I recently started looking for a more serious job, and I received two strong job offers that I now have to choose between. I'm seriously conflicted, so obviously I should turn to conditional prediction markets to make my decision for me.
The first job, which I will refer to as "Genesis", (not their real name), is a support role for a market trading firm. Some coding, some research, helping design trading strategies, etc. Just doing whatever I'm needed for across several fields.
The second job, which I will refer to as "Penguin", (not their real name either), is systems design work for a B2B fraud detection and prevention firm. Some coding, but more high level pentesting-adjacent stuff; thinking about how their systems could be defeated by sophisticated adversaries and coming up with robust countermeasures.
Both jobs are remote, not particularly time-bound (so I can choose when exactly to work), and full-time but with generous time off.
Genesis pays only a small yearly salary, but has a generous end-of-year bonus that depends on both team and individual trading performance. They've tried to convince me that it will be high (told me the bonus could be more than 3x the base salary in a good year), but without any such stipulation in an actual contract I have to take that skeptically.
Penguin pays with a lower-variance and more clearly-defined structure, about 4/5 in regular salary and 1/5 in equity. I'm a little concerned about the equity since from what I hear it's difficult to sell, but after meeting the company founders and employees I'm bullish on their prospects. (It's a pretty stable company, so I expect neither failure nor explosive growth. I think they'll remain generally successful and grow a bit faster than the overall market.)
Using my best guess at expected value from each job, I think Genesis is higher total compensation, but only by around 5%, and it's going to be very high variance. (If it matters, I believe the EV of both jobs to be somewhere in the 285k - 385k USD range yearly; I won't be more specific to avoid sharing information they'd rather keep private.)
The biggest difference is in the intangibles:
Genesis has an extremely fun company culture; several of the employees are already friends of mine, they've invited me to a retreat where the whole company just plays games for a week, etc. Many of them play Magic, many of them use Manifold. Very similar personality types to me, and the company actively encourages this culture.
Penguin is, uh, not fun. They're much more corporate and normal. Not overly bureaucratic or anything; it's absolutely a "get stuff done" culture, I'm encouraged to talk openly and give feedback, and after all they were willing to make an offer to someone whose primary work experience is "Magic judge". But they're not, like, gamers. Company retreats I expect will be "boss who wants people to think he's fun" more than actual fun.
On the other hand, Genesis's work product is just market trading, which strikes me as somewhat... nihilistic. I wouldn't be building anything of value to the world, we're just locked in a zero-sum game against less sophisticated traders. Sure we'll win, but like, ...why are we doing this? (I'm familiar with the "we're allocating capital more effectively" and "we're revealing important information about the future" arguments. This is plausible to me but I'm a little skeptical of factoring in these sorts of second-order effects too strongly.)
Penguin has a concrete mission that I can be proud of; fraud is unambiguously bad, and especially with deepfakes and AI agents on the rise, more cutting-edge tools to combat sophisticated attackers is sorely needed. I would be able to look back and say "I helped build this thing".
(I plan to donate a large portion of my salary to charity either way, so the direct prosociality of the job can be offset with higher pay. But on a psychological level it's more satisfying to be contributing to the world directly rather than just donating to a distant charity.)
I legit can't decide, but I need to give them an answer ideally by tonight. So I turn to the markets. Feel free to ask questions and give advice.
(I reserve the right to N/A an answer if it turns out that resolving it accurately would violate an NDA or other obligation.)
1,000People are also trading
This is not futarchic and not particularly information-revealing for me, but for those who might like to wager on something with less counterparty risk, I've added an answer that's just "which job will I take". I will commit not to wager on this answer myself until right before resolving it.
@AmmonLam Seems like both. Probably a bit more towards market, since they probably want to avoid fostering bad feeling by ranking some members of the team as significantly better than others. But that's speculation, I didn't ask them that question.
I'm debating with myself how to translate these thoughts into market values, but here are my insights (maybe someone else will have an easier time):
Genesis sounds higher risk. I'm not sure what your risk tolerance is (WvM history says high, vibes say low)
I would take either job under the assumption of the minimum compensation (no bonus, no equity value). Penguin wins on this metric but I'm not sure that even at such fractions of that high salary bracket that it matters; you'd likely be making more than you need either way
On MAP (mastery, autonomy, purpose - all critical measures for thriving), it sounds like Penguin is hands down the better choice. Clearer expectations, less prone to burnout, better alignment to values, etc.
However culture fit is incredibly important for long term satisfaction. A mismatch here can steal away all MAP indicators. You're skeptical about Penguin's culture and that's enough to suggest it's not viable outside the short term
Penguin is probably the better job. Genesis is probably the better life experience.
@Stralor Yeah I would normally assume you don't do that, but the last two bullet points and especially the last sentence sounded very ChatGPT-like to me.
Not a bad thing, objectively, I guess you're just one of the humans that ChatGPT tries to emulate with its voice. :)
@IsaacKing You put that in a kind way but that explains some issues I've been having in professional discourse. Damn. Formal English degree chopping me off at the knees.
@IsaacKing I would also be surprised if they were truly worthless, but when measuring expectation how comfortable are you with the floor?
Edit: this goes back to risk-tolerance. Thinking like a market trader: the EVs might be about the same, but if things go wrong are you overexposed?
@MaxA Was hoping for more traders, since right now a non-negligible fraction of the bets have been placed by Genesis employees. But yeah that kind of matches my intuition, long-term career prospects seem better at Penguin.
I'm not all that career-focused, to be fair. I did take the first ~10 years of my professional life off to mess around with Magic judging. But I would like something more serious going forwards.
On the other hand, the world is changing pretty quickly right now, and who knows what the professional world is going to look like in 2030. Planning for too far out seems sketchy with so much uncertainty around AI.
@IsaacKing so you're in your mid-30s or older. Penguin hands down. Stop with the games, start with the family. Make just enough effort at work to feed and clothe the kids, spend all the time outside work with them.
Unless you're a god level defcon personality, no one will remember you for what you've done in your job. But kids always remember a good father. 20-30 years from now, you will realize that it's all that matters.
Have as many kids as you can BTW.