Filling the Developer Skills Gap with Abby Kearns & James Governor (Ep. 46)

December 22, 2016 Coté


We don’t have enough people, and the people we have don’t have the right skills. That’s a gasp oft heard during the machinations of digital transformation. To investigate this sentiment, the Cloud Foundry Foundation recently fielded a survey to probe into both sentiment around developer skills and how organizations are addressing it. The findings were actually optimistic, but there’s still work to be done.

In this episode, we dig into this survey and what the findings mean for how IT departments need rethink their approach to training and hiring. To do so, we invited Abby Kearns and James Governor. Abby is the Executive Director of the Cloud Foundry Foundation who did the survey. James is one of the founders of the analyst firm RedMonk.

Show Notes

Links

  • The survey itself, Richard’s coverage of it, and Coté’s coverage.
  • Why do this survey? Was there a hypothesis you wanted to explore?
  • Organizations are preferring training over outsourcing, a nice finding, if slightly surprising.
  • Lessons from the UK GDS and outsourcing in the UK government, good and bad.
  • Related: James on outsourcing.]
  • Java, not dead in 2011, and still not dead in 2016.
  • Does age—or any other demographic—fit into this analysis? (Not really.)
  • Widening the pipeline of people by vacuuming up a more diverse set of people.
  • Topics for further inquiry.

About the Author

Biography

Previous
Episode 36: A false choice: systems of record vs. systems of engagement (Ep. 49)
Episode 36: A false choice: systems of record vs. systems of engagement (Ep. 49)

What's the best way to categorize and prioritize your IT projects? Splitting them up between systems of rec...

Next
Pivotal Cloud Foundry 1.8 with Jared Ruckle (Ep. 35)
Pivotal Cloud Foundry 1.8 with Jared Ruckle (Ep. 35)

This week, we talk with Jared Ruckle about the new Pivotal Cloud Foundry 1.8 release, delving into securi...