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Desperately Seeking Devs: How to Fill Bitcoin's Talent Shortage

Jimmy Song is a bitcoin developer, an instructor for Dev ++ and runs his own bitcoin technical seminar called Programming Blockchain.

In this opinion piece, he explains why there is a shortage of developers in the bitcoin community, why this is a problem and how the industry is there. attack.


Despite the explosive growth of the Bitcoin community in recent years – users, transactions, businesses, open-source projects, media coverage, cultural references and of course the price – there remains a clear deficit at once pronounced and difficult to complete.

Quite simply, there are not enough developers.

There are many reasons for the lack of talent, among which insatiable demand.

Just about every business that deals with Bitcoin can only recruit about the number of developers they need. These companies have considerable growth in their revenues and their customers and would like to grow as quickly as possible, but the main constraint is that they can not find enough qualified people to grow. Many of those with only local policies relaxed these requirements and now allow full-time remote bitcoin developers. A major company president is considering finding a local blockchain related expert to find a unicorn these days.

Another contributing factor is rising prices. While the appreciation has been good for all who have stood firm during the bear market, it's bad for a lot of bitcoin companies as they find that many developers simply do not need to work because of the gains on their bitcoin wallet. Many developers prefer to start their own business, contribute to open-source projects or focus on investing instead of working for someone else. In a certain way, bitcoin companies are victims of their own success.

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The talent gap in the ecosystem is becoming so severe that many companies are offering huge bonuses to find developers and still can not fill the positions. Most would like to hire 15 to 20 developers if possible, but they simply do not have enough qualified people.

Another contributing factor is the level of rigor required to program blockchain applications. Spoiling a website can result in the shutdown of a site for a few minutes, but spoiling a bitcoin transaction can result in a loss of money, which requires much more rigor. The rigor required of developers is rare.

The industry does not stay still. There are various initiatives to fill this development gap. The main one of them is Dev ++, which is led by Bitcoin Edge Initiative, a non-profit initiative aimed at filling this gap. This year at Scaling Bitcoin, in addition to a highly respected conference, Dev ++ will train up to 100 developers to become familiar with blockchain concepts. Bitcoin Edge is hoping to heavily subsidize this two-day in-person training through sponsorships from many bitcoin companies who believe the developer deficit is the biggest.

Devs: Learn and become a part of this exploding industry. Help us improve Bitcoin.

Image via Shutterstock


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