The booming blockchain sector in Vietnam is having to deal with a serious deficit in specialists, local media revealed. Despite the large number of software engineers in the country, those with blockchain expertise meet less than a fifth of the current demand, with businesses already looking for talent abroad.
Fierce competition for blockchain experts among Vietnamese companies
Vietnam is facing a lack of human resources that is hampering the progress of projects in its rapidly developing blockchain industry, English-language portal Bizhub reported. The Southeast Asian country has many capable software developers, but few of them have the necessary qualifications for distributed ledger technologies.
The shortages makes recruitment difficult and Vietnam doesn’t have many training programs to alleviate the problem, noted Trinh Ngoc Duc, chief executive of the company that developed the Fight of the Ages game. Quoted by the news outlet, he elaborated:
The scarcity of experienced blockchain programmers affects the product development process and leaves many potential projects unimplemented.
The deficit of blockchain specialists is already seen in many industries, including finance, education, healthcare, logistics, and agriculture. More than 50 sectors of the Vietnamese economy have started to apply blockchain solutions, with around 600 projects just in the Gamefi industry.
Meanwhile, existing talent can only meet 15-20% of demand, according to Jobhopin CEO Kevin Tung Nguyen. He himself recently lost three employees who were offered compensation three times higher than their compensation in his company. The market is hungry for blockchain programmers and the competition for them is getting fiercer, he commented.
Vietnamese Blockchain Companies Forced to Seek Foreign Experts to Fill Vacant Positions
Sourcing talent has become a major problem for many firms in Vietnam’s blockchain space which has been growing fast, confirmed Nguyen Thi Ngoc Dung from the National Innovation Center. Some companies have started to look for programmers in other countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, India, South Korea, and in Europe, she added.
Dung thinks one of the reasons is that universities in Vietnam don’t teach blockchain. She also thinks successful innovation hubs and startups should launch their own short courses for students and expand international cooperation.
A survey conducted by the Vietnamworks recruitment platform among more than 1,000 people working in the IT industry has revealed that blockchain engineers get the highest salaries. But Vietnam is not the only economy experiencing difficulties with finding enough blockchain talent. According to the professional social media network Linkedin, job postings with the keyword ‘blockchain’ in the U.S. increased by almost 400% in 2020-21.
