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Having an average fiat job Im constantly looking for opportunities to work in the bitcoin space.
It looks like most of the jobs are tech based like engineering.
Just wondering if anyone knows a path to learn how to do this stuff & approximately how long it will take.
Do you need to go to school or find the info on the internet? Do you need to build up some kind of portfolio so show your work? How can one know if you are "good" at coding?
Thanks
I'm going to simplify a lot, but here would be my suggested strategy:
  • Pick a solid project you want to contribute to
  • Start learning the technology (i.e. the programming language) that the project is written in
  • Create multiple toy projects in the same technology while learning it (while watching youtube videos, doing online classes, etc)
  • Export all of those projects on your github
  • During all of this also focus on "Computer Science 101" - learn data structures (especially HashMap) and common algorithms
    • implement all of those in the same language and publish on your github
  • When you feel comfortable with the technology, reach out to the companies that you would like to work for (if you want big company, then watch youtube videos on interviewing... the types of questions are quite similar across the board)
  • You could try Q&A roles first, which have less programming requirements
You may need to do 10+ interviews, but that's normal.
Overall this could be as fast as 4-6 months if you are starting quite from scratch.
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Thanks for the suggestions.
I have gone through some elementary python apps, but I think the computer science stuff might be a better foundational starting point.
6 months sounds pretty soon. I guess if it comes to you naturally & have genuine interest in the work then might not take that long
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Yeah, very few writing, copywriting, design, video editing, creative jobs
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Everyone here thinks the only jobs in tech are engineering and programming.
You need to start thinking about the other major components of a company and find a way to contribute: Operations, Marketing, Sales, HR, Finance, Quality. Startups generally have all these rolled up into one or two founding individuals, and a tech lead company will first hire all tech to support what they believe is the foundation of success. This is woefully shortsighted.
The reality is people need to have their day-to-day tasks limited to what they are best at. This is why you might see a founder hire a CEO so they can focus on tech, it seems backwards, and it may be. In the tech field, I think the Musk model may be the best approach: Be the face of the company, the marketing department, but also make technical architectural decisions and be the final approval for all NPI phase gates and releases. Being a techie in the marketing position allows the company to pivot rapidly to customer needs and ultimately bring the best product to market. Of course the high-level vision needs to be maintained and every bell and whistle can't be included and delay releases.
This brings me around to you. There are plenty of opportunities to support the techie-marketing founders. Sales, biz-dev, marketing support, ad-copy, documentation, requirement documentation, test plans, project management, release testing, CI tools, developer support, quality control, ticket/issue triage, customer support. The list is endless and you don't really need to know anything about crypto for these jobs other than that you want to learn.
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Yes, I'd agree with most of this. Problem is my background is in music which doesn't help much in experience in most companies.
I think an entry position in customer support might be a good start, but not sure if you can really work yourself up the chain.
Having some coding skills should open up more opportunities (if you're good at it)
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Being a coder doesen't necessarily mean an ability to work up a chain either. Usually in small companies, there isn't much of a chain to be worked. Small companies aren't immune to politics and backbiting. Someone with a music background would be familiar with self-presentation, with responding to people's needs. Getting a gig at a bar is not much different than proposing your product to a company or coordinating integration of your technology into another company's products. It's all people skills. Coders generally don't have those.
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I recommend taking a community college course to get your feet wet. Self-teaching is hard and many give up before they possess any of the powers that might motivate you to self teach.
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I recommend trying to solve something practical and learning to code that way. I learnt off my own back with no direct or class-based support. The best and most practical way to get into it is to simply start doing. A very basic primer might help if you have literally zero experience, but beyond that I find that coding courses don't give you the real experience you need to start working on meaningful projects. Just think of something you could solve by coding and get to it. Google is your friend here, type a question in and hunt for the answers. Most coders don't type thousands of lines of code all on their own, they patch bits and pieces of existing code together and tweak it for their particular needs.
Get to it, you can do it.
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Yeah,
I have an idea actually.... And it comes from a serious problem (entirely my fault) trying to retrieve a forgotten seed phrase.
I recently moved countries & so memorized the seed phrase. I practiced recalling numerous times before with success.
However as time passes, I guess we don't remember as well as we think.
So I have a 24 word seed phrase and there are 3-5 that I'm unsure. The rest are in their position almost certainly.
So, I'd like create some code to go through those 3-5 positions to find my seed phrase. I've been doing it manually & its taking too long to go through the possibilities.
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That's a perfect beginner project, you'll learn a few fundamentals, it's simple enough for almost any beginner to do, but just challenging enough to require some meaningful effort.
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You don't need to go to school to learn to code. Especially frontend development can be learned with Youtube at home.
You know you are "good" at coding if you have experience and know that stakeholders could throw any challenge at you and you'd probably find a solution if it isn't out of scope.
But don't worry, especially in the first few years it will ALWAYS feel like you are the question asker surrounded by experts. This is not necessarily the truth but that's what it will feel like - don't let that take you down.
And, good luck!
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