Realizing the Potential of Blockchain: Developing Developers
From cross-border remittances through Bitspark to streamlining humanitarian aid, the opportunities presented by blockchain are many and varied. Organisations and governments around the globe are looking to blockchain technology to solve some of humanity’s most pressing issues. The potential for blockchain technology to revolutionize our world seems limitless. Yet, there is one limitation on how quickly and effectively blockchain technology will be able to affect global change: the supply of skilled blockchain developers drastically fails to meet demand.
Because of blockchain technology’s far-reaching implications, developers with blockchain skills are in high demand at companies ranging from small startups to tech giant IBM, as well as financial powerhouses Bank of America and Capitol One. As of December 2017, there were more than 4,000 freelance blockchain developer job postings on Upwork, a 115% increase over 2016. And their salaries are rising. Experienced blockchain engineers are asking for — and getting — salaries upwards of $250,000.
This isn’t the first time that emerging and established technologies with great potential have been hampered by a skilled labor shortage. From America’s agonizingly slow Space Race takeoff to nuclear power, labor shortages can and have impacted every facet of life, keeping us from realizing the promises of tomorrow.
The question, then, is, can we learn something from how industries have successfully pivoted to address a shortage of skilled labor in the past? What does history have to tell us about how we can weather this talent deficit?
America’s Cold War Space Race
The successful launch of the Russian satellite Sputnik I on October 4, 1957 had an immediate and lasting impact on the United States. American belief in itself took a huge hit. After watching Russia beat America into space, over a quarter of Americans stated that Russian sciences and engineering talent was now superior to that in the US. Faced with this crisis of confidence, the US took swift and immediate action.
By the end of 1958, pro-American sentiment had soared — at least for a time. The 1950s and ’60s were marked by a period of see-sawing between Soviet and US dominance in space. The Space Race remained hot through the 1960s, and the Cold War didn’t officially end until 1991. But when the US landed the first manned spacecraft on the moon, the Space Race was essentially ended. And at the official end of the Cold War in 1991, the US had clearly emerged the victor, both technologically and economically.
What finally turned the tide on the Space Race? Education. A national interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education propelled America’s Space Race and Cold War victory, and scientific superiority.
Earlier education reforms finally got the backing they needed with investment from the National Science Foundation. In 1958, the National Defense Education Act provided low-interest loans for math and science college students. The same year, NASA was formed. And less than a decade later, Neil Armstrong took his historic “giant leap for mankind.”
The Nuclear Industry Struggles to Keep America’s Lights On
Another industry that has, at times, lacked critically skilled labor is the utility and power industry. Department of Labor statistics reveal that nearly 50% of utility workers across the United States will retire in the next five to 10 years.
Undergraduate nuclear engineering program enrollment has decreased in recent years, down almost 10 percent between 2013 and 2012. Meanwhile, graduate enrollment was down five percent between 2012 and 2013. Unfortunately, these drops aren’t paralleled by a decrease in demand. It’s no surprise, then, that power plants, and nuclear plants in particular, are looking at a shortage of tens of thousands of skilled workers.
The drop in workers comes from several sources:
- The perception that nuclear power is a “dying industry”
- The drop in the number of university programs offering undergraduate and graduate degrees in nuclear engineering
- The belief that salaries in nuclear engineering aren’t competitive with other fields
Because higher educational institutions aren’t primed to generate the needed workers, the nuclear power industry needs to look elsewhere to solve its crisis. It’s found the solution in vocational training programs.
Improved training programs, apprenticeships, and mentorships are all sources of potential employees in the power industry. Specialty programs such as Helmets to Hardhats, which has helped place 6,000 veterans in the building and construction trades, offer unique opportunities, not only for individual advancement, but also for the continuation of entire industries.
Producing vs. Consuming Skilled Labor
Another example of a skills gap is the tech industry as a whole. The Massachusetts High Technology Council published an index in 2016 which concluded that the entire state’s innovation economy is at risk due to a shortage of skilled workers. The hiring environment in Massachusetts, with six to 12-month hiring delays, and multiple unfilled job openings at companies such as HubSpot Inc., is in many respects “worse than previous tech booms.”
One solution is for companies to focus on producing — not just consuming — skilled labor, says Dev Bootcamp co-founder Dave Hoover. He created a software engineer apprenticeship program which ran for five years in Chicago, with the intent of addressing the skills gap by “engaging with local, high-potential amateurs” in six-month apprenticeships.
The benefits? Whereas other companies complained of a scarcity of skilled workers, Hoover’s employer, Obtiva, grew from 5 to 50 engineers, and helped grow its future parent company’s engineering team to around 500.
Education Is the Missing Link
Whether it’s via traditional education, re-training and mentorship of an underutilized population, or apprentice programs designed to serve an enthusiastic yet unskilled pool of amateurs, the solutions in all these scenarios has been the same: education. And just as with the Space Race, issues facing America’s nuclear industry, and a lack of qualified tech employees, education will be the answer for blockchain as well.
Education and certification programs can address the existing shortfall in blockchain engineers and also help the emerging blockchain industry get ahead of the curve. Growing the number of qualified blockchain developers must be a priority for the industry.
Setting the Blockchain Industry Free
While a few major universities have just begun to offer crypto-related courses, there are currently no accredited higher education programs dedicated to blockchain development, and training program offerings are limited. So called ‘coding bootcamps’ lack standardization and accreditation, producing sub-standard developers who don’t have the skills to handle high-level blockchain projects.
To free itself from the constraints of labor shortages, both currently and in the future, the blockchain industry must invest in accredited training programs that rapidly empower skilled and interested developers with the proper skillset. A world-class, high level blockchain curriculum is needed.
That’s why my partners and I are excited introduce Kingsland University — School of Blockchain. Kingsland is the world’s first university-accredited blockchain program and provides a range of high-quality, standardized blockchain education to developers, executives, and organizations alike.
To address the most immediate need for qualified blockchain engineers, we’re beginning by retraining existing software developers, who have already proven their proficiency in related languages, and we’re introducing them to the blockchain ecosystem through a systematic curriculum developed by blockchain experts.
Kingsland fills a growing need in the blockchain industry: the shortage of skilled developers threatens to cripple this emerging, world-changing industry. The world needs blockchain, and blockchain needs Kingsland University to educate the developers who will use this technology to change the future.
John Souza is founder and CEO of Kingsland University — School of Blockchain, the world’s first accredited blockchain training program. Souza is driving conversations around education policy for skill and capacity building in emerging economies at the World Economic Forum, OECD and at conferences and summits around the world. Find out more about Kingsland’s leading-edge education at KingslandUniversity.com
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