Is this the right time to look for a job in crypto? [Q&A]

Cryptocurrency markets have been going through a difficult time lately with a bear market and large fluctuations in value. So is now the time to apply for a crypto job?

Cryptotechnology is not going away, and many more companies are getting involved. We spoke to Bijan Shahrokhi, fintech expert and creator of Product Management Exercises, to find out if this is a good time to apply for a job in crypto and how you can improve your chances of landing one.

BN: Is it likely that we will see an increase in crypto job opportunities?

BS: Absolutely. You can see a significant increase; the best evidence is the investment volume of the crypto or Web3 industry.

As you can see, during the last bull run, many companies raised a lot of money with the premise of scaling their products and growing their engineering team over the next few years.

In many cases, almost in all cases, these projects will continue to grow their teams with the money they have raised. That is because it is the only way for them to be able to achieve the delivery that they promise to their investors and continue their growth trajectory.

So even if you add a new company for people to join, you can see that the capital to hire more talent in the industry is already committed and allocated. Many have found good talent in the industry. But because the talent pool is limited, it is difficult to find good people.

However, there is a supply problem; we don’t have a demand problem from a hiring perspective, we simply don’t have enough interested people working in this industry or willing to learn to be an engineer or product manager.

BN: What skills are particularly relevant to the crypto industry?

BS: I think there are two parts, firstly a traditional knowledge as an engineer or as a product manager or marketer. The second part is important though, and that is understanding the context and culture of Web3.

Because Web3 culture is very different from Web2 or regular corporate culture, people are usually driven by something higher than themselves or their companies, in many cases it’s about disrupting the entire industry, bringing transparency and privacy to it.

The only way you can have that knowledge is to jump right in, then attend events to get a deep understanding of the cultural norms to understand those protocols and then try to start contributing.

The good thing is that because many crypto projects are open source, you don’t have to be full-time to get involved. You can go to an open source project and start contributing as a step towards finding a way to grow full time in the industry. That is one of the beauties of crypto as a whole.

BN: Will we see more demand for “soft skilled” jobs alongside the more technical roles?

BS: Absolutely. It depends on what you define as soft skills, but there is a lot of demand for product management right now; companies must cover the need.

There is a lot of demand on the marketing side as well, community management and operations. Especially considering that the teams are becoming increasingly remote, it is difficult to figure out how to offer good HR and procedures. In addition, there is a lot of demand in the area of ​​regulation such as law and compliance.

These circumstances sometimes surprise people because they automatically see that you may not respect the law if you are interested in crypto. But still, a significant majority of companies must be aware of following the rules and regulations. This is why lawyers with a Web3 background are in high demand.

BN: What exactly is Web3 and what effect will it have in the long term?

BS: It depends on who you ask because people tend to have different views on this. Web3 is a product that utilizes underlying technologies. An individual device does not own this, and as a result the data is owned by the relevant user. The process of delivering these services takes place in a distributed system, i.e. Web3. It’s fascinating because what it does is it completely changes the power dynamic.

Instead of companies having the upper hand in the customer relationship, the dynamic is changing and the user is responsible for their data and can even own the data privately, no matter how limited access is. So we put the user as the king instead of the data.

There is no individual entity that can change things for users – for example, Facebook often changes policies and they expand the scope of their rights over the user’s data. You can’t do this on Web3 because privacy policy is a smart contract. The logic is that no individual can benefit from it. It’s a journey to get there, however, because much of this data is currently not decentralized.

BN: How is increased automation likely to affect the crypto job market?

BS: It’s the same effect automation has in other jobs because people are moving to do critical thinking jobs. So I don’t see automation affecting many jobs directly, instead it makes things more efficient because automation is a tool, and people leverage it to produce more intelligent contracts, better product services, and other tools. However, we are a long way from that because we are still building the foundations of Web3 today.

When automation is more available in crypto, things will become more efficient for humans. You can argue that smart contacts are already automating certain things, but jobs have not disappeared, in fact more jobs will be created in new ways, capturing value in today’s world.

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