Who did you want to be when you grow up? Nowadays, the career path is more unpredictable than it was 30 years ago; the professional environment is changing constantly depending on technical progress, new requirements and development paths arise almost in a blink of an eye. Yes, those circumstances make it even harder to choose a particular long-term career strategy, nevertheless, it gives us a tremendous opportunity to learn and to become one of the first achievers in a new wave of specialists. And as we all know money follows success. Talking about the crypto market now, we all heard about traders making a killing while trading, but in this article, the crypto job market will be reviewed to provide an idea on how almost anyone can switch over and succeed in that rather new market.
Let me hit you with some crypto market numbers first to provide the baseline. There are about 1,500 tradable crypto coins, and since 2013 number of digital wallet users has at least quadrupled as per cryptolization.com data. Total crypto market capital is holding the plank of more than $200 billion, and as you may guess, cryptocurrencies and blockchain create not only ginormous numbers but also jobs. During a year between December 2016 and 2017, job listings on Indeed.com have spiked by 207%, unsurprisingly most of them come from the U.S., California to be exact. And that’s just the figures that we know about, some job offers could easily be advertised elsewhere like on blogs or even on Facebook or Instagram.
Demand is now clearly exceeding supply for blockchain skilled specialists, as there are basically close to none comparing to the market size. And where demand is high, some special “cookies” are on offer to convince seasoned professionals to move into the unknown of crypto. First of all, statistics prove that crypto jobs are more likely to be remote, more than 5 times more likely comparing to others specializations in fact. Some companies are offering partial ownership, tokens, and tradable assets in the standard salary packages. Not to mention, that the average salaries are way beyond any market averages, but more on that a bit later.
The first specialization which is extremely thought after is the tech-related positions, such as developers and engineers. (if you are not tech minded, keep on reading as there is a surprise for you too further on!). That’s unsurprising, according to Upwork a blockchain engineer is the most wanted skill in the labor market after specialists in robotics. But if you are a developer, hop on the trend to start to earn an average of $100k+.
In case there is an urge for more, Switzerland is willing to offer anywhere from $180k, as there is an extreme need for blockchain developers. But there’s more, The land of the cheese and chocolate is also considered as one of the crypto and blockchain front posts. ICO’s are flooding to the nation while countries like China are banning them and the UK or the U.S. greatly discourage form conducting or investing in them.
What are the skills requirements for a blockchain developer or an engineer? Proficiency in languages such as C++; Python; PHP etc. are the basics. In case you are enthusiastic about crypto, the job will most likely be secured by now. As it was mentioned above, the demand is high, consequently, the majority of companies are willing to hire and train new crypto employees, and a solid base on which to build the new competencies is overwhelmingly considered to be enough. There is no need to say that you are a crypto expert, since this is most likely gonna be a lie, and most know it. Human resource experts argue that the industry is far too young for specialists to become professionals.
Well, now we get onto the crypto enthusiasts who are not into programming, and all that technical stuff. If you didn’t give up reading about tech crypto world employment, you might have noticed that trainings are provided on board. This privilege is not only for IT geeks but for anyone who is keen to work on projects with digital currencies as these projects a valuable practically everywhere. According to Tanner Hoban and Shaul Eyal about half of the global revenues related to blockchain was accounted by corporate giants like IBM, Microsoft, and Accenture.
In terms of training, for instance, PWC has a Digital Accelerator program to boost work with technical innovations in order to face client demand and keep up with the competition. Employees will cover 3 key areas of digital corporate operations: data analytics including Blockchain; automation of cybersecurity, drones and augmented reality, and the last area is artificial intelligence. Coding and design thinking will also be trained during this program. Sarah McEneaney, the leader in charge of this programme at PwC stated: “Our clients are looking for us to do things more digitally and control the cost of what we’re doing”.
If you heard of the digital or crypto project within the company you work for and, though the schedule is too busy, the recommendation here is to reconsider priorities. Taking a risk in a blockchain related project or a role could lead to working on something that could eventually lead to outstanding profits, and a development of valuable knowledge.
There is also a chance to be employed by a crypto company or a startup for a nontech position. It’s all about the soft skills (easy to learn, curiosity, etc) and hard skills set forming the base of starting specialization like project and brand management, compliance and community management and obviously sales. Technicians do not make up the majority of the team and no matter how good the tech they develop is, no one will invest or know about it without all the other business functions. A great majority of employees in blockchain associated businesses coming from other industries and they took a leap. As Julian Hosp (co-founder of Singapore-based crypto startup) mentioned, “We hardly ever hire from inside of crypto, because most people inside of crypto are very inexperienced. You have very-very few people who experienced who get into crypto industry”.
For crypto enthusiast or those who are interested in new career opportunities here are some handy links to get started with a search for that dream blockchain job: