One of the darkest sagas in crypto appears to have come to an end as Sam Bankman-Fried has been found guilty on multiple counts of fraud. While the crypto industry at large is healing, the damage done to employees of his exchange, FTX, may be irreparable.
At the time of its collapse, FTX had around 300 employees. All of them wanted to move on, but few had the opportunity to do so. At senior level, multiple headhunters said off the record that "nobody wants to touch them." They've been called "unemployable."
It's not been any easier further down the ladder. Employees have said "it's been a ****show to find a job to say the least." Employees have even been invited to interviews where the interviewer "just wanted to hear stories." Other employers are just "very hesitant and in most cases won't hire us."
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The harshest irony is that those that will benefit the most from it all are the people actively involved in the fraud, SBF aside of course. For their participation in the trial, it is expected that Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, FTX co-founder Gary Wang and FTX director of engineering Nishad Singh will receive little to no prison time.
They had their own impacts on FTX staff too. Employees cited the arrival of business executive Claire Watanabe, Singh's girlfriend, as a turning point for the company's culture. While there was "a lot of great work," being done previously, her arrival was akin to a "takeover," harming productivity as "she was not qualified."
Of the FTX alumni contacted, the vast majority did not respond to a request for comment. Of those that did, many wanted to just "put the whole thing behind them."
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