Wanted: Tech Pros with Open Source Skills

The job outlook for IT professionals is looking up, especially for those looking to work remotely.

LinkedIn says half of the top 10 remote jobs posted on its site are for developers and software engineers. In fact, tech jobs dominate the top of the list, holding four of the five spots. The only non-tech job among the top five is for account managers.

Even among all jobs – remote, in-person, onsite, etc. — posted to LinkedIn, tech is among the top 10 spots with jobs for software engineers and project managers, though the latter is not exclusively in IT.

Retail positions, jobs requiring an on-site presence, were the most commonly advertised positions on LinkedIn in July. That was to be expected as brick and mortar retailers continued to reopen. Many that had laid off workers months earlier, struggled to hire and train new workers. Training supervisor positions were ninth on the LinkedIn list.

Unlike retail’s customer facing business, the majority of tech jobs can be done remotely. All that’s needed are a computer, internet access and, of course, the right software and communication apps. Since not having these basics would be like a carpenter without a hammer, tech professionals are overwhelmingly confident they can effectively do their job remotely.

When LinkedIn surveyed workers in May, tech professionals were the most confident they and their industry would be effective working remotely. 85% said they personally can be effective working from home. Most (82%) also thought the entire tech industry could be effective working remotely.

The evidence shows their optimism was well-founded. Though some IT workers did lose their job – onsite support staff, for example – and hiring slowed as companies mothballed projects, unemployment among tech professionals is 4.4%, well below the national 10.2%. Job growth, however, will remain stunted by the COVID pandemic.

Photo by Patrick Amoy on Unsplash

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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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