Blockchain, Bitcoin and Ethereum have been added to Hacker News Hiring Trends, which tracks the popularity of languages, frameworks and technologies in the Hacker News thread "Ask HN: Who is hiring?".

The hntrends.com site was created, and is maintained, by Ryan Williams as a project in Ruby for analyzing trends in software development technologies through Hacker News submissions and its code is on GitHub.

The site was launched in June 2013, with data collected since April 2011, and starting in September 2013 there has been a monthly commentary on the month's highlights.

The November Highlights opens with an addition to the technologies and frameworks covered:

It appears that Blockchain growth has now extended into hiring demand for software developers with Blockchain skills. After noticing Upwork's Q3 Report (via @thenewstack) highlighted Blockchain as its 2nd fastest growing skill, I explored what the trends looked like in the Hacker News data and found the results were significant enough to add Blockchain, Bitcoin and Ethereum to the HN trends, beginning with this analysis of November's "Ask HN: Who is Hiring" thread.

Commenting on the chart produced Willams notes:

Blockchain has really begun to grow this fall, climbing to over 2.5% of all postings in November. This will definitely be a trend to watch in the coming months.

It is interesting to note an annual cycle in this chart with September/October having experienced local peaks since September 2012 in the case of Bircoin and September 2014 for Blockchain and Ethereum as well.

It is only since June 2016 that the generic Blockchain has been consistently more talked about than the specific example of its use in cryptocurrencies. The fact that Bitcoin has been experiencing problems in recent weeks, see Bitcoin Splits! is reflected in its decline in this chart. The other cryptocurrency now being followed, Ethereum, has increased it profile recently possibly spurred on by the formation, earlier this year, of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance by Microsoft in partnership with Intel, Accenture, and more than two dozen banks and other companies.

Another clue to the growing importance of Blockchain technology in general comes from this chart, based on data from CB Insights:

According to CB Insights, funding for blockchain companies started picking up in 2013 and has generally seen steady increases since then. However there was a steep increase in Q2 2017 coinciding with the start of Blockchain's meteoric rise in HNTrends. 

Williams notes, however:

Even though Blockchain is hot, it still has a ways to go to get to the top.

This is certainly the case as this chart, created using the HNTrends Compare feature reveals. It shows how the curve for Python, which is very high in the popularity stakes, reduces the Blockchain and Cryptocurrecy chart to a jumble along the bottom: 

Finally let's look at other November highlights:

React, which initially ousted Python the number one spot in June occupies it for fifth successive month.and Data Science saw a jump from rank 35 to rank 17 in November

I have included Android in my selection more to indicate that month to month wiggles can be discounted. Android has been consistely at #17 or #16 since May 2017 but you might not expect this to be so from the shape of its curve.

Despite its limitations HN Hiring Trends provides interesting feedback and, with Blokchain and Cryptocurrency being added as the 11th of its preset comparisons, is well worth keeing an eye on. 

More Information

Hacker News (HN) Hiring Trends

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