Bloomberg: Developers flock to blockchain boot camps

Baozou Comment : While the blockchain field is fiercely competing for talent, it is also actively launching various talent training camp courses. At present, these projects are mainly led by some companies and colleges. The number of participants is at least a dozen people. Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. has carried out internal training, and Deloitte is also conducting internal pilots and will open them to the public in the future. Institutions such as MIT are also seeking investment from companies for opening courses. Although there is a great demand for blockchain talents at present, in order to really create a large number of jobs, the technology itself needs to be improved.

Translation: Annie_Xu

A year ago, 27-year-old software developer Roy Breidi dreamed of starting a startup related to the digital currency Bitcoin.

But the problem is that he "doesn't really understand what's behind this magical technology."

So he enrolled in “Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies,” an online course on Coursera, a free massive open online course program. It’s one of a number of bootcamps and workshops that help industries, especially software developers, get involved in blockchain technology and turn their knowledge into better job opportunities.

Roy Breidi

A few months later, Breidi quit his job and started working full-time at Shake, a company that supports Bitcoin debit cards. The company recently received venture capital from Boost VC, and co-founder and CTO Breidi moved to a temporary office and housing provided by sponsors in San Mateo County, California. He currently has no salary and lives on savings, hoping that the company's equity will bring in income.

"The sky is the only limit."

Banks and insurance companies have begun to try to use blockchain to record transactions and asset transfers, and venture capitalists have invested more than 1.1 billion in start-ups, but there is a lack of qualified developers. On September 7, the recruitment website Indeed.com posted 136 blockchain-related job requirements, and Monster.com had 77 positions.

Entrepreneur Jered Kenna plans to hire a blockchain expert in the fall. "There are very few people with rich blockchain experience, but the demand is growing rapidly. Sometimes one person receives 5 job offers a day."

Kenna said an experienced developer can make up to $220,000 a year. His plan is to hire “one person with experience in blockchain and the rest from blockchain bootcamp graduates or those with more experience.”

The number of developers is expected to grow rapidly. Blockchain expert Jeff Garzik said 250 are true experts. Investor and author of "The Business Blockchain" William Mougayar said there are 7,000 to 8,000 people with different levels of blockchain development in the world, and if more industries start hiring, this group will grow to 100,000 within 18 to 24 months.

Arvind Narayanan, an associate professor of computer science at Princeton University who also teaches online courses, said that about 35,000 people had taken Coursera's introductory course at the end of 2015. The second semester started this month, and 46,000 people have signed up for the course.

Workshops are popping up in New York, Luxembourg, Sydney, and elsewhere. Courses last from a few days to a few months, teaching basic cryptography and the programming language Solidity to develop developer skills (programming languages ​​Java and Python are optional). They explain how these applications run differently on a shared blockchain.

"The thing about programming is that you have to remember that everything is public," said Joshua Gancher, who recently attended a boot camp at Cornell University.

The course price is not low

Advanced programming costs a lot of money. New York's Byte Academy plans to offer a full-day, eight-week course this fall with a tuition of $10,000. In April, the Luxembourg School of Business organized a two-day training camp for 17 people, including lawyers and Deloitte developers, with each person paying 1,200 euros ($1,350).

Lory Kehoe, head of the consulting firm's blockchain lab, said, "It is important that we use the training camp to cultivate talent for the Deloitte blockchain ecosystem." In November, Deloitte will organize a five-day blockchain training camp in Brussels, with 30 internal employees participating. Eventually, our training camp courses will be open to clients.

Many companies, including Google parent Alphabet Inc., have opened boot camp courses for internal employees. This spring, Capgemini Financial Services had 25 young developers take an eight-week, full-day course. Bart Cant, the company’s blockchain community director, said the company hopes to have 100 employees trained by the end of the year.

"There are perhaps only 100 blockchain experts in the world, and most of them are in start-ups. They like that kind of environment and find it difficult to adapt to the traditional environment."

Corporate Sponsorship

In order to reduce the cost of courses, some universities are seeking corporate sponsorship. Brian Forde, director of digital currency at MIT Media Lab, said that MIT received $100,000 in funding and service sponsorship from companies such as Deloitte and Zappos.com, and successfully provided training courses to 25 people in August.

Of course, only when blockchain technology becomes popular and enterprise technology testing becomes a more widespread practical application, will the number of developers increase. Dave Hoover, co-founder of Dev Bootcamp, a web developer training camp, said that it will take several years for high-paying blockchain jobs to appear in large numbers.

“For me, it’s just a matter of time because I believe blockchain is a game-changing technology. And the pace of change will be faster than the internet.”