Many Silicon Valley software engineers are quitting jobs at firms like Facebook and Google to pursue their dreams in the blockchain space.
The Search for a Better Future
Landing a job at one of the big tech companies like Apple, Google or Facebook is a dream come true for many software engineers. However, many techies are now leaving these much-coveted jobs to work in the blockchain industry.
A recent article in Forbes tells the story of Maximilian Wang, who turned 28 in August. The software engineer left his job at Facebook to establish a cryptocurrency exchange named Bgogo. Currently, he serves as the CEO of the blockchain start-up.
Speaking about his transition, Wang said:
You know engineers are very simple: you give us a task, and we find the solution to it [And] we spend all of our time on that. It’s hard to see what the world outside looks like and how that world functions and is making money.
The Lure of Blockchain
Wang came to know about blockchain technology in early 2017 and he would spend nights reading white papers on blockchain projects while working on his job at Facebook during the day.
According to Wang, his colleagues at work did not take him seriously when he excitedly spoke to them about blockchain. He recounted, “Everyone thought it was a scam. Nobody believed me.”
However, that began to change when the crypto market started to rally. By the start of the New Year, everyone, according to Wang, was talking about the growing blockchain industry. He realized the potential of the industry when he saw his cryptocurrency portfolio increase by the same amount as his annual salary.
Wang recalled:
The hardest part was not when you saw an opportunity to make money and you needed to figure out how to get that opportunity.
He added:
What made it hard was that after seeing everything happened in the world outside, at the end of the day, you still had to come back to reality and try your best to focus on your work [at Facebook].
His strong belief that cryptocurrency exchanges would become the banks of the future led Wang to quit his job and work on building Bgogo, a cryptocurrency exchange with supernode listing authority.
Wang wants Bgogo to become the top crypto platform in the future, the blockchain equivalent of JP Morgan Chase.
Qi Zhou, formerly employed with Facebook and Google is another such engineer who left his job to create QuarkChain.
Yang Liu, a partner and chief technologist at Spark Digital Capital, a New York-based family office, believes that it works both ways. Not only are software engineers looking for better opportunities, but even investors look for talent from the big tech giants. According to Liu, having big names adds credibility to the start-ups.
As many young software engineers leave the security of the much sought after jobs, for the growing blockchain industry, it is a welcome development.
What are your thoughts on software engineers moving from tech giants to the blockchain sector? Let us know in the comments below.
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