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'Blockchain Developer' is the Fastest-Growing US Job (venturebeat.com) 96

"Blockchain developer" is the top emerging job in the U.S. -- according to data published in LinkedIn's 2018 U.S. Emerging Jobs report. From a report: [...] Using data gleaned from the LinkedIn Economic Graph, which serves as a "digital representation of the global economy" by analyzing the skills and job openings from across 590 million members and 30 million companies, LinkedIn found that "blockchain developers" has grown 33-fold in the past four years. In this case, "emerging jobs" refers to the growth of specific job titles on LinkedIn profiles in the period between 2014 and 2018. It's worth noting here that "blockchain" didn't appear anywhere in the top 20 emerging jobs in 2017, while "machine learning engineer" topped the list last year -- it's in second place this year.
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'Blockchain Developer' is the Fastest-Growing US Job

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  • by pak9rabid ( 1011935 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @01:32PM (#57798602)
    And in another year, will be the fastest dying US job.
    • If I've learnt anything about IT; it's almost impossible to predict anything so sweeping accurately; and for a field based in logic it can be very illogical.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Blockchains are useful for certain things, but not the majority of the hyped products in development. There are simpler, cheaper, more reliable ways to do most things people are trying to shoehorn into blockchain. A block chain is just a signature verifiable log database with all of the issues a log database has plus limitations imposed by the verification requirements.
        • by Anonymous Coward

          It is a distributed and publicly inspectable log database. If you have any central authority or trust in an entity, then you wouldn't use blockchain. The number of uses for blockchain is very small.

        • The description should be "was", not "is". I've talked to a number of people working on blockchain stuff for different organisations, including in some cases multinational corporations, of which exactly zero are using the blockchain for technical purposes. In all cases it's for political reasons, if your problem solution includes the term "blockchain" it gets funded, if it doesn't then it may or may not get funded, but certainly a lot less so than if it does. In some cases they were quite open about it,
        • "A block chain is just a signature verifiable log database with all of the issues a log database has plus limitations imposed by the verification requirements."

          Good straight forward and simple description. Thanks

    • A year is being very generous

    • And in another year, will be the fastest dying US job.

      Virtual currencies like bitcoin are one thing. Blockchain technology is something else entirely and will likely be with us for a long time. Perhaps a car analogy. :-)

      Bitcoin and blockchain and like the Ford Model T car and the internal combustion engine (ICE). The formers (bitcoin, Model T) are just users of the latters (blockchain, ICE), formers that are entirely replaceable, yet the replacements will continue using the latters as will different classes of users unrelated to the formers use the latters.

      • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @02:55PM (#57799190) Journal
        I've interviewed with a couple of these startups. Some of them are ICOs that made a ton of money ripping people off and now are vaguely trying to appear legitimate. Some of them are trying to be trading platforms for bit coin (or whatever). I'll be honest: I haven't seen any that felt remotely worth working for (worth being defined as: not a scam and will probably someday turn the equity into cash). The real problem is that no realistic use for block chain has been found yet, other than a currency. Etherium is fun, but we had an article not long ago explaining how it's not particularly practical.
        • The realistic blockchain use is making reliable and accurate data available to any interested party, giving the latter unfettered read access to the data.

          Think of cryptocurrency as merely a proof-of-concept. Note that the financial success of the cryptocurrency is irrelevant, what matters is whether the blockchain successfully managed and tracked the assets in question.

          Also cryptocurrencies are not really currencies, there are assets. We are currently running a proof-of-concept test of an asset tradin
          • We are currently running a proof-of-concept test of an asset trading and tracking system,

            How do you verify that the assets match the blockchain? What happens if an asset is destroyed?

            • We are currently running a proof-of-concept test of an asset trading and tracking system,

              How do you verify that the assets match the blockchain? What happens if an asset is destroyed?

              Currently some coins are "destroyed" by transferring them to a special account.

              Verification of a digital asset is something internal to the blockchain. Any created asset can be tracked from its creation to its current owner(s). Anything currently owned can be tracked back to its creation. Note that creation of an asset, like transfer of an asset, it a verified event at the time it occurred. If you are talking about real-world assets verifying a document like a ledger is no different whether that ledger i

              • If you are talking about real-world assets verifying a document like a ledger is no different whether that ledger is blockchain based or another other type of online ledger or database or a physical pen and paper ledger.

                Yeah, so it's based on trust and subject to errors. So what do you get, then, from using a blockchain, besides inefficiency?

                • If you are talking about real-world assets verifying a document like a ledger is no different whether that ledger is blockchain based or another other type of online ledger or database or a physical pen and paper ledger.

                  Yeah, so it's based on trust and subject to errors. So what do you get, then, from using a blockchain, besides inefficiency?

                  You get fewer errors on the ledger side, my point above is that errors in warehouse physical inventory is often ledger independent (theft, etc).
                  Plus the blockchain based ledger inherently offers public transparency.
                  Your claim of inefficiency is based on what?

                  • my point above is that errors in warehouse physical inventory is often ledger independent (theft, etc).

                    Yeah, it's ledger independent. That is, not something that will be helped by a blockchain.

                    I'll be honest, I think your idea is crap and not helped at all by blockchain. Who ever said, "I want all my transactions to be public"

                    • Again we are not including digital assets but only real world at the moment.
                      Regarding public transactions, I'm not saying blockchain is some sort of universal replacement for all ledger-like activities, no more than the web was/is a replacement for all retail sales activities. However blockchain is another tool in the toolbox and for some cases it will be the better fit. Hence it will not die off, it will merely dip from the current misuse of blockchain we are currently experiencing in some investment circ
                    • However blockchain is another tool in the toolbox and for some cases it will be the better fit

                      No, there's no case where it's a better fit.

      • I've interviewed with a couple of these startups. Some of them are ICOs that made a ton of money ripping people off and now are vaguely trying to appear legitimate. Some of them are trying to be trading platforms for bit coin (or whatever). I'll be honest: I haven't seen any that felt remotely worth working for (worth being defined as: not a scam and will probably someday turn the equity into cash).
        • I've interviewed with a couple of these startups. Some of them are ICOs that made a ton of money ripping people off and now are vaguely trying to appear legitimate. Some of them are trying to be trading platforms for bit coin (or whatever). I'll be honest: I haven't seen any that felt remotely worth working for (worth being defined as: not a scam and will probably someday turn the equity into cash).

          I'm involved in a startup that has been at a few entrepreneur/investor events. About half the angel level investors that spent time at our booth were eager to know if we could incorporate blockchain into our product/service. The vibe we got from some of these was that they wanted blockchain to be somehow incorporated regardless of how ill-fitting it would be. They wanted the buzzword that was all that rage at the time.

          Its like the late Clinton-era internet bubble. Anything online/internet/web attracted i

    • And in another year, will be the fastest dying US job.

      Only when people finally realize you can't spin straw into gold.

    • Blockchains are so generic that I can call myself a "blockchain developer" because I use the -S option (e.g. "git commit -a -S -m 'same old crap`") when doing a push.

      • "git commit -a -S -m 'same old crap`" when doing a push

        Is that what you do when you do a push? I just grunt and it seems to work for me.

  • by fibonacci8 ( 260615 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @01:32PM (#57798606)
  • by Anonymous Coward

    If I start something, and convert one other person to it, that's 100% growth in a day! Fastest-growing foo!
    And going from zero to one, that's an infinite growth rate!

  • by Dallas May ( 4891515 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @01:38PM (#57798648)

    Also a little reported fact:

    More than 50% of American blockchain developers are expected to die before the age 80. Clearly this field needs regulation.

  • by sinij ( 911942 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @01:41PM (#57798674)
    Blockchain is new in the cloud. If your manager isn't already in on it, he will be shortly out of a job and replaced by another inane MBAonkey fully versed in modern corporate jargon.
    • import blockchain as bc
      import cloud as cld

      Woohoo! I'm a cloud blockchain developer! This is going straight on my resume.
    • Blockchain is new in the cloud.....

      My last manager was still looking for networking tokens. Not really, but it was a funny thought.

    • Blockchain is new in the cloud.

      Except "the cloud" is actually a thing that is used and working pretty well for those that use it. Even if they fix the issues with transaction per unit of time, I'm not sure how much need there is for decentralized databases by people with money to make it pay off.

  • Graphic Designer 2.0 ... good luck when the world realizes the buzzword is just that.
  • They charge ridiculously high prices to post any job there - so the people most likely to do that are those without any sense of the real value of money.

    Which describes BitCoin zealots to a "T".

  • by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @01:47PM (#57798728)

    Seriously are we that bad at statistics? It's a job that didn't exist until very recently. Any time you increase something from near zero the percentage growth is going to sound like a lot. Going from 1 to 1000 is a big percentage growth. Much bigger than going from 100,001 to 101,000 even though the absolute growth is identical.

    The actual number of blockchain developer jobs is a rounding error as an absolute number. There are plenty of other jobs growing MUCH faster in terms of absolute numbers.

    • So you're saying "blockchain developer" could have gone from one to 33 openings.
      • So you're saying "blockchain developer" could have gone from one to 33 openings.

        Basically yes. Any time you see "fastest growing" anything and they are talking about percentages, this is the problem.

        Big companies have this problem all the time. For example 10% growth in a company sounds solid but pretty modest right? And it is. But for a company like Apple, 10% growth means they have generate as much new sales in one year as eBay's entire revenue. So imagine your task is to create a company the size of eBay out of whole cloth in one year. Apple does that routinely and yet people

  • by known_coward_69 ( 4151743 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @01:58PM (#57798802)

    any future in that?

    • My company has just hired blockchain DBA in order to keep track of types of nuts in a mixed nuts container. Very promising career.

  • For us it is still âoe Cloud âoe and âoe Virtualization âoe.

    The second term is especially amusing to hear upper mgmt talk of it as if it were the Second Coming of Christ.

    They want to virtualize EVERYTHING and they kinda gloss over a bit when you tell them that, at some point, you need a physical connection or hardware to make it work.

  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @02:09PM (#57798892)

    5) Having to carve out each block from various types of stone to examine performance.

    4) Around Christmas, all of your co-workers see you with working the chains and start calling you "Ghost of Christmas Past".

    3) Every four minutes having to explain what Blockchain is, usually to the same people.

    2) Satoshi constantly sliding into your DM's.

    1) Everyone can verify with absolutely distributed certainly your love life is dead.

  • Then it must have already died in the real world
  • Ever since LinkedIn rebuilt the site to look and act like Facebook, the self-promoter social media mavens have been all over it and treating it like Facebook. Most people who actively maintain their LinkedIn account enough to get counted in statistics (I assume Microsoft picks accounts with recent activity) are super-aggressive self-promoters. My assumption would be that these would be the type of people who are out hyping their startup's "AIMLBlockchain with More Cognitive Services" product and calling the

  • Subtracting t_first_adherent from t_second_adherent and taking the reciprocal to compute the Borgesian uptake of Global Illumination is a violation of the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem [wikipedia.org].

    Somewhere in there, the math completely falls apart for year-over-year sample sets of two eager, bounteous measurements, bursting at the seams. (Who's going to knock 100% knowledge inflation? Bah! Humbug! Nyquist–Shannon is all wet.)

    This explains one of modern society's growth obsessions. At the second observat

  • by Anonymous Coward

    As developers we should be smart and use the hype surrounding blockchain as a way to eke out some profit from the whole situation. Read a few whitepapers, contribute to a few open source projects and you could easily find yourself pulling in 100k+ on VC money. And there is so much of it out there. Then put what you can aside for savings and when the industry shakes itself out in a few years you will be laughing.

    • uh, developers with actual useful skills pull in $100K+ at normal jobs, all of the ones at my employer do.

      why bother to ride a fad?

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