How to fail upward after being laid off
Other than my current role, I’ve been laid off from every full time job I’ve had since graduating from college. With so many laid off in recent months, including my friends and teammates from Coinbase, I wanted to share my story in hopes it’ll help folks fail upward like I have.
TLDR: pick the thing you’re most interested in at that time and use every opportunity to pursue it.
My first gig was as a consultant at EY in 2014. The kids who got all A’s regardless of how much they liked a class are perfect consultants. Unsurprising to anyone that knows me, I was not one of those. I started in Risk, Compliance, and Operations, but after two projects, knew I hated it and needed to go.
I started looking around the company for interesting work and found the Digital Strategy and Transformation group. It was widely regarded by my peers as the most desirable group at EY and I spent almost a year trying to get on one of their projects. I succeeded, and for a while, I felt on top of the world.
EY is a great company, but I wasn’t passionate about my work and that caused me endless anxiety. I worried I’d never find my passion, and knew I had to keep looking.
I started planning my next steps in 2017 but, as a directionless consultant, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I toured dual degree MBA/MS programs to specialize in renewable energy with the dream of working at Tesla. I didn’t have a particular passion for renewables, I just thought Tesla was dope and I couldn’t get a job there with my qualifications and experience. In 2017 I also bought my first bitcoin. I didn’t know anything about it, but it kept making the news. Actually being invested inspired me to read and learn about it, and the more the price rose, the more interested I became.
In early 2018, I was laid off from EY. The Digital group wasn’t meeting its revenue targets and, while I was a superstar on projects I loved, I was removed from projects I hated (the kiss of death for consultants).
By this point I knew I had to keep pursuing things that were interesting to me. It came down to two paths — crypto and renewable energy. I started doing some of my own crypto consulting in token and incentive design while at the same time my then girlfriend, now wife, Lisa set up a day for me to attend classes in HBS (where she went).
Attending HBS that day made me realize that while these folks were smart, they were no better than me, and the biggest reason I was even considering going was because of the giant chip on my shoulder. I wanted to prove to myself that I was top tier, even though the school I attended, and jobs I had, had not been. That is a terrible reason to spend two years and go $250k in debt.
Meanwhile, I loved, loved, loved working on crypto. I was always deeply curious about behavioral economics and incentive models in my own life and although I had been in crypto for less than a year, I found myself knowing more than most about token design. I consulted a few projects (all of which ended up going under) and then ended up joining the token design team at Token Foundry, which was part of ConsenSys.
In my eyes at the time, ConsenSys was the best company, Token Foundry was the best part of ConsenSys, and the token design team was the best team at Token Foundry.
Me: I hit the jackpot.
Narrator: In fact, he did not hit the jackpot.
While I did some interesting work and made good friends, many of whom I’m still close with today, I ended up joining at the peak. It was all downhill, with Token Foundry falling apart and ConsenSys going through multiple rounds of layoffs.
I was laid off in early December, the day after ETH hit $80. I could not begin to describe how horrible it was to be laid off then. There was no adoption, no users, no hope, and absolutely no one hiring in crypto.
Since I couldn’t get a job, I considered going to Lambda School (now called BloomTech) for a data science degree. I didn’t because I realized I thought data science was really cool, but I didn’t want to be a data scientist. I knew I wanted to stay in crypto.
After a very difficult experience at ConsenSys, I had a high bar for my next role. I wanted high quality founders that knew what they were doing, had strong ethics, a good culture, a product that made sense, and the goal of eventually doing something no one in crypto has done before — running a profitable business.
Lisa didn’t have a lot of hope for crypto making a recovery any time soon and tried to help me by setting me up with crypto-adjacent fintech startups. I had some early conversations with places like Stripe, but my heart wasn’t into it, and I knew I had to stay in crypto any way I could.
I had a lot of credit card debt, no savings, and by that point had lost 80% in my crypto portfolio holding from the top to the bottom after my mom gave me most of her savings to invest. I had no job prospects and I was desperate. I even applied for an intern position at Circle and would have reported to Ria, now a close friend. She didn’t hire me and we now often laugh about it.
I was so anxious about not having any income that I reached out to a friend from my EY days. She was working for a DEI non-profit and needed a temp bookkeeper for $15/hr to reconcile their invoices and accounts receivable. You won’t find it on my LinkedIn, but I took the role, and that little bit of side income (plus a little crypto consulting) gave me a lifeline to hold out.
I would do anything to be in crypto. I met the ETHDenver organizers while at ConsenSys and spoke to them about being a judge at their hackathon in early 2019. Instead, they asked me to join as the Judging and Bounties Steward, one of the lead organizers. I’m still not sure what gave them the confidence to do so. I don’t think they knew that the hackathon where I met them was the only one I’ve ever attended. But I was willing to work hard and for free, and it worked. I put myself in the middle of the hurricane working with the most committed builders at a time when few others were. ETHDenver was a huge success and although I was still poor and without prospects, I was happy.
After I got back to NYC, I kept looking for a role and stumbled upon an Operations Manager position at a little company called Bison Trails. I didn’t know much about infrastructure and the job description basically said “If you love crypto and want crypto to be successful, come work here!” But I did hear good things about them. Thankfully, someone I met at ETHDenver was connected to the CEO on LinkedIn so I got introduced and came in for an interview.
The interview went well, but there was really no job description, so the night before my second interview with both co-founders, I wrote what I thought my job description should be in my journal. When I spoke to them the next day they said “We have some things we think you should be working on.” and I said “Great, I have a list as well, but mine is written down, so why don’t you tell me your list and I’ll tell you where we align.” They listed theirs and I said “I have those 4, here’s the 5th.” and they said “Yup, you should do that too.” and I said “Great, that’s my job description.”
It was only after I got the offer and we had to figure out what my job title should be (since it’s clearly not an Operations Manager) that we came up with Protocol Specialist. I was the first one and now there’s ~50 working in the industry as many of our customers, competitors, and industry leading firms have adopted the role.
The rest, as they say, is history — one that I am still writing. Bison Trails ended up dominating the blockchain infrastructure space, was acquired by Coinbase, and is now Coinbase Cloud. As an early employee, I like to think I had a big part to play in that, and I continue to excel in my role today, leading a team of Protocol Specialists at Coinbase.
My heart goes out to all those impacted by layoffs at Coinbase and many other firms within crypto and outside. But I want you to know that if you are persistent and keep following your interests, you will succeed.
Note that following your interests is not the same as finding your passion. Passion is developed, not discovered. I followed my interests for close to a decade before developing a passion for protocols & infrastructure.
As you are thinking about your next steps, use this as an opportunity to hone in on what is interesting to you — whether that means considering your overall industry choice, career path, or what type of problem or team you’d like to work with. Reach out to people and ask for help and advice. Work for free if you have to and excel to break in. The world is ripe with opportunity.
Being laid off is a painful and scary experience, especially in a bear market, but it is also an opportunity to fail upward. Take it.
