Become a Blockchain Developer and Get Rich

Originally published by Michiel Mulders on March 16th 2018

@michielmuldersMichiel Mulders

Blockchain engineers are in demand.

An article published on the 14th of February by TechCrunch states there is a huge shortage of blockchain engineers. At the moment, there are 14 job offerings for every one blockchain developer. Although, the “$/knowledge” ratio increased even further this year in the blockchain space, where capital by far outpaces talent.

My favorite ‘throw money’ GIF — giphy.com

Disclaimer: I do not guarantee you will get rich.

“Requests for on-demand blockchain talent are skyrocketing. Last year, freelance talent marketplace Upwork saw blockchain rise to the fastest-growing skill out of more than 5,000 skills in terms of freelancer billings — a year-over-year increase of more than 35,000 percent. These requests span smart contract development, blockchain engineering projects, and overall blockchain consultancy.“

This is the top three most wanted skills:

Hyperledger Fabric: an enterprise blockchain framework focused on modularity and scalability to support the often changed business rules.
Ripple development: a payment protocol used for distributed processes for remittances, payments and exchanges.
Solidity smart contract development on the Ethereum network.

The blockchain ‘niche’ has the most high-paying jobs as even classic companies of the financial sector, like Bank of America, Visa, and others are seeking to explore blockchain technology.

Blockchain developers in the US earn up to $130k a year, by estimates of Computerworld. At the same time, software developers earn up to $105k a year. Such data was published by Matt Siegelman, the CEO of the data analysis campaign of the Burning Glass Technologies company performance.

What can we do?

First of all, iOlite is a project that helps to fill up this shortage. They are developing a product that is capable of understanding natural language and translating this to executable smart contract code. This seems to be the ideal solution, although we still need knowledgeable smart contract developers to define structures in combination with Solidity code so normal users can use this library of structures to create smart contracts based on their needs. To give developers the possibility to as well create smart contracts more easily, we offer developer plugins to translate mass programming languages to smart contract code.

MOOC platform Udemy offering Ethereum & Solidity course

Massive open online course (MOOC) platforms try to catch up with blockchain technology by providing blockchain related coding courses. This gives normal developers the possibility to jump in this new and exciting world of blockchain development. The high “$/knowledge” ration is another incentive for developers to become a blockchain developer.

Although, we have noticed that these courses do not provide in-depth knowledge on the matter. We don’t expect a MOOC graduate to develop a perfectly fine smart contract which can be used by an ICO, and they shouldn’t do as we are talking about millions of dollars.

At last, private talent networks like Toptal offer top quality blockchain engineering talent to be consulted by companies. This makes it easier for companies to find blockchain talent.

Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, thinks blockchain developers should be employed by multiple companies to democratize the knowledge they gather so more developers can discover and explore the possibilities of the blockchain. It’s easier to get started with blockchain development when you have a ‘buddy’ who can guide you on this quest.

Source: techcrunch.com