Introduction to Web3 for non technical people by Gayantha De Zoysa

Transcript

Um and our recruitment company, Rare Talent, uh we exclusively focus on technical talent for blockchain companies. Um and we help you to find um if you're looking for senior engineers, blockchain engineers, we can help you to find them in days, not in months. Um right. So why do I want to talk about this topic? um reason I felt like um it's a very um complex path and a bit of a confusing path if you especially if you're not a non like if you're coming from a nontechnical background um there's no obvious like a guide or route or like a curriculum that I can follow um and a lot of people do a lot of mistakes trying to figure out how do I get in how do I find a job uh and

and it can be quite overwhelming especially if you're if you're a non techch person so I thought hey let me pick on this because I have some unique uh insights It's based on the engineers over the engineers that I've spoken to over the last two years. Um I want to try and make this gap a little bit clearer for you. Right. So web 3 um it's actually open to anyone. Um anyone can u if you are willing to grind for two years um and I think anyone can make a pretty decent living as well as you can actually excel in this industry. It doesn't really matter which background you come from. I've seen engineers uh who used to be tattoo artists who used to be physiootherapist coming from completely different background and then excelling in this industry but what you

need is you need a very compelling reason to stay motivated right so my personal reasons my compelling reasons are like you know it's not just money um yes money is absolutely important because there has to be a incentive for you to stay in this uh uh space but then again if you are just coming for money then I think you're coming for the wrong reasons. Everybody wants to get rich but if you try to get quick like rich very quickly then that's you know it's not going to be sustainable. So personally for me I I really like the fact that we are in forefront of technology and then it's still being driven by the community and then now you can see all the institutions are coming behind this industry right um so when you are trying if you're trying to get into web 3 there

like I think the path can be easily broken into two two segments one is a technical path which I feel in my opinion is a very straightforward path if you I can give you some exact steps that you need to follow and then you can sort of uh become an expert in that and then that's also the nontechnical path which is the path that I took right so if I take technical side technical path um so the the the the I could break that down into sort of four main areas one is engineering like defi engineer like a smart contract engineer where you work as a work for a protocol um with smart contracts uh that's one area and then security is another area so you can

become like a bug bounty hunter or like an auditor, work for a top security firm and then uh start protecting the web3 ecosystem. Then there's cryptography which is lot of complex math, a lot of stuff that I don't understand. Uh but um the thing about cryptography is like there's very limited amount of jobs unless you really um have a passion for it. Um I think it'll be a little bit difficult to find jobs but then again there's there are few opportunities. Um and then there's this opportunity called uh like the role called Devril developer relations uh kind of working in between the developer engineering community as well as the uh the users trying to sort of bridge the bridge the ecosystems. Um in terms of nontechnical

you know like a very typical uh tech company you have the product management the marketing roles the finance roles to communities to founders to legal and operations and and all these web3 companies need this non non web uh nontechnical roles as well right um so if you want to take the technical path the opportunities like um what what's the how can how can someone get into it like Let's say you are you you're an web two engineer that you've been around for some time you have an interest in this area and what's the way that I can get into a company right so if you are a web two engineer um I think usually you could be a front- end

engineer or a backend engineer you might have a pretty good coverage with mstack or like you know nodej react uh you know that um and then um like what what could be like the career path right so What I've seen with most of the engineers like who are doing pretty well in web3 um they've had this career path where they started working for a web3 company as a front-end engineer or a backend engineer right and because it's important for you to understand how the ecosystem works you have to understanding have an understanding of defi um as well as how the smart contracts works and and that can come from working for a web three company uh but just doing a lot of web two work too um And then um so if you're starting

with front end like it's good to start with like things like NodeJS, React uh TypeScript or JavaScript. Um if you are trying to learn backend um uh programming languages, I would suggest Rust, Go, Python would be a good starting point. Um Rust is in quite a lot of demand at the moment. Uh we see a lot of companies looking for Rust engineers. So I would highly encourage that. Um but if you're not um if you're thinking about getting into like backend engineering, Python would be a really good place to start because it's quite easy to pick it up. Um once you do your you know like the year two years of experience at a web three company as a front end or a backend engineer then I think the next step for you to is to sort of how do I become a smart contract

engineer right? So in order to become a smart contract engineer, you need to learn solidity or like a like a smart contract programming language like solidity or rust or cyro. Um and if you want to learn solidity, there's whole bunch of tutorials out there. Um obviously rare skills, the company that I work for, we have published a lot of technical material too. You can check that out. Uh otherwise Patrick Collins has a really good series of videos for you to check out. Um and then there's this platform called node guardians where you can do bunch of quest to learn. Uh it's they have gified the entire learning experience. So that's a really good platform to start. Um and of course becoming active on Twitter will really help you as well. Um especially

if you are pursuing a career in web 3. I highly encourage being active on Twitter because it's I mean yes you can be around um web 3 without Twitter too but like if you want accelerated growth in terms of your career I would highly recommend that um and after smart contracts development um then the next step is if you want to get into security like if you want to become like one of the top auditors in the industry or like a bug bounty hunter um I would suggest going through uh uh reading lot of audit report code bases um and and um and participating in bug bounty competitions on platforms like cantina uh code arena um Immunifi there's whole bunch of

platforms out there um and these are some of the places where you can start and there's no better way to start than actually doing themselves so if you want to go down the path of security um I I highly encourage you to sort of uh check out these platforms too um and I've known like in fact like I spoke to a security smart contract uh like a auditor independent security researcher or a bug bounty hunter um last week and the guy used to be a a captain of a commercial ship 2 years ago and now he's in the top 100 auditors of code arena which is like one of the biggest auditing platforms. So um so what I'm trying to say is like if you have the

passion and then if you're willing to grind uh it's very easy to become an expert in this industry uh in a very short period of time right so how do you so this is a situation of okay if I don't have experience how can I get a job right uh or if I and I can't get a job without experience right so how do you hack this in terms of experience um one thing you could do is um open source contributions. If you are very early into your career and then you still don't know where to figure out um doing open source contribution is is one way to start building your profile. Um and I could recommend I mean we don't have any uh partnership with these companies this platform called only dust.xyz XYZ. Um

they have um I I got to know them about a month ago. Um and what they do is they have gone into all these found uh foundations like stellar foundation, darknet foundation, um ethereum foundation and then they have they are currently working with them and you can go to only dust and then through their platform you can start contributing to all these projects listed on in in their uh on this platform. So for an example, starknet has about has starknet foundation is working with these guys and then about 200 projects on starknet ecosystem are working on this platform and you can go and directly contribute to these projects as an open source contributor and when you do this what happens is you start building your

profile you start getting noticed and then you can uh you you start probably getting opportunities through these projects. Um and then the second thing I always like I I I told earlier as well like becoming very active on Twitter, right? Um, every legit person that I know on web in web 3 are on Twitter, right? So, start getting active on Twitter, start building your profile. And it's completely normal to be super anonymous on Twitter and then just talk about web 3 and that's fine. Um, a lot of the times that you know when when we want to start building a social profile, people think, "Oh, I have to reveal my personal information." No, you don't have to, right? uh on Twitter in web 3.

That's the beauty of it because you don't really have to reveal your identity or even talk about your personal life. You can just talk about completely about your work and then become a really good engineer and then start building a social profile there. Then the third option is hackathons. Um there's a lot of hackathons out there. Every week there's there's an hackathon from some foundation. Um why do you why should you do hackathons? One, it gives you the knowledge, right? When you start actually working on start building, when you start working, you are you are practical, you you're working with other people, you start learning, you start communicating and that also builds your network, right? So, you may not get hired immediately, but what will happen is if you start contributing well, if

you start working with these guys, um they will see some opportunities and then they may reach out to you. So these three things if you want to hack the experience and then sort of get get a role find a role I I would highly encourage you to do these three things right so what are the if you are like coming from a non-technical background like what are your opportunities so I think um what's important to understand is like it doesn't really matter which background you come from as long as you have some experience and then you have the commitment or like the discipline to learn about it then you can. So for an example like I come from a very product background uh or like a earlier marketing background but currently what

I do at rare skills is operations and then I also work as a like a technical recruiter right. So there were certain insights that I bought brought from my previous jobs that helps me to become a a recruiter which I never thought I will be. So same way like if you're coming from like legal background there's like crypto regulations there's governance that you can get into. If you're coming from traditional finance like you know uh capital markets um then yes you can get into defy like or even crypto banking. I've seen qu getting into uh smart contract programming. I've seen like other engineering trends like electrical engineers, mechanical engineers getting to into smart contract development. I've seen them getting into smart contract security. Um and also if

you are like a people's person like if you have built communities then there's opportunities for you in this industry. Um I see um a lot of community managers uh helping protocols to build larger communities uh without any technical background. Um and also like if you are a good copywriter or if you if you are a if you are really good at writing or communication expressing your ideas then there's there's a big opportunity for you in in uh in this industry right um one of the biggest companies that I know is called Mega Eat. uh the head of growth. Um I met him at a event about a month ago and then I I didn't know who the guy was and until I spoke to him and then he was like hey uh so I was like what do you do and then he's like you

know I I just write good tweets. I was like what? Like yeah I just write good tweets and that's my job. I'm like okay and and you are the head of growth at Mega. He was like yes. So what he does is he has a certain skill set which is like he can communicate articulate things really well right but he combined that with his curiosity to learn web 3 right and then he started he found a job um CMA like just like any other company you know like you need uh there are roles in operations you know other admin roles as well you just need to have a little bit of curiosity and then um commitment to or willingness to learn as well there's a reason why I marketing at the end because um marketing is pretty

similar um in web 3 but it it's same same but different right the the fundamentals the the you know uh the storytelling the positioning uh understanding the customer psychology is very similar but how you execute that is very different in Twitter uh sorry in in web 3 um because I think with traditional marketing what we are always known for is like you running ads, you know, like uh running some campaigns and whatever. And with with crypto, I think it's very different. Uh with crypto, it's all about building a community. Uh and it's it's it's very much community-led growth. So, you have to be legit. And I don't think you should try to BS your

customer. And and and and every time you try to BS your customer, you see like lot of rugpulls happening. And and people in crypto really understand whenever someone try to do a rug pull. Um, so it's all about in in in crypto I think it's all about building narratives or even like you know memes and you know how big memes are in in crypto and then different building different cultures uh rather than just a simple product sale uh in in traditional web right um so if you know all this okay how can you figure out where to start right so if you are coming from a nontechnical background uh especially like me I would suggest First let's try to understand

what's your current state right where do you currently stay like as in what are your skill set what are your strongest um strongest suites like as in okay are you really good at communicating what's your background do I have a very good understanding about how the traditional finance work or maybe you come from an engineering background just list it down list down everything that you are good at it can be technical it can be non techchnical it doesn't matter it can be your passion uh just list it down then you know where you currently stay right then what you can do is you can go to uh some of the job platforms like there are specific platforms for web3 jobs like crypto job list is one of the platforms and if you just search for crypto jobs you'll get a whole bunch of websites uh

in Google and then just explore the nontechnical job roles right once you start exploring these nontechnical job roles you'll understand hey there's an overlap of my skill set um and what these guys require and also there's a little bit of a gap Right? So understanding this gap is really important because that's where your growth is going to come from. Right? Once you understand okay there's a gap in your skill set you need to start working on that. Right? So educate yourself fill the knowledge gap and then start looking for projects to contribute. And when you start looking for projects to contribute, it doesn't have to be big projects. Even if it's a very small project, start contributing because the moment you start contributing, you start getting noticed.

You start building your profile and then people are going to uh reach out to you and your contributions is your new resume, right? It's not the I mean the CV is great, but at the same time, I've seen bunch of engineers who doesn't have a CV, but they have a really good GitHub profile because they have contributed to so many projects over the over the years, right? So, GitHub, Twitter, um, and those are that's going to be your new resume. And then the more you contribute, the more you document your experience, the more chances or the more opportunities that you're going to get.

And in fact, I I I I feel like contribution is in fact bigger than a degree. I'm not saying degree is not important. Degree is absolutely important. Like it's it's a very important milestone in your in your education journey. But at the same time, I've seen people without degrees like 16 year olds, 17 year olds doing exceptionally well in in this industry. Why? Because they got in in early and then they started contributing to these projects. They started learning the tech, they started understanding the community, they understand what's required and they will contribute. So it could be it could be just a comment, it could be just a bug fix, it could be just helping them to do the documentation properly. That's fine.

start contributing and then the more you do the more you are going to start building your profile and then the very important thing most important thing I think is start building your social presence on Twitter right um because if you are trying to find a job in web 3 you want to take the path with least resistance right and when you take and and you you can completely choose to avoid Twitter that's fine too and there have been there are so many people who have on that too. But if you're looking for path with least resistance where you want people to reach out to you, you want to generate inbound leads to you, then it's better to start becoming active on Twitter. Um, and I've seen people get

hired through Twitter simply because they they've had like very good voice opinions. They've documented their journey. Um, I we we we have a uh there was an engineer who studied at rare skills. Um he prior to this he was prior to getting into crypto he was a uh air force pilot for Singapore in Singapore. Uh and then he got into web 3. He took our boot camp and then the guy was grinding so hard like he was hustling and then he was just documenting everything that he was learning on um learning about web 3 on Twitter, right?

And he would do like five to seven to 10 tweets every day. Just it could be the things that he learned, it could be the things that where he failed, things that he didn't understand. He would just contribute like just document it, right? And he would get involved in these conversations, right? And then he started getting into uh he he really liked security. uh he realized that was his uh path that he wants to take and then um he started doing some audit competitions started doing really well and then because he was active on Twitter he got picked up by one of the biggest audit firms in the world called Spear Bit uh I would say like probably the top five audit firms web three audit firms in in in in the world uh got picked up by Spear Bit and then um and

Spearit pays you like $10,000 a if you're intermediate level security research. They'll pay you like $8 to $10,000 a week. Um, and he got picked up by them, right? And then 3 months down the line, he got picked up by even a better uh security company called Guardian Audits. And then now he works there purely because he built his social profile. Um, and also like sometime okay I think one of the questions that people might have is like okay I'm new to crypto. I don't know what to talk about. I don't know what to document. become the be the person that who ask the questions because every Twitter experts needs a person who ask questions from them also because they want to explain themselves.

Um so commenting, asking questions, posting insights, your learning experience, your failures will really help you to start building your social profile. And also don't fake it, right? People can smell your fake BS mile away, right? The moment you try to start becoming pretend to be someone else that you're not, people will notice that. So instead of pretending to be someone else, start documenting your experience um including the mistakes um as well. and um consistency. Make sure you post every day on Twitter. It doesn't matter.

I mean, even if you can't do every day, at least few times a week, do it on Twitter. It's not about like one viral post that you plan for like months and month or maybe weeks and weeks and then you hoping for that virality. Instead, do start doing a post every day. Right? So, just trying to wrap up the conversation. Um we we don't we are not looking for I think the industry is not looking for people who are perfect. Industry is looking for people who are passionate about what they're doing. And what you got to understand is is you are not starting from zero. You have some experience. You are bringing something unique into this industry with all the learnings that you have over the past few years. Right? So how can you adapt your skill set to be in this space?

Right? because web 3 will really reward your hybrid skill sets and and if you have the technical curiosity and then the domain expertise that's going to be a very very powerful tool for you to find a job right on that note that I'm going to wrap up my talk um if you have any questions um you can ask me um yeah I can I can try to answer some of them thank you any questions I guess no. Right. Thank you guys. Do this first three minutes again

so that the All right. Okay. Let's try and do this. Um right. Good morning everyone. My name is Guyanta uh or you can call me guy. And um today I'm here to talk a little bit about uh how can anyone get into web 3 uh whether you know how to code or you don't. Um okay so I work for a company called Rare Skills. I currently work as the um uh chief operating officer. Um we started about 2 years ago. Rare Skills is focused on advanced developer education. Um we've written whole bunch of books on zero knowledge proof um solidity smart contract security um as well as we run pay few paid boot camps. Um and also we

have a recruitment company uh called ray talent specialized in uh blockchain tech. Um prior to this I was at Amazon. Um I used to run couple of startups in Sri Lanka. Uh I think I'm a self-taught product and a marketeteer. uh over the last two and a half years I've interviewed over 400 engineers uh to help them to get into uh to become experts in web 3 or even helping them to find jobs. Um other than that I also run the largest uh entrepreneur uh community in Sri Lanka called Spike Sri Lanka. Uh we've been running for the last 11 years and then we've hosted over 90 meetups and if you want to stay in touch with me that's my Twitter handle. Right. So what does Rare Skills do? Um apart from the education uh we

also work with L1's and L2s on doing lot of technical content for them. Uh and then we help companies, our recruitment company helps um top web three companies to find engineers in days, not in months. Right? So I wanted to talk about this topic because I felt if you especially if you're coming from nontechnical background, this path can be a little bit confusing and uh complex. There's no obvious sort of a guide or like a structured path that you can follow. So uh and and it can be quite overwhelming for someone who's fairly new. Uh uh and my goal is to make your path a little bit clearer and then help you to figure out how you to

navigate uh in this uh ecosystem right? Um web 3 is open for everyone. Anyone can join this industry. I've seen um people with different backgrounds, people who are ship uh captains of commercial chip ships, uh people who've been uh tattoo artists, people who've been in the medical industry like physiootherapists or medical students getting into this industry. Um however um you need to have a compelling reason to get into this industry and I don't think it should be just money. We good? Okay. Thank you.