In the United States alone, the unemployment rate in the technology sector reached 2.1% in May. This is a slight drop from April, but with 623,627 job openings in this sector, this represents a 52% increase over the previous year. The Linux Foundation and learning platform edX found in their tenth annual open source jobs report that the market is even better for industry-savvy job seekers.
But how much? According to analysis by MarketandMarket, “the global open source services market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.2% […] to reach 50 billion dollars in 2026, compared to 21.7 billion in 2021”.
What does this mean for open source job seekers? The report indicates that 73% of professionals say it would be easy for them to find a new job. In contrast, 93% of employers struggle to find qualified talent.
A third of professionals leave their jobs
So far, most open source professionals (63%) say they haven’t changed jobs in the past year. Of course, this also means that one in three quit their job. Employers are therefore desperately trying to retain their qualified staff. It may not be the “Great Resignation” phenomenon, but it still makes life very difficult for HR.
“All companies struggled to recruit and retain talent last year, and the open source industry was no exception,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation. “Organizations that want to ensure they have the talent they need to achieve their business goals must not only differentiate themselves to attract that talent, but also look for ways to close the skills gap by developing new and existing talent. »
“There is a huge gap between supply and demand,” adds Clyde Seepersad, senior vice president and general manager of training and certification for the Linux Foundation. But job rotation could have been even worse. According to him, “employers have been more proactive. This avoided some of the rotation that might have happened otherwise.”
What keeps people from jumping ship is offering them “remote work”. “When you think of some places where the cost of living is high, like in the San Francisco Bay Area or Bangalore, it’s very attractive to allow people to work from other places, given the cost of living. and the impact on their real incomes,” says Clyde Seepersad.
Wage increases have also become very significant. “Salary is also a factor, but it could have been third or fourth,” notes Clyde Seepersad. “It is clear that it is now number one. »
To be exact, the report reveals that compensation has become the biggest differentiator: two out of three open source professionals said that a higher salary would deter them from leaving their job. With flexible working hours and working from home becoming the norm, financial incentives are more important than ever. Yes, flexible working hours and telecommuting are becoming the norm, it is important to note this. Without it, don’t expect to retain top open source talent.
Talent scarcity
Be warned, skilled open source talent is harder to find than ever. The vast majority of employers (93%) say they struggle to find the right people with the right skills.
This trend is not about to be reversed. Nearly half (46%) of employers plan to increase their open source hiring numbers over the next six months.
Another way to keep talents is to train the ones you already have. According to Clyde Seepersad, in the past, “corporate hiring managers would tell you outright that they didn’t really invest in training because it just encouraged people to find another job. That mindset has really changed.” This is because “if you don’t try to encourage and develop growth, employees will go elsewhere. Yes, the salary has become more important. But if you invest in their career, in the relationship, you can build loyalty with your staff.”
A related issue is that certifications are also more important than ever. Nearly 90% of employers are willing to pay for their employees to obtain certifications, and 81% of professionals intend to acquire them. Additionally, 69% of employers say they are more likely to hire an IT professional with a certification.
As a side effect, prior experience loses its importance with the shortage of talent. If you have a certification that shows you have the right skills, it is easier today to find a job.
Most in-demand skills
What skills? For the future, everything revolves around the cloud and containers. In fact, 69% of employers are looking for people who are knowledgeable about cloud, Docker, and Kubernetes. Pure Linux skills also remain in high demand – by 61% of hiring managers. This is not surprising since under the cloud and the containers hides Linux.
It’s also no surprise that security concerns are on the rise. Cybersecurity skills rank fourth in hiring decisions, according to 40% of employers, after cloud, Linux and DevOps.
Incidentally, DevOps is also increasingly important. Clyde Seepersad observes that “in the past there were well-defined walls between the development team and the implementation team. They are collapsing under the weight of new expectations”.
Safety training is also becoming vitally important. There just aren’t enough security skills. Employees know it. And 77% of employed open source professionals say they would benefit from additional security training.
If you had to choose one skill to focus on to enter the open source job market, Clyde Seepersad offers an interesting choice: Git, the distributed version control system.
Why ? Because now everyone is using Git. “The goal isn’t necessarily to say you’ve made 1,000 accepted pulls from a Git repository,” Clyde Seepersad points out. “It’s about getting used to this work to get into the dynamics of often working collaboratively on code. And everyone is a developer now. Previously, people who were more on the security side of deployment engineering were hesitant to take a closer look at code because the idea was up to the developers. And the same was true with developers, in terms of things like scalability. But that fell apart with DevOps, and now everyone is collectively responsible for code. As you learn what code is and how it is managed, you have the opportunity to contribute to it. And, with that, you can put yourself in a very good position. »
And, with all these small steps, you’ll be leaps and bounds closer to a great career in open source.
Source: ZDNet.com