Cloud companies desperately need experienced workers
Cloud Foundry, the open-source Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud, surveyed nearly 900 executives and all of them are having fits finding enough staffers with cloud skills. How bad is it? Bad.
We really, really need people who understand the cloud and there's nothing like enough of them to go around.
"Historically, large enterprises outsourced management of their development technology needs," said Sam Ramji, the Cloud Foundry Foundation's CEO, in a statement. "Now, as digital transformation becomes core to the success of companies in diverse industries including financial services, insurance, and automotive, enterprises are coming to depend on their own employees to manage this shift. The rising need for individuals to develop and deploy software highlights the immense shortage of available talent to work in this rapidly growing field. This developer gap is rapidly widening as more enterprises become de facto software companies."
Here's a closer look at the main points of the report, Identifying the Developer Gap.
There is a looming shortage of developers driven by non-tech companies' need for developers. The cloud is no longer just for technology business.
Most (64 percent) of companies see the shortage of qualified workers. They're also starting to feel its impact. When I was at OpenStack Summit, there were dozens of companies on the showroom floor and every one of them was looking for cloud-experienced workers There simply aren't enough to go around.
As companies start their cloud journeys, they feel the shortage even more acutely. Over half the respondents (57 percent) state that this shortage has already impacted their ability to hire skilled people.
Discrete technologies are in the greatest demand. Companies are prioritizing specialized skills such as mobile application development, language-specific coding, and deployment on specific Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), while fundamental skills-such as continuous delivery, continuous integration, and test-driven development-are notably the least in demand.
The most in-demand skills are database (47 percent) and specific coding languages (Javascript, C++, Go, etc, at 46 percent) while only 40 percent of respondents classified continuous integration as a needed skill. These are closely followed by deploying on a specific infrastructure (38 percent) like Azure, AWS or Google Cloud Platform, and mobile application development (38 percent).
Training is key. Companies are looking to training to address these challenges, predominantly choosing to train existing employees over hiring new developers or outsourcing. The majority of companies (62 percent) express confidence in the abilities of their developers to "keep current" with their IT knowledge and skills. On an individual level, however, only 47 percent of developers express confidence in their own ability to keep current.
Speaking as someone who's been covering clouds for ages, both are wildly optimistic. If you're a company, bite the bullet and provide training for your employees. If you're working in IT, start taking cloud classes and begin working on clouds. This will help you keep your current job and get a new one.
Some people -- CIOs who have been ignoring the cloud -- don't think the lack of qualified IT staffers is a real problem. They're wrong. The developer skills shortage is real and it's only going to get worse.
This shortage also means you're unlikely to find the cloud crew you need for your company. Like it or not, you need to start training your in-house staff or rely on third-party cloud providers or integrators.
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