First published: April 17th 2023
Hi everyone,
Join us for another edition of Coffee With Calyptus, where we bring you captivating perspectives on the ever-changing terrain of web3 development and remote crypto jobs.
In this week's edition, we interview Igor Mandrigin, CTO & Co-Founder at Gateway.fm and long-term Ethereum contributor. He shares insights on what it takes to be a successful web3 engineer, how to land a top web3 job and offers his predictions on the industry’s future.
What’s the biggest difference between being a Web2 and a Web3 Engineer?
Two things...1) Since web2 is a mature market, engineers have become increasingly specialised. If you want to land a top blockchain job, you need to be more of a generalist - knowing a bit of most things will do you well (there are some exceptions!). 2) Web3 engineers need to be more disciplined than traditional software engineers - there is much less room for mistakes.
What’s the most important thing to be a successful Web3 Engineer?
You need to be up-to-date with everything! It’s very easy to fall behind given the industry moves so quickly but there are a few things I do to ensure I don’t: Twitter... I follow the blockchains that I work on, Polygon for example does a great job of posting developer-related content. Newsletters... for Ethereum, This Week in Ethereum is fantastic. I also follow r/ethereum on Reddit and a bunch of web3 devs on Substack. You can even check out best web3 job boards like Calyptus to understand what the leading employers are seeking as valuable skill requirements (because the top tools/languages etc are always changing!).
What’s your biggest prediction for Web3 over the next 3-5 years?
I have a few…
More modularisation & more app-chains / blockchains unique to a project, including private rollups (like zk). When you try to connect tradfi to defi, the benefits of zk-tech is very high!
I’m unclear on alternative L1s (Solana etc) - to me it looks like L2’s and 3’s are gaining more and more traction.
I’m also seeing a lot of interest from banks (though they move slowly) - I’ve started getting invites to fintech conferences which has never happened before!
