The Future of Jobs in the Metaverse

With the move online during the 4th industrial revolution a whole host of ‘internet’ jobs were created that the previous generations of workers could only have dreamed of. Creatives moved their IRL design skills to the web with user interface design roles, software development of all types boomed, and digital marketing became the new go to skillset to help move marketing from offline to online.

Now as the digital space has become increasingly more complex, cultivating a huge social media following isn’t just the ambition and task of influencers, but entire social media management functions within businesses, data science departments are no longer confined to only the nerdiest of businesses and most roles now require the vast majority of time to be spent on slack/email/zoom/teams/gsuite etc

So with the concept of the metaverse starting to move from the early adopters and into the peripheral of enterprise and general retail populous, I’m sure that there will be brand new jobs created to help make the experience more exciting and frictionless. Here’s some metaverse related jobs I’m already seeing or which I think we’ll soon start to see…

🏘️ Construction Companies: Companies who build digital real estate to customer specifications. This could be anything from a personal NFT art gallery to a virtual business HQ. There’s already a number of businesses leading the way in this field but I expect this will be a high growth area with more companies wanting to build a bespoke area in the metaverse.

👗 Digital Tailors: This is definitely a service I would pay for as whilst there’s some great wearables out there, often you have a bespoke wearable design in mind and need someone with the digital design skills to bring it to life. As we see more fashion brands enter the space, there will be an increasing need for those with a fashionable eye plus 3D design skills to help create digital clothing. I can also foresee a premium service where you can have a couture wearable made to your or your company’s design desires.

🛋️ Interior Designer: Your digital real estate will be an extension of your personal or business brand so it’s important that not only does it look good but it works as a space to navigate and explore. So just as we have IRL experts who help to create beautifully crafted and designed spaces, I think we’ll see metaverse interior designers who can help you get the most out of your virtual buildings.

🧱 Real Estate Agents: In Decentraland being near a road, a plaza, the Decentraland road sign and especially being in a fancy district will bump up your real estate price. If you don’t know this you may overpay on a plot of land or undersell your own development. Therefore with an increasing number of metaverses to know about, I imagine we’ll move to a world where brokers help to ensure you get the best price and location for your space’s purpose.

🎉 Experience Planner: The equivalent of an events manager IRL and taking on responsibility for planning and running events in the metaverse whether it’s for a birthday party, company event or industry gala. This will likely involve coordinating with those designing the experience and those who are ensuring it’s packed with avatars attending.

💬 Metaverse Marketing Manager: Like the web2 version, this role will focus on bringing attention and usage of a metaverse or even specific locations/projects within it. This type of role will likely provide an accessible route for those bringing over from web2 into web3 since the majority of the skills required will be the same.

👯 Metaverse Community Manager: As above, this role will likely carry across many of the same skills from crypto project community management that we see today. It could therefore be an extension of Telegram and Discord groups for metaverse related projects, but hopefully will expand to include support and hype driving within the metaverse itself. You can imagine the metaverse community manager being an on hand presence within the virtual space to greet visitors, ensure they’re making the most out of the space and to help enforce behavioural expectations.

🚓 Police Officers: In 2018, just before Decentraland opened its doors to the world, there was a community poll asking how the nascent digital world should be policed. 40.7% of respondents advocated for a Decentraland Police Force, 11.1% suggested bots as a solution and 40.7% said users should take on a superhero/vigilante role.

https://twitter.com/NFTPlazas/status/1044768193284202496

With examples of financial crime, harassment and illegal e-commerce already being present in the metaverse and only expected to rise, the question of how users can keep themselves safe and whether it should/could also be someone else’s responsibility is a growing topic of discussion.

https://www.elliptic.co/resources/crime-in-the-metaverse

We may see metaverses deploy their own automated or soulbound-avatar police forces to help safeguard against bad actors, however it’s worth noting that in decentralised metaverses where access is often via cryptocurrency addresses which are easy to generate rather than traditional KYC routes, the tools at a police force’s disposal could be very limited. In Decentraland at the moment, some trad-orgs have a series of disclaimers before you enter the space which essentially amount to a “click here to promise you won’t misbehaviour, but there’s nothing we can actually do if you break this” and whilst The Sandbox requires you to go through a liveness and document verification process this is to claim rewards for the season’s games and you can play without going through this process.

So how and who are the future police officers is certainly up for debate.

These are just a handful of the potential metaverse-related roles that I think we’ll start seeing job descriptions for over the coming months and years, and I’m excited to see others that I can’t even currently conceptualise!

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.