儘管大環境如此，AppWorks
School 過去三年多來，仍遇到不少申請者，很擔心自己沒有相關的學經歷、從我們的 16 週免費程式課程畢業後，無法跟本科系的人競爭，因此遲遲不敢踏上軟體工程師的新職涯。因此，我們想從實際的觀察中，分享我們看到轉職者具有的優勢，幫助更多人勇於做出選擇，早日成為心目中的軟體工程師：
以 AppWorks School Front-End Class #1 的學員
Peter 潘國育為例，政大企管系畢業後，有兩年分別在行銷與專案管理的相關經歷，在工作中需要大量與人溝通、協助策劃與執行，也隨之建立起核心技能。在
AppWorks School 中，我們就感受到他能良好地與同學、導師互動，充分表達自己的問題與人交流，也能夠自己規劃進度並確實達成。最終在結業之際，他第一時間就拿到了超過當年度校友平均的
Offer，也較市場上的本科新鮮人高出
10% 以上，最後選擇加入 OTT 影音串流科技公司 KKStream，擔任前端工程師。
最後，還有一種轉職者的優勢，是結合原有的專業知識，成為稀有的跨域新品種。以曾與
AppWorks School 合作招募軟體人才的新創企業為例，就不乏想招募具備財務會計背景，又具有軟體開發能力的人才，來協助內部建制財務系統；也有醫療領域新創，在招募工程師時，特別偏好具備生醫背景的成員。這些「混血兒」在軟體開發過程中，會更貼近使用者的需求與想法，並扮演用戶與工程師溝通的橋樑，使得產品開發更加順暢。
AppWorks School 第五屆的校友 SuSu 梁殊維，過去曾在會計師事務所磨練，隨後也曾在大型企業擔任過主辦會計，因為想投入自動化工作相關領域而決定轉換跑道。過去紮實的財會經驗，讓她在結業之際，受到當時快速成長，急需建置內部系統的旅遊體驗平台
KKday 力邀，希望由她來主導財務系統開發。
Dapper Labs, the company behind CryptoKitties and upcoming projects such as NBA Top Shot, today announced $11M in funding and the development of Flow, a new blockchain built to enable decentralized applications at scale in gaming, culture and entertainment.
The largest investor in the round was Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund, with participation from new investors Accomplice, Taiwan’s AppWorks, Autonomous Partners, and Warner Music Group, as well as existing investors Union Square Ventures, Venrock, Digital Currency Group, Animoca Brands, SV Angel, Version One, and CoinFund, among others. Angel investors who participated in this round included Don Mattrick, William Mougayar, James and Glenn Hutchins, Don Mattrick, and Nanon de Gaspe Beaubien-Mattrick.
“For consumers to embrace crypto, we need to stop approaching it as an emerging technology and instead give people products they can use every day,” said Roham Gharegozlou, CEO of Dapper Labs. “After two years of research, we’re excited to unveil Flow, a new blockchain built to support entire ecosystems of apps and games without compromising the values of decentralization. Bitcoin and Ethereum show how crypto can make the world of finance more open and transparent; Flow will do the same for consumers of entertainment and culture.”
With this investment round, Dapper Labs joins forces with the largest accelerator in Asia to introduce important global blockchain technology to the region and engage in AppWorks’ extensive developer community in Southeast Asia and Taiwan.
Flow is a global network designed to meet the needs of DApp’s massive expansion, so Asia’s market potential cannot be ignored, says Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou.
“Asia has many of the world’s leading consumer technology and game developers, and we want to ensure that Flow meets their needs. Choosing to work with AppWorks not only complies with our long-term vision, it also helps us participate in the huge startup and partner community that is part of Asia’s largest startup accelerator.”
Jessica Liu, the partner at AppWorks who led the team’s investment, pointed out that entertainment and gaming has nearly always brought early adopters to new technologies. The same principle applies to the current development of blockchain. Asia, she says, is the perfect market for a solid team like Dapper Labs to lead this transformation.
She says, “We believe that with their methodical approach to blockchain gaming and entertainment development, Dapper Labs will be the best team to push forward new applications for gaming and entertainment on blockchain. They have the best shot at being able to utilize decentralisation in this environment to lower the costs of generating scale and user acquisition in Southeast Asia and Taiwan.”
Some of the types of experiences Flow will support include: artists or bands using crypto tokens to give music lovers unprecedented new ways to show their fandom; games that reward players for adding value and enable interoperability with assets and identities that users can take across environments; or platforms for sports fans around the world to trade verified, authentic, limited-edition digital memorabilia in real-time. The company will begin its first partnerships with Ubisoft and Warner Music.
“Warner Music is always searching for new opportunities for our artists and has dedicated itself to exploring emerging technologies to enable these,” said Jeff Bronikowski, SVP, Global Digital Business Development and Head of Innovation and Emerging Technology at Warner Music Group. “When we met with Dapper Labs, they immediately understood our vision so we sought to solidify the partnership through this strategic investment. We are thrilled to be part of their next phase of innovation, and look forward to working alongside them to help identify and capitalize on ground-breaking technologies on our artists’ behalf.”
In addition to the new investment, Dapper Labs is announcing partnerships with leading entertainment publishers to ensure Flow is ready for enterprise-scale use-cases. Ubisoft, well known for developing games like Far Cry, Just Dance and Assassin’s Creed, is advising on Flow, providing valuable industry feedback.
Flow was designed by Dieter Shirley, CTO of Dapper Labs and the technical mind behind CryptoKitties and Ethereum’s ERC-721 standard for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). “The architecture for Flow was inspired by modern CPUs.” Shirley said. “Flow pipelines the work of running a blockchain across four different node types, instead of following the typical approach of requiring all nodes, or ‘miners’, to do everything. This lets us maintain the decentralization needed to make the network trustworthy while achieving the kind of scale needed to serve billions of users.”
“An internet governed by open, trustworthy services has only recently become possible, thanks to advances in blockchain and cryptocurrencies.” said Chris Dixon, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “With Flow, the Dapper Labs team has developed a solution to the problem of scalability without losing decentralization or sharding the network. This means a better environment for application developers and ultimately more network effects that benefit consumers.”
Flow will launch in 2020, in time to support many of the company’s large-scale, consumer-facing entertainment, music, and gaming projects in the works. For more information about Flow, please visit www.buildwithflow.com.
About Dapper Labs
Formed in February 2018, Dapper Labs mission is to make the world more open and trustworthy by introducing consumers to the value of blockchain technology through fun and games. Dapper Labs is the team behind CryptoKitties, one of the first and most successful blockchain applications outside of cryptocurrency, and Dapper, the world’s first publicly available smart wallet. Upcoming Dapper Labs projects include Cheeze Wizards, the world’s first blockchain-based battle royale, NBA Top Shot, a platform created in partnership with the NBA and NBPA, and Flow, a consumer-based blockchain for decentralized applications. With over $40M in financing, notable investors in Dapper Labs include Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, Venrock, GV (formerly known as Google Ventures), and the founders of Dreamworks, Reddit, Coinbase, Zynga, and AngelList, among others. For more information on Dapper Labs, visit www.dapperlabs.com.
因開發 CryptoKitties (迷戀貓) 一炮而紅，近期並與 NBA 合作推出區塊鏈收藏品遊戲平台
NBA Top Shot 的加拿大新創 Dapper Labs，於今 (13 日) 宣布，完成最新一輪 1,100 萬美元資金募集，並同時宣布開發可滿足
DApp 擴容、可應用在娛樂與遊戲等領域的區塊鏈公鏈 Flow。
本輪投資由 Andreessen Horowitz 的加密貨幣基金領投，新加入的投資機構包括
Accomplice、AppWorks、Autonomous Partners 和華納音樂集團 (Warner Music Group)，以及現有投資機構
Union Square Ventures、Venrock、Digital Currency Group、Animoca Brands、SV Angel、Version
One 與 CoinFund 等。本輪的個人投資人則包括 Zynga 前執行長 Don Mattrick、《The Business Blockchain》作者
William Mougayar、James and Glenn Hutchins 與 Nanon de Gaspe Beaubien-Mattrick 等。
選擇要專注的領域後，另一個新手常見的誤區，就是經常反覆學習「已知的知識」。變成一直在新手圈裡跨不出去，我稱之為「新手舒適圈」。舉例來說，許多 Web 開發新手，經常反覆學習各種 HTML 標籤，卻遲遲做不出想要的網頁畫面；Android 開發新手，則持續練習處理靜態的畫面、簡單的按鈕互動，卻不知道怎麼串接後端資料、處理用戶的網路行為。
相較於制度完善、發展成熟的大公司，新創最大的不同，就是處於產業風口、成長快速，但人力精簡、變化多且快，沒有太多可以參考的既定
SOP 或過往成功經驗，為了求生存或 Time to Market，不論是商業模式、發展策略、產品或服務，隨時都可能調整、優化，經常會從市場反饋中，修正預定的計畫與執行方式，工作節奏需要快、狠、準。
一旦新創獲得商業成功，經歷過草創階段、一路走來的員工，個人的身價與名聲，自然跟著水漲船高。對於職涯的選擇，Google
前執行長 Eric Schmidt曾說過一句名言：「如果有人給你一個在火箭上的位子，不用問它在哪裡，上去就對了！」(If
You’re Offered a Seat on a Rocket Ship, You Don’t Ask What Seat. You Just Get
On.)
