A lot of people have been wanting to get into web3 and land their first web3 job. Web3 is an industry that allows you to shape the future internet and also build a lucrative career for yourself at the same time.
We noticed that within the Eat The Blocks community we have a lot of web2 developers who are interested in getting into web3 but aren’t sure where to start.
So let’s have a look at what you can do to take that leap of faith while making sure that you land on a proverbial sponge that will be your web3 career!
🤔 How I found my first Web3 Developer job
I was a web developer before this and it was in 2017 that I realized that the web3 space had a huge potential to shape the future.
The industry looked very promising and it felt amazing to think of myself as a part of a new wave of developers that would shape the internet of the future.
This is when I seriously started thinking about becoming a developer in the web3 space and I was able to land my first full time job as a software developer.
The even more amazing thing was that I was getting paid $100,000 per year and hear this, it was fully remote!
The average global salary for a blockchain developer is $87,000 and the career growth trajectory is nothing short of amazing as well.
This full time software developer position was truly a massive upgrade for my career.
Recognizing the potential of this I got motivated to create a blog to help other web developers to get their foot in the door too.
The blog then led me to start the YouTube channel too which now has a staggering 145,000+ subscribers and keeps on growing.
And since 2017, we have had more than 9 million views on the channel and on our coding school.
More than 10,000 developers have taken our courses, and I recently launched a six month boot camp for website redevelopment.
Since we ourselves are in the industry we are able to keep our content 100% up to date and comprehensive.
A big part of our programme is not just the technical skills which you will learn but also coaching you folks on how to land your first web3 jobs as well.
This is the fastest way to get your first job in crypto if you want to apply for the next gold rush, click here.
🔑 Key Tips To Get Your First Web3 Job
Web2 Is The Foundation Of Web3 Development
A lot of people who are new to development directly jump into the web3 space and take on something like solidity or rust.
This is not the best way to go about it. It will be inefficient and will fail to land you any substantial interviews or even internships.
Web3 is actually built on top of web2. And most of the people who are hiring for these roles either assume or expect that you are already familiar with the foundations of development.
Development is not just about knowing a language like Javascript. Development is about understanding logic, thinking processes, debugging etc.
So the best way to go about learning web3 development efficiently is to go through the following steps:
Learn Web Development
Learn Javascript at the very least but any other language like python, c++ can suffice as well.
The goal here is to get you familiar with writing code, debugging and pushing things into production.
That means you need to spend some time learning Git as well. Once you know how to code, what language you code in is trivial and becomes a matter of how well you can go through the documentation and execute things when learning a new language.
💻Don’t Just Watch YouTube Coding Tutorials!
Most people when they get started with coding end up watching courses end to end on YouTube and feel they are now ready to take on the world.
Coding is not about knowing the syntax or simply how to write a loop. It’s about learning how to think in the same way that a computer thinks.
The only way to properly learn development is by actually doing it.
Don’t get me wrong, there is some great content available on YouTube, but the danger is that you get stuck in tutorial hell as thousands of others have.
This situation actually gets worse when you start to apply for jobs as a fresher.
If you’ve been in tutorial hell you either will not have some cool projects in your portfolio to showcase that you can build but you will have projects that thousands of other people have too.
The best way to go about this is to learn from 1 or 2 sources and then start applying. Start building some projects for your portfolio.
What we always suggest is to look at some real world problems that you see and try to solve them. Or at the very least build a project that would tell people that you can build things that other people can interact with.
💪🏼Build & Learn Development In Public
Out of all industries, web3 is an industry that really rewards people who build in public with massive opportunities.
And out of all platforms there are three that have been accepted well into the crypto world: Twitter, YouTube & Tik Tok.
Now, building in public has its pros and cons but I can easily say that the pros outweigh the cons by multifold.
I’m not asking you to produce high quality pieces of content that YouTubers like Unbox Therapy would get a complex from.
I’m simply suggesting that we must share publicly what we are building.
Learned a lesson? Share what you learnt and how you’re applying it.
Made a mistake? Share what you did and how you dealt with it.
Developers on Twitter do really well and guess what other companies want to work with people who are well known in the space.
Another advantage of building transparently is that you learn much faster as the bar you set for yourself is very high which really helps in boosting your career.
Another way to work in public is to create a blog and to share your crypto journey there. Although a blog is a totally separate beast altogether, it can really help you build your own community that you own.
🛠Work As A Web3 Developer On Open Source Projects
Another amazing way to get offers that is tried and tested by thousands of developers in this space is contributing to open source projects.
This way you can show what you are capable of doing when it comes to production level projects.
However, there are two caveats here.
First, there is no guarantee of getting paid when working in an open source project.
It is very common to be working for a long time before you really get paid.
However with more money flowing into the ecosystem, projects have started to open up grants programs for people helping build and maintain the network across the board which helps.
Second, contributing to open source is difficult.
It’s not always easy to get some guidance from other contributors. This is why I don’t necessarily recommend this to beginners.
🌎 Networking Is Imperative For A Job in Crypto
You know the saying, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”
Well, for something as technical as web3 development, it’s actually both of them.
If you just have the knowledge and not a good network, it’s not impossible to find a good job in Web3.
It’s just that it’s going to take more time, so why not make it easier for you?
There are three places I would recommend to network first.
As I said before, on Twitter you have a lot of developers, including web2 and web3 developers.
So start to hangout on Twitter, follow other website developers, and participate in a conversation.
The best way to grow and make connections on Twitter is by replying to tweets of other developers in the ecosystem and add value to them and their community.
That’s the big secret to networking on Twitter!
Discord
There are countless web3 developer communities up on Discord.
Most of the crypto projects have their Discord servers with channels dedicated towards developer discussions, especially Discord servers of DAOs.
DAO, or a Decentralized Autonomous Organization is a special kind of Web3 project that is completely decentralized.
And by being a member of a DAO and participating in conversation in their Discord, you can find some freelance gigs or a full time job, and usually when you get a job like this, you skip the typical recruiter process completely.
Hackathons
I’ve spoken with several developers who got their first opportunity through a Hackathon they took part in. They hadn’t even started building anything yet, still they had a job in hand just because they aimed to compete with the best developers around them.
And simply because some people liked the look of a participant’s profile, they invited the developers for an informal chat and the next thing you know, they’re doing great work and getting paid in ETH.
In comparison, in Web2, it’s pretty much impossible to do the same thing.
💬Learn the Web3 Language
If you ask the average person in the street, they will tell you that people in crypto just want to get rich quickly.
This might be true for a lot of the investors, but for developers it’s a bit of an oversimplification.
It’s true that the money you can make in crypto is attractive, but beyond this, a lot of builders and developers in this space are really into the social project side of crypto.
Crypto isn’t just some random technology anymore thanks to decentralization. It has the potential to fundamentally transform our societies.
And there is a crypto lingo that everyone here understands which you can learn too and join the inner circle!
Learning these doesn’t just allow you to communicate with your peers better but it also helps you sound more knowledgeable during your interviews and conversations.
Conclusion
I hope you loved reading this. But as you know reading and knowing is one thing but applying what we know is a completely different ball game.
Crypto is a fast paced industry for developers so we must keep learning, keep iterating and keep building!
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