What is a blockchain? This is a word on the Internet that says 'red, purple,' but few people can say it clearly in one sentence.
According to Carol, founder of IFOODCHAIN, Chairman of the Board, China does not really know more than 3,000 people who are developing blockchains. They are all located in major companies and many simply go out and send their own coins. Digital currency vertical media “Currencies World” Partner Feng Jun said that China can really read the original code of Bitcoin with no more than 200 people.
Even so, it can't stop the blockchain from popping up overnight.
In the Spring Festival of the Dog Years just past, Xu Xiaoping, an angel investor, encouraged the embrace of the blockchain revolution in the WeChat group. Numerous celebrities and investors discussed the point of view at the '3 o'clock sleepless blockchain group', making the blockchain plentiful. The entire Spring Festival. Subsequently, Zhu Xiaohu and Chen Weixing revolved around the blockchain on the Internet, saying that the dispute between the blockchains has become a debate in which all people participate.
Blockchain technology has long existed for many years and was originally obscured by the fact that Nakamoto successfully developed Bitcoin using this technology. Bitcoin jumped to less than $1,000 from the beginning of the year in 2017 and reached $20,000 by the end of the year. The huge wealth effect of 20 times the increase has attracted countless people. The blockchain technology used to develop Bitcoin has caught the attention of the world overnight.
Today, the wealth effect is attracting a large number of entrepreneurs in China. Investors join in, such as Tencent, Ali, Xiaomi, Suning and other large companies have also joined the headquarters of the blockchain Nuggets, a blockchain talent competition. The war has started.
one
Liu Song, founder and CEO of AAA Chain, said that even in the Silicon Valley of the United States, the talents in the blockchain, whether it is technology, products, or operational personnel, are relatively scarce. 'Not many people can engage in blockchain technology development. There is only a handful of stable products that can be put into operation. Liu Song said that in the US Silicon Valley, the annual salary of talents in the blockchain is about 250,000 U.S. dollars or more. 'The domestic economy will be cheaper, but compared to other industries, It's also ridiculously high.'
In his view, an important reason for the shortage of talent in the blockchain is that a large number of blockchain projects have raised huge amounts of money. These projects require technical talents when the products are on the ground. As a new technology, the ready-made talents are very less.
"The blockchain's demand for talent is much higher than that of artificial intelligence and other industries. It is an integrated requirement. It requires you to understand Java, C++, GO, etc. It also requires understanding of cryptography,' said Karon.
However, compared to Feng Jun, Caron may be much more fortunate. He already has a relatively mature technology development team. There are 6 people who focus on the development of blockchain technology.
As early as the end of 2015, Karon, who had once fought in the PR industry, unexpectedly entered the blockchain field. He believes this technology is well suited for the food industry. 'Starting with traceability, because the data cannot be tampered with. Chain technology can promote food safety.' Karon said.
Since then, he has managed to find some like-minded partners and created a root chain. This is the first agricultural blockchain application in China that uses blockchain for food safety traceability.
From the point of view of the social pain points traced from food safety, the 'root chain' aims to trace the roots of the blockchain technology and establish a publicly trusted product authenticity identification system and value realization platform.
However, the lack of suitable blockchain development talents has become the biggest problem that Caron has to face. Since the end of 2015, he has recruited from colleges and universities such as Beiyou, and he has begun to develop blockchain technology development talents.
Similar to Liu Song's case, Tencent's blockchain team also cultivated itself mainly. As early as 2015, Tencent started to build a blockchain R&D team and built a blockchain infrastructure platform—blockchain. Service (BaaS platform)
In this year's 'two sessions', Ma Huateng published his views on the blockchain: 'Blockchain is a good technology, but it is still in the early stages of development. It needs to establish an effective application model. Tencent is also actively exploring the area. Block chain application in various scenarios. '
Tsai Tsai, general manager of the blockchain business, said that the current blockchain, like the mobile network of the year, will face a shortage of talent.
When the mobile network arrived, it was the same. You have to recruit Android. It's very difficult for iOS. You can only train yourself and let those who do C++ develop to learn Android and iOS development.
Before he took over the blockchain business, Tsai Gego also learned on his own. According to Cai Yuge, members of the Tencent blockchain R&D team are mostly converted from the inside.
Today, the application scenarios developed by Tencent with blockchain technology have already landed on micro-gold, supply chain finance, e-certification, charity tracking and other projects.
For Liu Song, the process of forming a team was even more difficult. He had to dig people from the Internet industry, and then he began to train blockchain-related knowledge from 0, personally hand-to-hand training. Currently, AAAChain has 12 R&D teams, including core technology development. 3 people.
The popularity of the blockchain has also made those engineers who really understand the development of blockchain technology a 'short-seller'. They often work in multiple roles and act as 'consultants' in multiple projects and multiple teams.
'This is a very common phenomenon. The degree of participation of consultants is different. Some of them are just name-named, others are deeply involved.' Liu Song said. In his team, there is such a technical consultant, who will not only jointly develop , Also sharing technical resources.
In IFOODCHAIN's team members, all but the founder of Caron, even the CEO, will be given the title of 'Advisor' in front of them. These 'Consultants' often have another identity in addition to participating in the project.
two
“Your family lives in Fangshan. Would you like to run so far every day to get to work?” On March 14th, in the office of Feng Jun, Building B, Wangguang Building, Wangjing, Beijing, HR questioned an interviewer questioningly.
'Will, I drive myself.' The interviewer replied firmly. From Fangshan to Wangjing, more than 50 kilometers apart, without traffic jams, it took more than an hour to drive. HR is worried that this will become the interviewer's future entry. A major obstacle to the work. But the temptation of high salary is obviously higher than the daily running through the city.
At the same time, another HR plugged in a resume for Feng Jun. He took it unconsciously, glanced at it, then pushed open the door and walked into a conference room where a young girl was anxiously waiting for an interview.
This has become a habit. For several months, similar interviews, Feng Jun performed more than a dozen times a day, which occupied most of his time.
After Feng Jun resigned from Tencent Finance in September last year, Feng Jun entered the 'currency circle' of the rolling business.
Within half a year, the company has grown from scratch and has more than 50 employees. However, this speed is still far behind the development of the industry. It is precisely talents or people who restrict the development of the company.
However, what makes Feng Jun very discouraged is that the success rate of the interview is less than 1%. 'Sometimes a day goes by, there is no suitable one.' Feng Jun said. There are many reasons for unsuccessful interviews, such as 'Large opening' In just two hours, the interviewers were in an endless stream. Most of them did not understand the blockchain.
However, in fact, since the establishment in September last year, Feng Jun and several other partners have been plagued by the recruitment of people. Before the start of business, Feng Jun threw out an olive branch to almost all known former colleagues and was rejected.
'I called my friends around and I didn't want to come.' Feng Jun reluctantly said. Compared to technical talent recruitment, Feng Jun's content section was the most difficult to recruit. Feng Jun later concluded that those senior media people either Reluctant to risk, or to do blockchain self media.
Although it is difficult to recruit people, the company still hopes to double its staff size as quickly as possible this year to keep pace with the development of the digital currency industry.
Data from recruitment websites may be more illustrative of the boom in the blockchain talent market.
Lagou said that as early as 2014~2015, there were companies concerned about the relevant trends of the blockchain, but the concentrated outbreak of blockchain demand was in November 2017.
According to statistics provided by Lagounet, among the companies that have delivered Top30, there are startup companies such as Niuchi Technology and Quark Chain, as well as giants such as Netcom, Xiaomi, Tencent, and 36-inch technology media platforms. .
According to the "2018 Peak Season Talent Trend Report" released directly by BOSS, from January to February 2018, the number of companies that released blockchain-related jobs increased 4.6 times year-on-year, and the supply of talents increased 235% year-on-year. Although the growth rate is higher than other Internet positions, but stocks are still far below actual demand.
According to the category of job titles, technology-related blockchain-related posts accounted for 73.7%, operations accounted for 8.4%, product categories accounted for 7.5%, and other positions (industry analysts, marketing, journalists, etc.) accounted for 10%.
three
Faced with the boom of the blockchain, there are not many rationalists like Liu Xiao (a pseudonym). Liu Xiao serves a brokerage firm and his position is a new three board analyst.
From the second half of last year, he found that many colleagues engaged in research on the new Third Board have turned to blockchain research. Some media who once focused on the new three boards also turned to the blockchain.
'A friend I know, I'm going to work on the blockchain project now, and ICO is already. Another institutional investor went to Hong Kong to do a blockchain project.' Liu Xiao said. But he thinks, blockchain Behind the fire is the logic of the country's depriving for profit.
'For companies, on the one hand to quickly recruit such professionals, on the other hand, we must also consciously train and reserve more talent.' Lagou said.
However, whether it is Liu Song, or Karon, or even Tencent, while training the blockchain talents, they are facing another more troublesome reality - brain drain.
Companies like Liu Song and Karon, who have mature blockchain technology development talent, can easily be targeted by big companies such as Tencent and Ali. In the temptation of high salaries, human nature cannot stand the test of money.
According to data from Lagou.com, at present, there are 1,000 blockchain posts open on the Lagounet platform. The average monthly salary for blockchain-related job postings is 34,000 yuan.
In a “High-paying List of 2018 Blockchains” of Lagounet, the monthly salary of Tencent recruiting blockchain development engineers is 20,000 to 40,000 yuan, and the monthly salary of millet recruitment blockchain experts is 30,000 to 60,000 Yuan. The blockchain senior developer has a salary of 50,000 to 100,000.
What makes Liu Song even more angry is that in the face of 'temptation' from outside, some employees tend to 'set prices from the bottom up'. If the domestic starting price is between 300,000 yuan and 500,000 yuan, the asking price is often higher than the normal level. 50%, even 100%. 'If I weren't the CEO, I just wrote the code myself. It was really an upset to sit down. ' Liu Song said angrily.
In addition to high salaries, these blockchain technical talents often have additional requirements. That is to take the project token. In this regard, Karon once suffered a loss. Without the ICO, the painstakingly trained technical staff could not resist the temptation. , Going to other companies, or simply going to send money.
The so-called ICO is the 'first issue token', which is similar to the IPO (initial public offering). The difference is that the IPO issues stocks, and the ICO issues tokens, which are encrypted digital currencies. Investors use real The currency goes to buy stocks, and it is Bitcoins, Ethereum and other digital currencies, and some even air coins to buy tokens. Even though the Central Bank has already declared ICO to raise funds illegally and to conduct inventory of various ICO financing platforms, Asked to withdraw the financed project, but the ICO still continues to ban.
In June 2013, MasterCard (MSC) launched crowdfunding and raised a total of 5,000 Bitcoins. This is considered to be the earliest ICO project in the world. The world's most famous and most successful ICO project is Ethereum.
At the end of 2013, the Ethereum founder released the first edition of Ethereum, which was launched in July 2014. A total of 72 million Ether coins were issued. Ethereum has become the representative of blockchain 2.0 and has become the market value second only to bits. The second largest number of currency cryptocurrencies.
In Caron's view, ICO is divided into two stages: the first stage is from December 2016 to August 2017; the second stage is from last October to January this year.
During this period, there was a lot of money ringing around to find Caron, hoping to help with the coin. 'There are several of them who stayed here for several days and came to talk to me every day.' Caron said.
However, due to various reasons, Karon resisted the temptation and did not have a coin. Of course, he missed two chances to make a coin and made him regret that he also tasted the bitterness.
With no ICO, Karon's blockchain R&D team members were removed three or four times. They were either taken away by larger companies with higher salaries or transferred to the 'dollar circle'.
Nowadays, the booming of blockchain has also prompted some domestic universities to pay attention to blockchain research.
In August 2017, the “Joint Research Center for Blockchain Technologies of Tsinghua University (Computer Department) - Beijing Aershan Financial Technology Co., Ltd. was established. 'This year at least one or two hundred colleges and universities will open a blockchain course,' said Karon.