The Kubernetes skills gap is here. What can companies do about it?

Back in the 1990s you could literally take somebody off the street and teach them Novell or Windows NT in just a couple of weeks. I know, because I was one of them. Well, those times are gone. With technologies like cloud computing and Kubernetes, IT engineers today need a large set of knowledge and skills, ranging from Linux, networking foundations, CI/CD, storage, Infrastructure as Code, and the list goes on and on. And that scope of expertise is not something you can acquire in a couple of months or even in a couple of years. Even if you specialize in Kubernetes, you'll need to work with it daily for at least a couple of years to be able to set up and manage large production environments. Kubernetes is a kind of distributed computing, which is a very complex and difficult area.?Not to speak about all the additional tooling that is needed.

Today many companies are joining in on the platform engineering movement and are trying to recruit platform engineers. To be successful, a platform engineer not only needs to be able to build a platform, but also market it to internal teams. This requires both technical and “soft skills” — a rare combination to find.?

A frequently seen consequence of the lack of skilled platform engineers is that senior developers take up the responsibility for managing environments and infrastructure. This can lead to a situation where the platform is created and maintained by the same people whose input in terms of coding and product development is most valuable.

So, how can organizations effectively bridge the skills gap and ensure they have the necessary expertise to adopt and utilize complex technologies like Kubernetes to prevent this antipattern??

Here are a few recommendations based on my experience:?

1. Take time to properly educate and train your engineers. Know that it takes significant time, often over a year, to get engineers up to speed on complex technologies like Kubernetes. Invest in training programs for the long-term rather than expecting quick results.
2. Look for solutions that provide higher-level abstractions and self-service capabilities on top of Kubernetes. This allows developers to focus on their core work without getting bogged down in the nitty-gritty details of Kubernetes administration and maintenance.
3. Leverage automation as much as possible, especially for tasks like onboarding developers onto the platform. Automating repetitive tasks can help maximize the productivity of limited skilled resources.
4. Explore how AI/ML can complement automation to further simplify Kubernetes management, such as for handling alerts, resource allocation and high availability.
5. Be selective in adopting new technologies, including Kubernetes. Carefully evaluate if Kubernetes is truly necessary for your company's use case, rather than jumping in prematurely.

And if you’re looking for an easy and practical way to begin narrowing that Kubernetes skills gap, stop by the Akamai booth at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America. See you there!