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  • The Skills Successful DevOps Pros Need in 2023

    The Skills Successful DevOps Pros Need in 2023

    In the last decade, DevOps adoption has grown considerably. An increasing number of companies across a wide range of industries are embracing the benefits of DevOps, and we have not seen the end of the growth cycle yet. Indeed, the total DevOps market is expected to continue to grow significantly in the next few years, with one recent market survey projecting an annual revenue growth of no less than 24.7% from 2023 to 2030 (which will bring the market value to about 51 billion dollars).

    Further, DevOps is continuously integrating with and accommodating new technologies, which are themselves evolving quickly. This means DevOps professionals will have to invest more and more time each year to stay current and effective at their job. But, this predicament comes with a silver lining. By staying current and even ahead of the game, DevOps professionals are better able to differentiate themselves and deepen their level of expertise—and with that comes the ability to increase their income potential over time.

    In this article, we take a look at what knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) DevOps professionals should bring to the table if they want to keep up with the fast pace of change in the industry in 2023—and beyond.

    Knowledge – What Pros Need to Know

    As always, DevOps professionals are expected to have a baseline level of knowledge before taking on a new role, internally or externally. But, as DevOps adoption grows, professionals will need to make a concerted effort just to stay abreast of current trends.

    Platform Nuances

    Each platform places limitations on DevOps processes, and their successful implementation within a company will vary depending on the platform. It’s not uncommon to have to tailor your approach in particular circumstances. In the case of Salesforce, for example, successful DevOps processes must begin with improved deployment speed and accuracy. Only once this is achieved can Salesforce DevOps professionals move onto more mature processes such as automated testing and releases.

    Industry Standards

    DevOps professionals should understand the constraints of the technology they are working with. and within their industry. Both factors may place limitations on or add additional requirements to what they do. Any given technology platform comes with its own unique constraints, such as file sizes or limits on API usage. This is especially true of cloud-hosted systems like Salesforce, where there are multitenant architectures and resources are allocated to customers. Similarly, different industries are faced with differing constraints, such as the HIPAA requirements for companies handling health care data in the U.S. As a result, DevOps professionals will need to understand these tied to specific standards or processes of their given industries.

    Transferable knowledge

    As a final word on knowledge, it’s critical to make sure you are aware of DevOps trends and best practices on platforms other than your own. There are times, more often than we realize, that your knowledge of what has been successfully utilized on other platforms can be transferred to your own. Even if these practices are not directly transferable, they can point you in directions that can ultimately prove beneficial to your DevOps work on a completely different platform.

    Skills—What Professionals Need to Master

    While there are a huge number of skills that DevOps professionals need in order to stay current and further their career growth, I’d suggest paying particular attention to…

    Version control

    This skill is fundamental—you just can’t do the job without it. Make sure you thoroughly understand its nuances: Branching strategies, rebasing or merging, rollbacks, cherry-picking, etc. It’s also valuable to understand different approaches’ limitations and use cases.

    Automation

    Become well-versed in the differences between continuous integration and continuous deployment/delivery (CI/CD) and how they form the CI/CD pipeline. Knowing where and when to apply it and how to apply it are also critical skills to master.

    Successful teams also benefit from building automated workflows. A recent survey Gearset ran with Salesforce DevOps professionals showed that 85% of teams were either currently using or planning to use source control over the next year. Automated workflows are critical to optimizing ROI in DevOps, as they reduce manual processes and unlock some of the most valuable benefits of DevOps for teams of all sizes.

    Testing

    Test automation is increasingly central to achieving DevOps success. As such, you would be wise to develop expertise in environmental testing, unit testing (integrated with automation and release gating) and UI test automation.

    Monitoring

    Application monitoring for performance, errors, data anomalies and security is arguably as crucial as testing. DevOps professionals must apply the same level of diligence to routine system operations as they do to deployments. As DevSecOps becomes more prominent in 2023, it’s expected that there will be increased collaboration and integration with infosec teams.

    Backup

    It’s critical to master the backup and restore process, no matter which platform you work on. It should absolutely be included as part of a comprehensive DevOps skill set. This is because skill underpins the mean-time-to-recovery metric. DevOps professionals must be familiar with the processes and tools necessary for restoring systems and data to achieve a rapid and secure return to business as usual.

    Demonstrating ROI of DevOps

    Finally, it’s essential for team leads, or those hoping to advance their DevOps career, to effectively convey the performance of DevOps, which can be measured using indicators such as Google’s DORA metrics. This means translating DevOps metrics into quantifiable business value that can be easily understood. It is crucial for managers to not only motivate their teams but also to validate the return on investment (ROI) in DevOps to critical stakeholders. By connecting the performance improvements resulting from DevOps practices with tangible business outcomes and demonstrating the ROI, managers can secure continued support for the DevOps approach within their organization.

    Abilities—What Professionals Need

    This final aspect of KSA plays an important role in fostering the collaborative culture that is the hallmark of DevOps success.

    Communication

    DevOps is not just about the tools—you need to maximize communication effectiveness so that the team aligns their goals with the least amount of friction. If everyone is using the same model to reach the same goal, you will achieve success that much faster.

    Continuous improvement

    DevOps success is not a fixed goal. Rather, there are always elements of the process, or your team’s skills, that can be tweaked, changed or improved.

    Making training a priority

    As per the aforementioned Gearset survey, 45% of teams who train once a month rate their team’s collaboration as ‘excellent’ compared with only 13% of untrained teams. Teams that prioritize training outperform all others on a wide range of metrics, including but not limited to seeing fewer bugs and data loss incidents.

    This Challenge is an Opportunity

    There’s a huge range of KSAs that DevOps professionals will need to master if they want to thrive in 2023. Clearly, working in DevOps has never been more demanding than it is today. But, from this challenge, there’s also a tremendous opportunity for professionals to make themselves indispensable.

  • Five Great DevOps Job Opportunities

    Five Great DevOps Job Opportunities

    devopsy.kinsta.cloud is now providing a weekly DevOps jobs report through which opportunities for DevOps professionals will be highlighted to better serve our audience.

    Our goal in these challenging economic times is to make it easier for DevOps professionals to advance their careers.

    Of course, the pool of available DevOps talent is still relatively constrained, so when one DevOps professional takes on a new role it tends to create an opportunity for others.

    The five job postings shared this week are selected based on the company looking to hire, the vertical industry segment and, naturally, the pay scale being offered.

    We’re also committed to providing additional insights into the state of the DevOps job market. In the meantime, for your consideration:

    LinkedIn

    Harris Allied
    New York, New York
    DevOps Engineer
    $160,000 to $175,000

    CareerBuilder.com

    MassMutual Financial Group
    Remote
    DevOps/Kubernetes Cloud Infrastructure Engineer

    $137,800 to $180,800

    Indeed.com

    Lawrence Livermore Labs
    Livermore, California
    DevOps Engineer
    $123,960 to $159,168

    SimplyHired.com

    CVS Health
    Remote
    DevOps Engineer
    $90,000 to $180,000

    Dice.com

    Idea Entity
    Herndon, Virginia
    Azure DevOps Engineer
    $80,000 to $100,000

  • How to Build Successful DevOps Teams

    How to Build Successful DevOps Teams

    The DevOps sector is still in urgent need of new talent, with 38% of tech companies stating that they struggle to find skilled developers in 2023. These same respondents named DevOps as the number-one area where they are feeling the pinch. Because of this, businesses must ensure they prioritize and nurture the right set of core skills when building DevOps teams.

    Below, we discuss the key qualities that businesses should look for when taking on new DevOps engineers and what leaders can do to get the most out of existing employees.

    Tech companies that prioritize the development of these skills will be rewarded with an intelligent, inquisitive and high-performing DevOps team, setting themselves apart from competitors.

    An Eagerness to Learn

    The DevOps sector is constantly evolving, so the talent organizations hire should be similarly open to evolution in the way they work.

    Emil Krawczak, DevOps engineer at STX Next, said this is a key trait necessary for success. “To be successful as a DevOps engineer, you need to have a natural thirst for knowledge and desire to develop, and also be highly persistent when faced with challenges. This area of IT is developing so quickly that it’s difficult to keep track of everything new. It is not enough to learn at work; you need to take steps to grow your capabilities outside of the day-to-day, as well.”

    An Analytical and Strategic Approach

    System administration and development skills are essential, but they aren’t enough if developers don’t keep the bigger picture in mind at all times. Therefore, the ability to think strategically and the ability to apply analytical skills are invaluable for DevOps engineers.

    Piotr Pawłowski, DevOps specialist at The One Question, explained how these traits made it easier for engineers to tackle a DevOps project. “Being successful in DevOps means having an analytical mind and taking a strategic approach. First and foremost, you should be to analyze the project and decide the right tools and approaches. You might know a lot about different tools and cloud solutions, but if you don’t know how to use them, you will not be successful in the world of DevOps.”

    Putting DevOps Theory Into Practice

    The ability to put theory into practice is where true progress is made. With that in mind, what DevOps employees glean from training, education, books and research has little relevance unless it is supplemented by practical experience.

    Versatility is an integral skill in the industry, and successful DevOps pros should be able to use—or at least have working knowledge of—a broad range of tools. They should also specialize in at least one area of Dev or Ops. Python is a great example; Python is highly effective in the automation process and the language should be viewed as a key stepping stone in growing DevOps engineering skillsets.

    Identifying Transferrable Skills

    Employers searching for new talent should look for relevant skills in other IT disciplines that could help a candidate make the switch to DevOps. For example, experience in SysOps or a specific programming language can be extremely useful when opting for a change of focus.

    “DevOps unites the world of admins (SysOps) with the world of programmers/developers (Dev). The easiest way to get into DevOps is to have experience in both of these areas,” Krawczak said. “As an admin, you can build on your experience in scripting, and as a developer, you can leverage your experience in setting up local infrastructure for testing.”

    A Clear and Focused Approach to Specialisation

    Marcelo Grebois, senior DevOps Engineer at Toptal, said businesses should keep things as simple as possible when establishing their DevOps approach. “Try to make things easy. Always think about automation, keep all infrastructure ‘as-code’ and stay up-to-date on tools and technologies.”

    Roman Kamiński, cloud system architect at Atos, agreed. “Using automation tools such as Ansible and Terraform, for example, stops developers from getting left behind while helping them adjust to an ever-changing industry.”

    Developing the Next Generation

    It’s important that tech companies invest in the growth of DevOps engineers and help them focus on the skills that will maximize their potential. The organizations that put time and resources into nurturing the next generation of talent will benefit from a larger pool of well-trained engineers. In the long term, this will ease the DevOps skills shortage and make for a more prosperous IT department.

  • A Supportive Engineering Culture is Key for Recruiting and Productivity

    A Supportive Engineering Culture is Key for Recruiting and Productivity

    Skilled engineers are in high demand, as their ability to build new products quickly is extremely valuable for businesses competing in a tight market. Strong engineering talent allows businesses to increase productivity and meet customer demand faster, which is essential for long-term success. However, in the current economic context, companies are being forced to reduce spending while trying to achieve the same results. This means engineers have fewer resources available to achieve their goals–increasing the pressure on their role. At the same time, engineering talent remains a valuable asset; in the UK, for example, just under half (49%) of engineering businesses struggle to find workers with a sufficient skillset for the job.

    So, businesses must find a way to attract and retain talented developers while ensuring they feel supported through challenging times. A vital step to achieving this is creating a workplace culture that promotes developer satisfaction. Below, I explore how businesses can create a positive working environment for engineers, make transparent decisions and ensure their teams feel supported – to create a culture where developers want to stay and supercharge business performance.

    The Key Pillars to Creating a Positive Culture

    Leaders of all stripes are tasked with ensuring that their employees are supported, engaged and motivated to do their best work. However, the route to achieving these outcomes can sometimes seem vague and elusive.

    Research shows that there are several key pillars for creating a strong organizational culture. The first is psychological safety. Developers must have the freedom to take risks without the fear of being criticized. Software engineering is an industry in which professionals must be creative enough to be able to create something out of nothing, so it’s important that companies ensure developers have the space they need to experiment and try new approaches.

    Secondly, dependability is essential. Developers are more likely to produce high-quality work in a timely manner if their employer believes in them and their abilities. Developers often face immense pressure to ship functional code on a daily basis; feeling trusted can give them the confidence they need to take on more responsibility and drive projects forward. Alongside this, it’s the leader’s role to ensure developers have a very clear and structured mission. They must know exactly the goals they’re aiming to achieve, the part they’re playing in reaching these goals and the plan for execution.

    Finally, ensuring developers understand the meaning of their work and are fully aware of the impact it has is an important pillar for cultural success. Sometimes, software engineers spend a huge amount of time on small fixes and updates that may seem insignificant. Business leaders must make efforts to communicate the importance of developers’ work and the value they bring to the business. If developers feel valued and rewarded for their difficult work, they will be more motivated to commit themselves to their mission and stay at the organization.

    When engineering teams are happy and supported, they are also more likely to speak highly of their organization and encourage other developers to join the team, helping the company build a strong pipeline of engineering talent.

    Making Transparent Decisions Using Concrete Data

    Transparency is another crucial element to ensure engineering teams are happy and motivated to do their best work. Developers can’t do their jobs effectively if they don’t have insight into the workflows on their teams or don’t have context into decisions that impact their ability to perform effectively.

    With tools such as software delivery intelligence platforms, developers can see the positive impact of their contributions and how they’re helping the business succeed. These tools also enable engineering managers to rely on concrete data to celebrate developer progress on previously invisible work and show how their work contributes to wider business success. This helps developers gain more autonomy to achieve the company’s goals, and eventually create better business outcomes.

    For example, Manulife adopted an engineering analytics tool to create an engineering culture that is based on trust and transparency. The concrete data generated is used to analyze engineering processes and highlight talent that may have remained hidden without a data-driven approach. Data also helps managers decide who within the team deserves to be promoted based on precise insights into everyone’s contribution.

    Use Data to Help Overcome Complex Challenges

    The mission of developers is constantly evolving, with new technologies, programming languages and methodologies changing very quickly and making the job more complex over time. It is up to engineering leaders to help their teams remove potential barriers that are blocking them from being successful in their roles.

    With data-driven insights, engineering leaders can better support and uplift their teams. Data about engineering workflows allows leaders to understand exactly where bottlenecks exist and remove them quickly before slowing their projects down. This means that employees can learn what worked–or didn’t work–from one project to the next, as well as develop the necessary skills to remove roadblocks to future success.

    Timelines and targets for projects set by business leaders can also then be tailored to each person’s abilities and based on concrete data that show where they can boost efficiency to ensure everyone produces their best quality work and remains engaged and motivated.

    In the current technology industry, employee culture is one big factor determining where developers wish to work. In a context where engineering talent is in high demand, it’s the job of every organization to create a stellar work culture to attract and retain talent.

  • Five Great DevOps Job Opportunities

    Five Great DevOps Job Opportunities

    devopsy.kinsta.cloud is now providing a weekly DevOps jobs report through which opportunities for DevOps professionals will be highlighted to better serve our audience.

    Our goal in these challenging economic times is to make it easier for DevOps professionals to advance their careers.

    Of course, the pool of available DevOps talent is still relatively constrained, so when one DevOps professional takes on a new role it tends to create an opportunity for others.

    The five job postings shared this week are selected based on the company looking to hire, the vertical industry segment and, naturally, the pay scale being offered.

    We’re also committed to providing additional insights into the state of the DevOps job market. In the meantime, for your consideration:

    Monster.com

    Ace American Insurance Company (Chubb)
    Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
    DevOps Engineer
    $157,477 to $172,000

    LinkedIn

    DRISHTICON
    Mountain View, California
    Senior DevOps Engineer
    $120,000 to $150,000

    Dice.com

    Srivango Technologies
    Cary, North Carolina
    Java Developer with Azure and DevOps Expertise
    $120,000 to $140,000

    Indeed

    The Coca-Cola Company
    Atlanta, Georgia
    Cloud DevOps Engineer
    $102,00o to $109,000

    SimplyHired

    Moody’s
    Remote
    DevOps Engineer
    $90,000 to $159,300

  • Things We Should Acknowledge, Part Two: Skills Are Less Relevant

    Things We Should Acknowledge, Part Two: Skills Are Less Relevant

    This is perhaps the toughest issue for all of us to acknowledge: The longer you are in the space, the more skills you have filled out on LinkedIn (or wherever you are tracking your career for HR reps to look at) but the skills you possess today are, by definition, a subset of the skills you will possess even a couple of months from now if you change roles. Note that I said “change roles,” not “change employers.” The fact is that we use an insane number of tools in the development, DevOps and operations environments, and we’re addicted to adding new ones (that might be a hint about part three of this series). Changing roles within a company can involve minor changes, or it can take you to a whole new environment where no one cares that you are a Java genius; they want to know how fast you can pick up Python and be truly productive. Or they nod at your talk of configuring servers and ask if you can do that with Ansible on containers. It’s just not as important anymore for most employees to have a specific skillset. That’s a major contributor to the problems I talked about in part one.

    Of course, there are roles in IT that involve far less change. Email administration, for example, isn’t all that different from the way it has been since, well, forever. We have changed how/where the server is configured and many orgs have added SSO or multifactor authentication, creating new issues, but it’s all evolutionary. When NoSQL systems came out, it looked like a major change in DBA work, but it really wasn’t. Within a year, reality put SQL over top of NoSQL stores and DBAs kept chugging along.

    But DevOps has impacted both development and operations in profound ways. We pretty much standardized on Java, with all of its warts, because it was object oriented, general purpose and could be compiled if needed. Though embedded largely stayed with C, there was no serious competition in the enterprise for Java and Java-like (.NET) languages. Knowing them meant you could do everything but real-time/embedded development jobs—and even some embedded work shifted to Java as prices for miniaturized compute power dropped.

    But that changed. The inflection point was JavaScript, and from there, we went a little bit crazy. When JavaScript took off, full-stack developers needed to know one front-end and a couple of backend languages. Other languages still existed—the staying power of both Perl and PHP is somewhat surprising to me; they’re both good languages but have limitations. But still, no serious competition. But Node.js took JavaScript to the server, Ruby was popular for backends, Python came along for quick scripting … And now we have apps written in those and a dozen more languages floating around.

    I chose languages to fit the whole story into a blog because they see less change than the operations side, where we’ve gone from annual big releases to rolling deployments updated frequently and all the support tools changed in the process. Infrastructure has changed, data stores have changed, mobility has changed, UI targets have changed—basically, it’s a chaotic mess.

    And you’re in the heart of it, keeping the data flowing and the org running. It’s astounding, and you deserve more kudos than you’re likely getting. So approach hiring differently. Some orgs are already there, but skill-based hiring is still too prevalent. Hire broad technical knowledge and a desire to know more. As someone I know honestly said in a job interview once, “No, I never used it, but it is just another programming language. I’ll be productive in a week.” She got the job and delivered as promised. For all but those few corner-case roles, hire for potential and achievements and skills will follow.

  • Why Low-Code/No-Code Tech is Important in a Competitive Job Market

    Why Low-Code/No-Code Tech is Important in a Competitive Job Market

    The demand for tech professionals is increasing exponentially as digital skills become a requirement for businesses. However, the world is facing a serious shortage of tech professionals. According to a forecast by the World Economic Forum, 50% of the world’s labor force will need to upskill in order to keep pace with technological advancements and automation. Similarly, digital transformation will change over one billion jobs. Yet the majority of workers around the world lack the digital skills to meet the demands of their jobs. According to a recent study, three in four employers in the world (data from 40 countries) claim a work shortage. On the other hand, millions of young people find themselves unemployed as they lack the basic digital skills for in-demand jobs. Low-code/no-code software solutions can offer a solution to this labor shortage and close the gap for workers who quickly need to acquire digital skills. Proficiency in low-code/no-code applications will provide candidates with a competitive edge in the job market.

    Low-code/no-code software allows citizen developers and business experts to build business applications without requiring high technical expertise. With citizen development becoming an important part of all organizations’ business strategy, the demand for workers with proficiency in low-code/no-code app development is increasing. Expertise in low-code/no-code app development has become an expected skill set for potential employees.

    Benefits of Low-Code/No-Code App Development

    Citizen Development

    As discussed above, digital skills are becoming a part of almost all technical jobs. Employees should be proficient in using technology to streamline data collection, automate daily processes and leverage mobile technology. To achieve digital transformation, employees should be acquainted with advancements in digital technologies. This is where the skills gap seeps in. Learning code is not an easy task. It requires a lot of time, patience and effort. Add mobile development skills to the list, and there’s an even larger skills gap. Low-code/no-code app development can play a major role in addressing the skills gap. With pre-built apps and components, low-code/no-code development platforms offer an intuitive environment for designing software without the need to be proficient in coding. Such platforms can be easily used by people without programming skills to build flexible interfaces their companies need. However, low code can also be used by IT departments to deliver faster digital solutions while freeing up time to focus on more complex coding tasks.

    Additionally, low-code naturally aligns with the millennial proclivity to be digitally savvy. This generation is more comfortable than ever with using digital technologies in all aspects of their lives. Thus, they are more inclined and open to using low-code/no-code platforms and gaining some expertise in the domain.

    Empowering Users

    Low-code/no-code platforms empower citizen developers or business users to “skill up” in an increasingly digital society. By empowering business users to develop applications without the need for coding, low-code generates jobs directly or indirectly. The rate of technological advancement tells us that it is no longer favorable for companies to take months to develop a single app. Since the software has a life of three to five years, taking several months to develop apps is not conducive to the competitive market. As such, low-code/no-code app development can empower business users to develop applications quickly. However, citizen developers should work with IT management to ensure that the app adheres to all the company’s compliance requirements and governance guidelines. This is because citizen developers may not be proficient in scaling apps.

    Business Experts Understand Business Application Need

    Business needs are continuously evolving, especially since after the pandemic, when so many people are remote or using mobile apps to run businesses. At this rapid pace, it is not always easy for IT departments to continuously craft new apps and immediately update apps to match evolving circumstances and needs.

    Business users who are close to daily tasks, data collection requirements and ongoing processes, are in an excellent position to understand urgent needs for specific business applications. As a result, business users are in a much better position to collect department requirements and propose an application that caters to those specific needs. In such situations, low-code or no-code development solutions equip business users to develop applications directly based on their needs.

    How Can Low-Code/No-Code Help Employees Advance Their Careers?

    As discussed above, low-code has tremendous potential and benefits in the current digitally charged environment. Here are some benefits for candidates learning low-code skills:

    1. Bridge Business and IT

    Low-code/no-code is an easy entry point for someone in their early career phases interested in working in the IT department. By learning low-code solutions for streamlining business processes and automating workflows, employees can take a step towards interfacing with IT departments or understanding the basics of coding. With necessary low-code skills, employees can also become leaders in cross-functional groups or digital transformation teams responsible for introducing low-code/no-code solutions and rapidly introducing new business applications. There is a huge gap in this space, as only 29% of IT leaders feel confident that they have the right training mechanisms for non-developers to build applications.

    2. Increase Your Salary

    As employees grow their low-code skills, their salaries will correspondingly increase to reflect digital proficiency. Since low-code/no-code skills will increase in demand, proficient users will make significant gains in terms of the salary offered by major companies. Glassdoor suggests that the average base salary of a workflow automation specialist in the U.S. is $81,335 per year, while that of a data analyst is just $69,517 per year.

    3. Higher Job Satisfaction

    A full 71% of employees expect their work organizations to provide them with the same level of service using technology that customers’ products provide. Organizations can introduce low-code/no-code applications within the organization to increase the level of employee satisfaction.

    Low-code/no-code skills are becoming highly coveted in the current competitive job market. Offering benefits to both employees and organizations, low-code app development is the key to digital transformation.

  • Are You Feeling the Hiring Crunch?

    Are You Feeling the Hiring Crunch?

    After years of experience, we can now definitively say one thing about information technology: There is always a hiring crunch, and it will always be better soon.

    I first noticed this trend in InfoSec years ago. Everyone was short-staffed and looking for available candidates. Everyone wrote their recruitment text like there was no shortage and they could ask for the moon and everyone was certain that this temporary staffing shortage would end soon.

    It didn’t. It still hasn’t. And it has spread. DevOps in general, development in particular are acting exactly the same these days. And it’s not going to get better.

    So, my advice? If you absolutely must have a person, write your recruitment copy to reflect the actual skills you must have. No bells and whistles, no “We always include…” no “But what if we…” Hire for what you need. Or hire with an eye to training what you need. And offer competitive pay. No one here will argue that IT is underpaid, but when there is a shortage of people, or more are leaving than coming in, then the cost of employees goes up. That’s just the way it is. If you are only hiring the ones you must have, then you can afford to pay them a bit more.

    Meanwhile, invest in even more automation. Let’s face it; again, we can learn from InfoSec. They are doing more with less staff—even if “more” is not “everything that everyone wishes they could”.  They have at least partially conquered their staffing woes by increasing the use of automation. DevSecOps is automating even more of the space, so we really will eventually get over the InfoSec staffing shortage.

    We can do this for all of IT, too—just follow their lead. Invest in automation, take the risk and turn on automated actions. Start small, but get started. Relatively high turnover and lower qualified applicant counts are likely to be the status quo for the foreseeable future, so automating processes as much as possible is not taking away jobs at this point, it is improving response in light of a lack of people for the available jobs.

    So, to sum up:

    • Hire when you can, but be focused. Don’t ask for experience in all three big cloud providers if you’re looking for an Azure person. Don’t ask for fifteen years of experience in Go for that entry-level position. Be realistic, be laser-focused and get the person you need in.
    • Train when you can’t hire. Let’s face it, there are going to be people who are massively familiar with application security but who have never done DevSecOps specifically or never used your DevSecOps solution. Train them—whether they are internal or hired with an eye toward training.
    • For non-critical, long-term needs, explore automation options. That includes both things that are being done manually today and things that are not being done at all. Find a way to get it done in the absence of hiring someone.

    And keep rocking it. You are already getting the job done—I’m just recommending ways to stay on top of it and deliver more while you try to find the additional people you need. A balance of automation and hiring will help you sleep at night and make the rest of the org certain that IT is on the ball.

  • Manufacturing Workers Eager to Digitally Upskill

    Manufacturing Workers Eager to Digitally Upskill

    Anyone who has worked in machining within the past 70 years knew that the future of machining was automation. In the 1940s, computer pioneer John T. Parsons and engineer Frank L. Stulen invented, via a contract with the U.S. Air Force, numerical control milling machines. The machines were designed to help the Air Force produce geometrically complex parts more economically and accurately.

    Those machines were the precursor to today’s computer numerical control (CNC) machining tools that use programming to automatically process some material, such as metal or wood, to specification. By the late 1980s, such machines were standard within tool and die, machine shops and manufacturing floors. Today, such digitization of manufacturing is accelerating.

    Workers, for the most part, embrace the change and would do more to meet the technical skills demands needed for their jobs – if only their employers supported them. That’s the primary finding from a survey, Digital Illiteracy in the Factory: Providing Workers with Low-Code Tools, commissioned by low-code platform provider Mendix.

    Interestingly, today, low-code development tools are finding a home in manufacturing. According to the survey, nearly 9 out of 10 said they want to learn low-code software development, while only 3% currently use low-code in their jobs. More than two-thirds (67%) say they want to create a software app that would solve work issues. According to this survey and a parallel survey conducted in Europe, U.S. workers are more willing to welcome and contribute to workplace digitalization than their counterparts in Germany (78% versus 61%) — a surprising result, given that German manufacturing workers enjoy a reputation as some of the most skilled in the world.

    “Incorporating digital applications is vital to the ongoing competitiveness of manufacturing in the U.S., and it is heartening to see such a large percentage of the manufacturing workforce ready to contribute to this effort,” Gardner Carrick, vice president of strategic initiatives at The Manufacturing Institute said in a statement. “Low-code applications provide our workforce with the tools to contribute to this digital transformation, and we should prioritize training in these skills.”

    The survey found that 87% of U.S. workers want to learn low-code development, and within those respondents, 88% of women who responded indicated being very interested in learning low-code, while 51% of men responded in kind. Perhaps not surprisingly, younger workers are more interested in learning low-code than those nearing retirement.

    That may be so, but U.S. manufacturing employers aren’t getting the memo. The survey found that U.S. manufacturers are giving their workers little help in developing their digital skills, and only 18% of workers are happy with their digital skills. “That only 18% are happy with their digital skills is just one sign that more training is required. At a time when the country’s manufacturing industry remains mired in a decades-long slump and when managers clamor for more useful software applications, news reports indicate that the nation’s workforce is ill-equipped to deal with writing code,” Mendix said in a statement.

    “The United States needs to move now to get their workers into the digital game,” said Derek Roos, Mendix CEO. “If the country wants ‘Made in the USA’ to mean something again, and if it wants to reduce unemployment and keep its economy vital and thriving, manufacturing and industry should provide low-code and other tools that help bridge the digital divide.”

    The survey was conducted from Jan. 29 through Feb. 11, among 250 full-time manufacturing workers in the U.S. and 250 within Germany. The survey’s objectives included learning workers’ attitudes and motivations, as well as obstacles that prevent them from acquiring low-code and other digital skills.

  • The Linux Foundation Adds Free Jenkins Training Course

    The Linux Foundation Adds Free Jenkins Training Course

    The Linux Foundation, in collaboration with the Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF), today launched a free introductory course to the open source Jenkins continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform as part of what it plans will become a series of free and paid online DevOps tools courses.

    Clyde Seepersad, general manager of training at the Linux Foundation, said that while the foundation already provides access to some higher-level conceptual DevOps courses, the launch of the CDF last year provides a knowledge base from which the Linux Foundation can now provide online courses specific to DevOps tools. The CDF is an arm of The Linux Foundation.

    The Linux Foundation will also provide courses on Spinnaker, a CD platform, and other DevOps tools that, along with Jenkins, are now being developed under the auspices of the CDF, he added.

    In general, Seepersad said demand for DevOps expertise is increasing as organizations more aggressively embrace digital business transformation initiatives in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, IT teams are adopting a wider range of cloud-native technologies to build more flexible and resilient applications. DevOps platforms such as Jenkins make it possible for IT teams to build those applications faster.

    The challenge many organizations underestimate is the extent of changes to their internal IT culture required to make that transition, Seepersad said—too many organizations still put tools into the hands of developers without really thinking through the workflow issues between developers and IT operations teams.

    The most important thing for any organization to do, he said, is to make sure there is an open DevOps dialogue versus tiptoeing around issues that will tend to increase resistance only further.

    Ultimately, free training should help expand the overall size of the DevOps community at a time when many IT professionals are trying to increase their skills. DevOps professionals not only command higher salaries, but they are also less likely to be laid off. DevOps teams oversee the development and deployment of applications and can also programmatically manage levels of infrastructure that IT administrators relying on traditional graphical user interface (GUI) tools can’t match. That’s a critical issue when many IT organizations these days are trying to do a lot more with even less.

    There’s nothing quite like an economic crisis to focus everyone’s mind. The biggest DevOps challenge any organization typically faces is overcoming inertia. Too many IT professionals have relatively narrow skillsets that conspire to increase the total size of the IT organization. In addition to relying on increased levels of automation to reduce costs, IT leaders want to be able to scale IT environments without having to increase headcount.

    It may take a little while longer for the transition to DevOps to fully play out. However, it’s now more of a question of existential survival rather than if or even to what degree to embrace DevOps. Organizations that don’t embrace DevOps processes to ruthlessly automate the management of IT now might very well never get another chance.