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Cryptocurrency’s Developer Gold Rush

06Jun
Green KeyInformation Technology

The hottest new industry for software developers is one they last flocked to in 2017 — cryptocurrency.

Citing a report by the crypto VC firm Electric Capital, Bloomberg says the number of new tech professionals going to work for cryptocurrency startups and taking on decentralized finance (DeFi) projects has been increasing at the rate of 15% per month since January. That’s about 13,600 new developers joining the crypto sector through October, according to Electric’s numbers.

Bloomberg reports that 80% of all active developers began their work in just the last two years.

Overall, however, the number of software developers working in cryptocurrency has stayed flat. Electric says the incoming professionals have gone to work mostly for the top 200 ecosystems. Outside those 200, there’s been a 30% exodus since December 2018.

The total pool of active crypto developers is about 9,000 a month, according to the report.

Yahoo Finance explains that “The [Electric Capital] report tracks ecosystems by blockchain. In other words, a Bitcoin developer is counted toward Bitcoin even if the person is working on its Lightning Network or any of its wallets.”

That developers are joining the top ecosystems and leaving those at the bottom is, Bloomberg says, “one of the best barometers of a project’s promise and health.”

Maria Shen, a partner at Electric, told Bloomberg, “Developers are one of the signals of quality in a crypto ecosystem.”

The big winner, she says, is Ethereum. With more than 300 developers a month joining the organization, Shen told Yahoo, “Ethereum has continuously grown through Crypto Winter.”

Electric’s survey of publicly available code documentation on GitHub and GitLab and elsewhere shows Ethereum had about 2,300 developers working monthly in the third quarter of the year. It’s closest competitor, Bitcoin, had 400.

Meanwhile, the report says the average monthly number of developers working on DeFi projects grew 67% since January. (Wikipedia defines DeFi as “an experimental form of finance that does not rely on central financial intermediaries such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks, and instead utilizes smart contracts on blockchains.”

Ken Deeter, an Electric Capital partner, suggested to Coindesk that developer interest in DeFi could be partially attributed to developers from fintech frustrated by what they can’t do there.

“DeFi is a really interesting area … where there’s an ability for developers to really experiment in a way that in the traditional financial system is difficult to do.”

Photo by Nick Chong on Unsplash

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“In today’s world,” says The Ohio State Engineer Magazine, “It is essential for an engineer to possess strong communication skills; it is the biggest determiner of success in the modern engineer’s professional career.” This goes double for project leads and managers.

Clear communication starts with knowing the details of the project, defining the end goals clearly, assigning roles and setting expectations. Clarity is essential, so even when you see nodding heads, don’t assume everyone understands. Ask for discussion. A diplomatic way of ensuring your team understands what needs to be done is ask if the process and goals are realistic; does anyone see any potential problems. Invite pushback on the timeline.

Besides uncovering misunderstandings or communication gaps, you’ll demonstrate your openness to disagreement and differing points of view. Creating an environment of psychological safety is the single most important component of team success, according to Google, which exhaustively studied team leadership.

A Slack blog post describes how a team lead creates psychological safety:

  1. An empathetic approach – “Strive to read your teammates. Are they content, stressed out or struggling?… Aiming to empathize with their point of view is key to gaining their trust.”
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  4. Be humble – When you make a mistake, admit it. When you’ve been short with someone, apologize. Say “please” and “thank you” often.

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When COVID-19 began closing businesses and shops, companies worldwide upped their spending on technology so much that within the first three months of the pandemic they’d already spent all of their 2020 budget increase. This extra $15 billion a week is among the biggest increase in tech spending in history.

Most of those billions was spent updating systems to accommodate remote working and improving network security. A wise decision as it turned out, since cyber attacks have become a fact of life for CIOs and CTOs. 41% of the 4,200 global IT leaders participating in a Harvey Nash/KPMG CIO Survey said this year, their company has had more cyber attacks than ever. By far, attackers have targeted the massive relocation of workers from offices to homes. 83% of the attacks were phishing and 62% were malware.

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After security skills, cited by 35% of the responding IT leaders, the next three most scarce technology skills are organizational change management (27%), enterprise architecture (23%) and technical architecture and advanced analytics both at 22%, according to the survey.

KPMG Nash IT survey 2020.jpg

Those shifts in most wanted IT skills reflect the change organizations are making in their tech investment. The survey says that after security and privacy, investment in infrastructure and the cloud was the third most important tech priority, with the number of IT leaders actively considering distributed cloud nearly doubling in just 12 months (from 11% to 21%).

It’s likely that even after the pandemic subsides, these areas will continue to be a key tech focus. Worldwide, 43% of IT leaders expect more than half their workforce will continue to be remote.

“Leaders,” says a summary of the report, “Will therefore need to rethink how they attract and engage their employees in a world where physical location is no longer a prime asset.”

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