About Network School
You’re probably here because you’re following @balajis and have an interest in network states. If so, great! You’ve found your way to the back of the house, the application to become part of the Network School Core Team.
But what exactly is the Network School? The detailed version is here, but the short version can be expressed in three bullets:
First, the Network School is a school for the dark talent. We recruit founders from around the world to build tech companies, digital currencies, and internet communities.
Second, the Network School is a startup society that itself bootstraps startup societies. We host digital nomads and remote workers, online creators and open source developers, all of whom want to join our new society and help build other new societies from the ground up.
Finally, the Network School is a nascent alternative to Stanford and to San Francisco. Those places were great in their day, but they’ve declined. And so we need new locales built from the ground up to be neutral Tech Switzerlands, with the right balance of internationalism and capitalism.
OK! Now, let’s talk about working with us as a lecturer.
About You
Western academia is in decline, but decentralized science is just beginning. We now have the capital to endow a startup Stanford based on completely new premises, and that’s exactly what we’re doing:
We’re seeking people from everywhere, because we’re internationalists.
We’re investing in the best candidates, because we’re capitalists
We’re focusing initially on STEM, because we’re technologists
But we also want to train independent creators in every field from history to philosophy, because we’re humanists
So: we’re looking for pragmatic academics to become lecturers at our new Network School, which is located right outside sunny Singapore. Here’s the profile of the type of person we’re looking for:
Background. You might have a traditional academic STEM PhD, or you might be a self-taught open-source developer. But essentially what you enjoy doing most is learning, teaching, and publishing online.
Tech Forward. You are broadly pro-crypto, pro-social, and pro-AI. That is: you recognize that crypto scams, social spam, and AI slop exist, but you think these issues can be mitigated and you want to lean into the future rather than fight it.
Classically Liberal. You aren’t woke, but you also aren’t an ultranationalist. You aren’t primarily money-driven, but you aren’t anti-capitalist either. In other words, you’re a classical liberal (or similar) who appreciated what Western academia once was, at least in part. And you want to help build an Internet First replacement that tosses the bad parts and reinvents the good parts.
Basically: the ideal candidate is someone who loves to learn and teach, and has either completed a STEM PhD or equivalent, but has realized that traditional Western academia is over. If this describes you, you’re probably also interested in reproducible research, decentralized science, and creating new institutions. Submit your resume below and we’ll check it out.
What You’ll Do
What will you do on a daily basis as a lecturer at Network School?
First, you’ll start by curating the best online courses, like Jeremy Howard’s fast.ai and Dan Boneh’s Cryptography, and organizing multi-day “learnathons” on these topics every few weeks. That means (a) going through the entire class yourself first and then (b) helping many other people add that skill in a few days of intense dawn-to-dusk focused effort. We can speak about this more, but essentially the thesis is that these offline learnathons will provide motivation and structure to complement the online courses.
Additionally, you’ll also work with us to award “cryptocredentials”, which are new types of onchain certifications where we assert in a provable way that someone has learned a topic. The idea is to gradually build up to fully verifiable replacements for diplomas and resumes. Again, we can discuss more after you apply, but we’ll need this kind of thing in the brave new AI-enabled world we’re entering.
Finally, you’ll constantly be researching emerging tech, recruiting researchers, playing with new tools, and creating content around everything for both in-person and online audiences. Basically, it’s the ideal role for someone who likes teaching and learning technology.
What You’ll Get
In addition to salary and equity, you’ll get a full membership on site at the Network School, eliminating most daily expenses. That includes room, breakfast/lunch/dinner, wifi, 24/7 gym, and more. So, this is a great role for someone who wants to teach and learn all day, save money, and level up…while building a startup Stanford alternative to 20th century academia. If that sounds like you, apply below!