I have about 15 years of experience in finance/ accounting and the upstream oil and gas industry in Houston. I got into bitcoin late last year and am completely obsessed with crypto and the possibilities it has to change everyday aspects of our lives. My dream job would be to work at a company at the intersection of energy and crypto. I have applied to dozens of crypto jobs, but having no tangible crypto experience is holding me back. Any suggestions on how someone with my background could break into the crypto industry?

Bluehazel said:

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I have about 15 years of experience in finance/ accounting and the upstream oil and gas industry in Houston. I got into bitcoin late last year and am completely obsessed with crypto and the possibilities it has to change everyday aspects of our lives. My dream job would be to work at a company at the intersection of energy and crypto. I have applied to dozens of crypto jobs, but having no tangible crypto experience is holding me back. Any suggestions on how someone with my background could break into the crypto industry?

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You've applied at dozens of jobs... but absent "tangible" experience.

When you look at those opportunity descriptions identifying what are the minimum candidate requirements... then comparing them, line-item by line-item, to your resume... are they aligning? Are they "speaking" to each other?

Does any of your historical employment experience even remotely reconcile with those requirements? When you're looking at the candidate requirements are you telling yourself, "That's me"? I've done that in one fashion or another", but wondering why you're not getting any "hits"?

Do you believe yourself qualified to perform the functions, in whatever capacity, of an entry-level crypto job?

Does your resume reveal you could do it? Or, at the very least, heavily suggest you could do it?

Many of the answers to those questions lie in the content of your resume. While not always successful, the primary purpose of a resume is to inspire an invitation to communicate. You get that "communication", in whichever form, you then capitalize upon it by earning an interview.

Best wishes on your new pursuit!

There is a group that meets on this topic around O&G: Blockchain for Energy Consortium.

One vendor that has latched onto this group from the very beginning is Data Gumbo. Check them out.

I guess "learn to code" actually fits here.

I respectfully have a different take and I'm wondering if people disagree with me.

-If you have 15ish years of finance and accounting experience, then I'm guessing you're about 40.
-You also mentioned that you don't have any coding experience (specifically, you wrote that you tried a few intro classes, but never got over the hump).
-Final assumption: your age likely means kids, a spouse, all that, so you have limited time to build new skill sets. Maybe 5-10 hours a week?

Given that you'd be starting from square one, at age ~40, with limited time to learn, I think you'd be far better served by building on your finance experience than by trying to learn to code, which is a colossal undertaking. Sure you can learn basic programming fairly quickly, but assuming 5-10 hours of practice a week, it'd probably be pushing 2 years before you could contribute substantively to a crypto project. And be aware, that just gets you to entry level. At that point, you'd still likely be the most junior guy on the team by a lot. Is tar really what you want to do? I wouldn't in your shoes.

On the other hand, you know corporate finance like the back of your hand. Maybe knock out a 3-5 month crypto product management class (project management is necessarily finance related in the banking and lending space) or rewrite parts of your resume to highlight experience on project sizing and valuation. Maybe start writing stories for a population crypto blog? Also, Shelley's suggestion is one of my favorites. Get on a job board, take notes on 20-30 good looking jobs for which you're moderately qualified, and then identify the common skills and themes. that'll help you improve your resume bullets + highlight any important gaps that you might have to fill in with additional training.

To build on this:
Instead of trying to leave your current company, convert your company to a new orange pill, paying employees/converting books to % bitcoin/payments to vendors etc.. you could be the guy who saves the company umpteen hours of labor or complete collapse because you got them transitioned early.

Or maybe you figure out the new employee/ownership/incentive structure that creates complete alignment in growth and behavior and wealth creation that seemingly abated in 1971....

Lots to build here. Keep learning and growing so that you can properly contribute towards this decentralized ecosystem.

If you'd like to grow in bitcoin Lightning learn how to operate lightning channels and such here:
Plebnet-
GET STRUCK BY LIGHTNING

wiki.plebnet.org

https://bitcoinerjobs.co/