#x27;s aren&#x27;t willing to give up, regardless of the medium of exchange.<p>As it related to this case, the biggest question folks have is &quot;what benefit to I get for working for a company pseudonymously&quot;. On reflection it&#x27;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.

&gt;using your legal identity at work is unnecessary, and puts your safety, security, and privacy, at risk.<p>It is?<p>I want this?<p>I tried watching a bit of the video but it kinda lost me with the bitcoin stuff as I don&#x27;t really think of bitcoin and my relationship with my employer ... have anything to do with each other.

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.<p>How would they even know, if a competitor got hired to work for them?<p>This might possibly be a good thing for workers, but there&#x27;s so much risk involved for the employer, any competent legal expert would strongly advice against it.

Most of this stuff is in crypto&#x2F;smart contract&#x2F;DeFi space…which is currently imploding.<p>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.

... yeah not going to happen. There&#x27;s benefits to non-anonymous employment and the benefits of pseudonymous employment seem to mostly apply to illegal or grey area ventures.<p>If you work as a blockchain engineer these days I can definitely see why you would want to remain anonymous.

This is a wonderful idea, but the first listing I clicked claimed being anon-friendly while also asking for a mandatory resume.<p>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.<p>Also, it would be useful to filter by part-time&#x2F;full-time&#x2F;contract positions.

This sounds like a good thing, but I&#x27;m not sure it is.<p>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.<p>I&#x27;m a very &quot;out&quot; antifascist, and I&#x27;ve lost jobs due to my public not-liking-fascists, so I&#x27;m sympathetic to people who&#x27;d benefit from pseudonymous work, but fiverrization is <i>not</i> the way forward.<p>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).

<i>&gt; using your legal identity at work is unnecessary, and puts your safety, security, and privacy, at risk.</i><p>How is it even possible to employ someone in the US without knowing their legal identity?

I don&#x27;t know generally the use case for this though I remember seeing the most brilliant person I&#x27;ve ever encountered (a forum long ago) enquiring if a job enabled people to work anonymously; he was very cautious with his identity.<p>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).<p>The site is interesting but perhaps a little gung-ho with some of its statements.

How do these companies address tax reporting requirements?

I don&#x27;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&#x2F;residence (for local tax purposes). An employer who fails to collect <i>and retain</i> this information is effectively indistinguishable from a sweatshop owner.<p>On the other hand, &quot;pseudonymously&quot; might really just mean that the company collects that information, and doesn&#x27;t forcefully disclose any of it to your coworkers. Which seems...not particularly abnormal? I&#x27;ve worked with over a dozen people over the years whose &quot;official&quot; name, residence, &amp;c. was never disclosed to me.

&gt; soon most work will be done pseudonymously<p>Eyebrow raised very high<p>81 days this article was discussed in HN: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sofuckingagile.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;mourning-loss-as-a-remote-team" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sofuckingagile.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;mourning-loss-as-a-remot...</a><p>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&#x27;s wife created a support ticket because they didn&#x27;t know basic facts about them.<p>If after reading that article, you walk away thinking it&#x27;s a great setup, I&#x27;m thinking you&#x27;re likely very different from anyone I&#x27;ve ever met.

Sounds like a good idea if you want to launder money.<p>Anyway, I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s legal anywhere in Europe.

Looking forward to giving audit-level access to my systems to a anon &quot;Senior Security Auditor&quot;.

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&#x27;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

Might want to look at adult industry jobs, a lot of them offer remote work with minimal identity verification. Ironically, that&#x27;s how I got my first development job when I was still in high school (the employer didn&#x27;t know nor ask my age). It would have been a lot more difficult to get a similar job at a &quot;regular&quot; employer who knew my age.

How can you be pseudonymous if you work in person like this post: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;anonfriendly.com&#x2F;jobs&#x2F;62a278494d70510878922082" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;anonfriendly.com&#x2F;jobs&#x2F;62a278494d70510878922082</a><p>It will be very weird if people call me badrabbit in person.

&gt; using your legal identity at work is unnecessary, and puts your safety, security, and privacy, at risk.<p>Yes. And that&#x27;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&#x27;re more likely to be caught doing insider trading or some other illegal&#x2F;anti-competitive act. An identity is part of regulating a culture and maintaining the law. The risk is a feature, not a bug.<p>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&#x27;ve kept it on the dark web.

Here is a question I have often wondered about:<p>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 &quot;German to English translation service&quot;.<p>Up comes a website that says &quot;We translate one page of text for ₿0.000048&quot;. 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.<p>Would I be allowed to use that service? Can I deduct the expense from my taxes?

A common refrain is that &quot;crypto is speedrunning the history of finance.&quot; I think this is destined for the same outcome: we&#x27;re going to hear stories coming out of pseudonymous work that remind us why the rules are in place today.<p>For example: can&#x27;t file lawsuits against your employer for labor violations if you&#x27;re trying to stay anonymous! So they really don&#x27;t have a great incentive to treat you well.

In most places, being employed anonymously is illegal for both the individual and the company.<p>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 <i>their</i> taxes.<p>Apart from that, you&#x27;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.

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.<p>I just don&#x27;t see this taking off in any significant way for legitimate work.

I’m not sure I would hire anyone pseudonymously except for work that could be done on, say, Upwork or MechTurk (small assignments that don’t require sensitive access).<p>I would look at the US CISA guidance[1] on North Korean hacker MOs and consider the possibility that the person you hire might be using the opportunity to drain your company of finances, IP, or to sabotage your infrastructure. They may not work for North Korea, but consider the possibility they might abuse your trust in a similar way.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cisa.gov&#x2F;uscert&#x2F;ncas&#x2F;alerts&#x2F;aa20-106a" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cisa.gov&#x2F;uscert&#x2F;ncas&#x2F;alerts&#x2F;aa20-106a</a>

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&#x27;re not getting access to that as some anonymous internet rando.

&quot;using your legal identity at work is unnecessary&quot;<p>Uh, employers in the US are required to verify employment eligibility. One submits an i9 form.<p>For contractors &#x2F; etc, you still need to submit information for 1099.<p>What am I missing here - if considering the US?

They&#x27;re all cryptocurrency jobs? Figures.

How do they pay the check? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;intelibilia.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;18-crypto-wages-day" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;intelibilia.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;18-crypto-wages-day</a>

I&#x27;m a bit scared to ask but... How do you stipulate a contract if you&#x27;re pseudonymous? Or maybe you are supposed to work without a contract and accept monthly payments using a cryptocurrency?

Every single job posting is from a weird crypto bullshit company. Great.

Nowhere sane?

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.<p>What else is it for?

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?

theyre all cryptoasset related jobs :&#x2F; bummer

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&#x27;re working with? I can&#x27;t imagine feeling comfortable sending anything in writing in a work environment to a colleague who has no reputational accountability (both within &#x2F; outside the firm).

This is awesome. I would be much more comfortable working on my political side projects if employment was pseudonymous.

Holy shit and I won&#x27;t even attempt to say this with any tact or grace... You&#x27;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.

Don&#x27;t exploit brokers like Zerodium already operate under these kinds of parameters?

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.

I&#x27;m not sure how I guarantee that I&#x27;m not getting exploited if I&#x27;m working without my employer knowing who I am. How do I have a reasonable expectation of legal protection in this scenario?

Interesting to note: HN sometimes upvotes articles just because they want to shit on an idea. I&#x27;m not disagreeing here actually, the statement:<p>&gt; don&#x27;t doxx yourself for work<p>could (was?) generated by a Markov chain.

It’s interesting to see all these ideas built around the idea that “more anonymity is better.”<p>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.<p>Personally, I want a less anonymous and more communal internet (and society).

What if you want a job that isn&#x27;t defi&#x2F;crypto silliness?

I am amazed at the arm-chair lawyers here who leap at the opportunity to tear holes and make veiled accusations about something so completely basic as &quot;ability to work for pay.&quot; Do people not understand that cash work is as old as boats? Do you really want government record keeping in every day and night of your personal life? You want that so badly that you will leap to the front of the forum with your Legal Questions ?<p>Yes, health care and stability and proper tax payments are the mark of civilized life. And guess what First Worlders ? more people around you are falling into despair than you realize, because they wont say it.

How does this work given that the company needs to record who they are making payment too (even if it&#x27;s just a W-2 contractor).<p>(I&#x27;m speaking from a US lens here)

You get paid anonymously, in your choice of LUNA or APE.

So employees can work pseudonymously, but employers have to disclose their identity? Why not make it fully pseudonymous for both sides?

That sounds like rugpulls waiting to happen.

Anyone else find it odd that the two jobs that list salaries are in the junior dev&#x2F;first job range?

On a related note, anyone know if there&#x27;s a site that shows you (decent) part-time coding jobs?

how does this work within the us where employers need to have your tax identification?

&gt; don&#x27;t doxx yourself for work.<p>That’s a pretty cynical and paranoid outlook on life.

It is very dangerous for a blockchain engineer to reveal their line of work.

Seems pretty illegal in most countries

I have actually used pseudonymity for some time. It works. It&#x27;s not perfect, but I find it to be very useful.<p>I fell into it out of necessity because formal legal contracts are often not feasible to enforce when you are paying some guy, who lives halfway around the world, a few hundred or a few thousand dollars.<p>As long as everyone pays their taxes, in some cases this can be a very reasonable method of working with contractors. However, this approach tends to make dispute resolution in a court of law unfeasible.<p>Specifically, for software development I use obfuscation instead of the threat of adjudication to protect myself. Essentially I indicate to the contractor, &quot;Here, build this thing for me. I&#x27;m not going to tell you how I&#x27;m going to use it. Also, I&#x27;m not giving you my real name; I don&#x27;t need your real name. I&#x27;ll pay you weekly or even daily so that you don&#x27;t need to worry much about being unpaid.&quot;<p>This is an ancient concept, but the internet makes it much more efficient. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach but, frankly, it is, wellll, ummmm, kind of weird and very unfriendly because each party is implicitly and constantly indicating, &quot;I don&#x27;t trust you&quot; to one another.<p>On the plus side, ending relationships is typically extremely quick and easy. &quot;What&#x27;s that? You refuse to do what I want? I see. Goodbye and good luck.&quot; No muss, no fuss, no drama, and no fear of reprisals. I detest arguing with, for example, recalcitrant or incompetent contractors.<p>From my perspective, the ending “relationships part” is super-duper great. I detest becoming enmeshed in sticky personal disputes with contractors whom I have engaged.<p>I need contractors to provide me with deliverables. I strive to prevent them from discussing their personal lives with me. Why? I have found that once contractors start discussing their personal lives with me, they will invariably use my knowledge of their problems as means to justify their excuses for failing to deliver on time and&#x2F;or on budget.<p>Regardless of their reasons, if they are unable to deliver high quality work on time and on budget, then I need to find another contractor who will.