How I landed a career as a blockchain developer without any technical background
The decision, the process and how it changed my life
This is the story about my journey and how I made it from being stuck into a career as a journalist for 13-years to working as a blockchain developer for one of the top blockchain development companies in Europe.
If someone had told me a year ago where I will be sitting now, I have would never believed them. And actually, I still don’t. But here it is - I am a blockchain developer and that’s what is written on my business card. The journey from the stuffy chair in the even more stuffy editorial office to being part of the fastest growing technologies was quite a ride.
Some say Blockchain will or currently is revolutionising the world and I firmly believe in it as it already has overturned my life. My environment now consists of young, energetic and enthusiastic team of developers from LimeChain. You can image what a contrast this is from what I’ve been used to for the past 13 years.
And as much as I feel more than lucky to be one of the pieces of this fresh crew of limes, it is one of the most challenging and crazy things I’ve ever done. Here is the story of how I ended up here.
During my long-term journalism experience, I have gotten into the habit of being informed about everything that happens all over the world, the latest news and the tendencies in society. I was always hungry for something totally new and revolutionary. However, for the last few years everything seemed so boring.
Even though I was on top of everything what was going on around the world, I was so stuck with the bad news that surround me every day and the political claptrap, that I felt the need to break away for a while. I could easily be diagnosed with burnout or just bored to death.
I knew that it was time for a change so I took the daring decision to take an unpaid leave and travel for six months in Asia, hoping that would refresh my mind. The journey was really wonderful but as each day passed by, I felt the noose around my neck tightening as soon I had to be back in the same situation that made me unhappy.
I needed something more challenging, something to put me out of the comfort zone.
As it often happens, a spontaneous talk with a friend is enough to change the discourse in your life. What I needed was just one question - “You are a journalist, have you heard about Blockchain? I think it has a big future!”. And that was it — my interest was provoked. I started reading and the more I read, the more I liked the idea behind the technology. As I was digging deeper into my research, I found it very promising and believed in its progressive development.
Then, during my 6-month adventure, I took the decision to qualify as a blockchain journalist. I was in Vietnam when I enrolled in an online course to learn the basics of the blockchain technology.
The funniest thing was that the main purpose of the trip was to clear my head and not to start the biggest challenge of my life.
But to my surprise, I found it more interesting than I thought. The more I was learning, the stronger was my desire to pick up more about the structure and functionalities of smart contracts. Naturally, this led to taking a course in programming, which totally blowed my mind. It was really challenging to switch from being a person who writes stories to one who applies mathematical logic in each action. But when you are passionate about the goals you have set, you find motivation to continue regardless of how difficult the way is. Sometimes it is necessary to make a brave choice and to jump into choppy waters in order to achieve the change you are longing for.
So when I come back from the trip I quit my job and faced the unknown. I found myself having a mixture of feelings. It was relief, optimism, awakening, expectancy and so on but no fear. I was sure I have chosen the right path. However, this probably would have never happened if I hadn’t taken that 6-month journey.
After learning the basics of writing code and having already heard about blockchain concept, the next step was to embrace Solidity and the ability to create smart contracts. That was the moment when I fell in love with programming. Solidity is a pleasant programming language and the smart contracts are relatively simple even for a newbie like me. It is known to be quite similar to Javascript and isn’t a big challenge for those who have previous experience. In addition, writing smart contracts adds new conceptual thinking to the programming as a whole.
At the end I was totally sure I want to break up with the journalism and to become a blockchain developer. For me, this meant new opportunities, new challenges and new thirst for learning. I am feeling so motivated now and happy to watch the world changing because of Blockchain. And the most exciting thing is that I am a part of this new revolutionary establishment.
Here at LimeChain, we believe in Blockchain future and led by that feeling, it’s our mission to develop the community. Therefore, we decided to launch a Blockchain Academy that will equip IT specialists and professionals with the tools they need in order to become part of this movement.
Stay tuned for announcing the details around our next project!
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