Predictions for the Future of Work and Education: A Q&A With The Linux Foundation

When it comes to creating more equitable access and opportunity for all kinds of learners, open source technology has become an increasingly important medium. Ten years ago, edX was founded on an open source platform to enable endless innovation in meeting learners’ needs. Ever since, I’ve seen the demand for open source skill sets rapidly expand across all realms of tech.?

These trends are the focus of The Linux Foundation ’s 10th annual Open Source Jobs Report, published earlier this summer in partnership with edX . I recently connected with Clyde Seepersad , The Linux Foundation’s senior vice president and general manager of training and certification, to dig deeper and predict what these trends mean for the future of learning and work.?

Thanks for joining me! We love having The Linux Foundation as one of our early learning partners. Across the Foundation’s findings from the last 10 years of jobs reports, what would you say are some of the greatest lessons learned?

I think there are two big lessons here. The first is that all coding and tech is now open source in a very meaningful way, with almost no exceptions. The second is that every business has to now think about a build-your-own as well as buy-your-own talent strategy because otherwise, they’ll never fill every open seat.

The only way for businesses to solve this problem structurally is to invest more in their people. They need to find anyone who expresses a passion for tech and give them a career path to learn the most in-demand technologies. That healthy pipeline of internal talent development is one of the primary conditions for getting their technical staffing needs met. And as industries get even deeper into recognizing the benefits of open source, that’s going to directly influence which technologies workers need to learn in order to have successful careers.

The 2022 report specifically outlines that skills in Linux, DevOps, and the cloud remain in high demand while cybersecurity and machine learning skills are mounting in demand by the minute. Given these trends, what do you project might be some of the most marketable skills in the future?

For the foreseeable future, any sort of computing is going to be cloud-based. In terms of lowest common denominator, being comfortable with operating in a cloud computing environment is the most basic-level skill that workers are going to need, because whether it's cyber or AI or edge IoT, the one constancy is that data is processed and held in the cloud.

From an education standpoint, this means that the notion of people going off and training in their 20s for a field and then they’re pretty much done—that’s not relevant anymore because everything is changing so fast. Tech professionals need to move toward investing in their career as a lifelong learning journey but also understanding that the skills they acquire have a half-life. Workers should learn the basics and then keep adding to their portfolio over time, because the mix of tooling is going to change and the technical horizons are going to keep evolving.

That’s great advice! And you are totally right. Terms like cloud computing and big data did not exist 15 years ago, and that’s where the action is. From a big picture perspective, how do you see the worlds of work and education coming together to meet economic needs into the future—and are there any additional tips you’d offer for businesses and tech professionals??

I’m seeing more people adopting the mindset that education is no longer an “event” but rather a lifelong process—and by necessity, education needs to happen in the context of your job.?

From a hiring manager’s perspective, there’s always been this concern that they’ll train people who’ll just turn around and leave. The truth is, those people were going to leave anyway. So, if companies can keep half of those people by investing more in their learning from within, then they’re still way ahead of where they’d be if all they did was hire from the outside.?

Workers have traditionally had this mental firewall between what they do for their own talent development and what they do for their job. But just like source code now being developed out in the open, people should develop their skills that same way and make it part of their job, because the best way to learn is to practice in a real-world context. Don’t treat education as something you carve off and only do on nights and weekends. Make it a continuous flow process in your day-to-day job routine.?

Love your phrase continuous, lifelong learning! We need to embrace this approach if we want to be in the thick of the action.

Yes, at the end of the day, because technology moves and changes so fast, employers today care more about skills than knowledge. We’re living and working and learning in a different world now, where individual career advancement, corporate recruiting needs, and education interplay with each other on a daily basis.

To learn more about The Linux Foundation’s predictions for hiring future tech talent, visit The Latest on edX.