Build a career for tomorrow with wisdom from today’s thought leaders!
In Tomorrow’s Jobs Today, you’ll learn career tips, leadership secrets, and strategies from today’s most innovative business minds and renowned brands across the globe, including Paramount Pictures, State Farm Insurance, and PwC. You’ll discover exciting careers in emerging fields and find the unique toolset and education to land your dream job!
-Gain expertise with insights from Smart City CIOs, Data Protection Officers, Software Developers, Informatics Specialists, and many other skilled professionals on what it takes to succeed.
-Get indispensable resources like job descriptions, salary ranges, and a comprehensive directory of associations supporting these new professions.
-Explore technologies like Blockchain, Big Data, AgTech, the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Telematics, Health Information Technology, eDiscovery, and Cybersecurity and understand how they’ve transformed the job landscape.
This best-seller is for students determining which career track to embark on, guidance counselors and parents helping them, professionals between jobs, and everybody who wants a glimpse into the future of work!
Build a career for tomorrow with wisdom from today’s thought leaders!
In Tomorrow’s Jobs Today, you’ll learn career tips, leadership secrets, and strategies from today’s most innovative business minds and renowned brands across the globe, including Paramount Pictures, State Farm Insurance, and PwC. You’ll discover exciting careers in emerging fields and find the unique toolset and education to land your dream job!
-Gain expertise with insights from Smart City CIOs, Data Protection Officers, Software Developers, Informatics Specialists, and many other skilled professionals on what it takes to succeed.
-Get indispensable resources like job descriptions, salary ranges, and a comprehensive directory of associations supporting these new professions.
-Explore technologies like Blockchain, Big Data, AgTech, the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Telematics, Health Information Technology, eDiscovery, and Cybersecurity and understand how they’ve transformed the job landscape.
This best-seller is for students determining which career track to embark on, guidance counselors and parents helping them, professionals between jobs, and everybody who wants a glimpse into the future of work!
What is Blockchain?
Blockchain is a decentralized, distributed, and public digital ledger that records transactions across many computers so that they cannot be altered retroactively.1 The mysterious “Satoshi Nakamoto” introduced blockchain in 2008 to facilitate bitcoin cryptocurrency transactions, and it has become the leading distributed ledger technology (DLT). However, this modern software innovation has various other uses, from contract management to supply chain logistics.
What’s it like to work in this field?
Most people associate blockchain with cryptocurrency, and the buzz around distributed ledger technology continues to make news. At the time of this printing, Samuel Bankman-Fried of FTX Trading was being prosecuted for allegedly using the tool, or at least exploiting its allure, to defraud investors around the world out of billions of dollars.2 Fortunately, entrepreneurs and computer scientists like Ashish Gadnis have demonstrated that you can also use blockchain for the common good.
Ashish was born and raised in a slum in India fifty years ago. And he grew up hating being poor. When he moved to the United States and started building his career and first company, he always asked himself, “If somebody buys this thing, and if it all works out, could I walk away and try to help address the extreme poverty situation in the world?”
Well, he did end up selling his service offering and later spent time in the Congo, where he volunteered until some traumatic events and experiences prompted him to reflect even further. And that’s when he decided to start something that would “make a dent in the universe.”
Ashish is now the CEO at BanQu, a blockchain-based, traceability solution that provides real-time data and reporting throughout the supply chain. He was the chair of the Financial Inclusion Working Committee for the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance. He now travels the world explaining how this revolutionary new technology transforms how we contemplate supply chain economics.
He holds an MBA from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management and graduated from the Global Leadership and Public Policy program at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
BLOCKCHAIN AND SUPPLY CHAINS
When we sat down to talk to Ashish, he pointed out that 1.2 billion people, including displaced refugees and those in extreme poverty zones, actively participate in the world’s supply chains. That includes the most impoverished farmers in Congo or Guatemala, or Indonesia, who grow the ingredients you find in cosmetics and overpriced vanilla lattes. Yet, current models for getting those farmers their fair share of the profits and out of the poverty they face have largely failed.
Upon studying this problem, his solution was to enable farmers in the supply chain’s last mile to participate equally using blockchain. 3
Today he’s working across Africa and Asia with his blockchain platform to address similar problems. It’s been almost five years since he launched one of the first projects in Zambia, where he met a woman farmer named Ida with five children, none of whom were in school. The woman had no running water or a permanent home.
However, Ida could farm, and she worked hard. The problem was that people in her position often found themselves on the short end of the stick because they were not able, in many cases, to prove their financial transaction history. Ashish asked himself, “What happens if Ida sells 40 kilos upstream, and there are seven middlemen?”
The answer was that after she sold her cassava crop, somebody picked it up, brought it to somebody else, then to somebody else, then to the warehouse. And eventually, she lost the ability to track her product, and by that, Ashish explains, her product’s actual value in the supply chain.
“You see, while the internet has come to people in poverty, it hasn’t actually pulled people out of extreme poverty, let alone permanently,” Ashish says. “There’s mobile money, big data, and AI, but none of those models have ever allowed that mother, who is also a farmer, to participate [in the economy] equally.” To Ashish, participating equally means that the woman farmer has a physical, digitally stored copy of her transactions that nobody can ever steal or manipulate. She can prove her transaction history, legitimizing her existence in that supply chain. That allows her to leverage that data in a way that reduces her cost of borrowing. It will enable her to be portable. It gives her identity.
Fast forward to today, and BanQu is used throughout Zambia. Ida has been using their product for five years. She uses mobile money. She has a bank account, all her children are in school, and her farming operations have expanded!
The use of blockchain for the common good can be revolutionary. Yet Ashish is still one of the only entrepreneurs taking a commercial approach to the technology while simultaneously being purpose-driven and purpose-driven.
And it’s paying off!
His for-profit, for-purpose software company has the largest brands in the world rushing to BanQu because it makes the supply chain now more cost-effective and efficient. Farmers get better visibility into the supply chain regarding quality, market access, and forecasting, enabling an ecosystem for crop insurance, climate protection, and education. And the other side of the coin is that companies can start addressing issues like carbon credits, regenerative agriculture, gender equality, and labor rights with data.
Blockchain also changes dynamics in the supply chain. If a farmer has been selling beans to a coffee company, but the coffee company says, “Hey, I don’t want to buy your coffee from now on,” in today’s world, that coffee company is just going to walk away with all this valuable data on the farmer. But with blockchain, Ashish says that the relationship between the farmer and the coffee company fundamentally changes. The company may still walk away with data, but the farmer now has a copy of that data that he can use to support his business, and nobody can ever take it away.
HOW BANQU WORKS
The large brands in the food business sign up to use BanQu tools to enable immediate traceability and transparency into their existing crop flows by subscribing to the platform. Then, the company configures language, currency, workflow, asset classes, and other attributes into the software. They provide an option to the customer to use their metadata framework to get real-time metrics. Next, they deliver the history of every buy or sell via SMS message because most of these farmers already have an SMS-only phone, even if they may not have a smartphone. This gives them a record of the transactions as they progress. As the weeks pass, the farmer can see their entire history, validated in the ledger. It makes the farmer bankable, and at the same time, it adds transparency to the brand and supply chain.
What’s so exciting about all this is that we are only at the dawn of finding ways to use blockchain for the common good. Ashish thinks we haven’t even begun to tap the possibilities.
BLOCKCHAIN FOR TRACEABILITY COMPLIANCE
The BanQu platform can now scale across multiple industries and functions. In the last few years, they’ve used their blockchain solution to become leaders in traceability transparency that helps companies meet compliance requirements for regulations around deforestation, carbon credits, and other sustainability-driven laws.
For example, if you’re in the palm oil business, the EU requires you to prove that the palm oil is coming from deforestation-free land. Until recently, most companies had no idea where their raw materials came from because they were buying from intermediaries exploiting poor farmers. But now they can use BanQu’s software to provide evidence of fair trade instead of just claiming they were, a practice known as “greenwashing.”
Also, beginning this year, companies have three years to comply with the EU’s new Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence rule. That means external auditors will look for evidence of corporate compliance in multiple areas. If a company has been claiming a carbon credit or offset because they’ve been using regenerative agriculture in a product like coffee, they must prove it.
That’s where BanQu comes in. With their banking software, companies can show that they’re abiding by the rules, log into their software in any boardroom, and evidence their compliance metrics in real-time. Coca-Cola, for example, is just one of many companies already providing this data, in the case of waste pickers in South Africa who are being directly compensated by their partners as a result of BanQu’s solution and, as a result, are finally making a living wage.
JUMPING INTO THE TECHNOLOGY STACK
BanQu is rapidly growing, with offices in South Africa and Europe, and plans to open another location in Asia. They’re looking for all kinds of people. One is the person who understands that technologies like blockchain serve a purpose beyond cryptocurrency. BanQu uses the “core of blockchain,” which ensures that everybody in the supply chain has equal rights to a particular transaction. They also want implementation specialists who understand supply chains in emerging markets like Ghana, Indonesia, and Malaysia.
Ashish’s advice for anybody trying to break into the business is bold and inspiring. “For one, you’ll probably have to fail a million times,” he says. “That’s the easiest answer. But from a career standpoint, I would definitely get into computer science or some technology stack. The big five are the internet of things, blockchain, big data, artificial and quantum computing. Those five technologies will transform every aspect of our lives, good or bad. If you want to start the next charity or big thing, you’d better be knowledgeable about these areas because although you might end up being a brain surgeon, you’ll still probably need to understand one of these five. That would be number one.”
His second piece of advice is “just jumping in, getting a good startup going, and being willing to fail. Only expect that you’ll fail. Many young people make the mistake of joining a large company just for a safety net or a startup because they want to make a million dollars overnight. Both motivations can result in the wrong approaches to success in my mind. In my opinion, if you’re in your 20s until you’re 35, you’ve got to say, I’m going to live in eight different countries, fail 15 different times, and be completely broke. But then, you might have a much better chance of hitting it big after that.”
What kind of education might you need?
A blockchain developer typically starts by pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer science, information security, or a related discipline. Some employers might require you to have programming skills, while others might prioritize work experience.3
Blockchain technology jobs
In 2022, the average pay for a blockchain developer in the United States was $130,034.00. At that time, blockchain developers’ highest average salaries were in New York, California, Massachusetts, Oregon, Wyoming, and Alaska. But there are many other positions, some of them non-technical. A few companies paying the highest salaries in 2022 were Hyperledger, CTO Blockchain, Blockchain Software Engineer, Solidity Remote, and Oracle Blockchain.
Management Consultant - $197,256
Principal Architect - $157,054
Senior Software Engineer - $136,598
Software Developer - $115,000
Software Engineer - $95,195
Tomorrow's Jobs Today by Rafael Moscatel (with support from Abby Moscatel) aims to lift the lid on job roles of the future career market. Example career paths covered in detail include Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence and Advisory Consulting. Each area has its own chapter, allowing for an in depth study which starts with a broad history and overview, details of expected starting salary and essential qualifications (where applicable) for entry. Interviews with well-seasoned experts in the field go a long way to providing a human insight into the industries they represent, the conversational tone helps massively to bring energy into the large bodies of text.
This book is clearly trying to capitalise on a younger readership base, those that are coming toward the end of their formal education and looking to making career path decisions. With that in mind, Tomorrow's Job's Today would have benefitted from being punchier and quicker to the point in places. There is no imagery or diagrams in this book, content which would have massively supported some of the more complex terminology or been useful as a springboard for some of the meatier paragraphs. While a useful statistic to include, the use of a dollar currency for expected starting salaries is also restrictive to an American readership base and are as accurate as the day the book is published. I would be a little nervous of expecting the figures to be accurate in a year or two, especially given the current volatility of global inflation.
This is a good book for anyone wanting a candid insight into a specific field of interest. With full credit to the authors, some of the specific areas of interest are not as simple to explain as stacking shelves in a warehouse (for what it is worth, Blockchain is complicated!) It remains an insightful guide for those wanting to enter a market that is becoming increasingly dominated by the internet and technology. That said, the humanity students in the room, or those seeking a career in mainstream corporate roles, you might want to sit this one out.
AEB Reviews