Why Do We Have a DevOps Talent Shortage? ??

What do we mean by a DevOps talent shortage????

Well...it really is as simple as this...we do not have enough DevOps talent to meet the demand in the Dutch market! You only have to think back to early 2021, when a Statistica report showed that over 65% of organisations' higher management struggled to attract DevOps Engineers. One of the most significant factors affecting this was the adoption of remote working policies, further increasing the demand for these talented individuals.??

Who is being hired right now????

DevOps hiring is difficult on both sides but more so for global companies looking to attract the best talent. With the lasting effects of covid, the war and the general-rising costs, many companies are now looking to rely on automation to help better their bottom line. This trend has led to Senior DevOps Engineers being the most desired hires in the market, which is backed by the data from Indeed.NL. It shows that a massive 72% of adverts posted by companies and recruitment agencies as targetting senior profiles. This is mainly down to their specialist knowledge and expert level of autonomy experience.?

Who Misses Out? ?

This mainly affects junior DevOps Engineers or Software Engineers looking to reskill. For example, I worked out that 79% of my clients in the freelance Dutch DevOps market have requested senior profiles with Kubernetes experience. The need for higher levels of domain knowledge with a senior profile is incredibly sought after in this market, and it makes it near impossible for Junior DevOps Engineers to get noticed, but not all hope is lost! If you are in this position and are looking to get DevOps experience as a junior, I would look at permanent positions in companies that allow you to grow!?

Automate, Automate and Automate Some More!?????

The real catch-22 is that automation should help with the talent shortages right? Well, that is not entirely true, yes an experienced DevOps Engineer with top automation experts can help decrease developer's workloads. But if you are a company looking to develop this strategy then you are going to need a handful of experts to set it up in the first place and employees to maintain this.?

Why Is "DevOps" so popular? ??

It has been proven time and time again to lessen the workloads of boring and mundane tasks for both developers and engineers, allowing them to focus on more important work. It also has the added benefits of increasing development momentum and increases release quality. In the end, the reason that these individuals are so sought after and therefore certain companies encounter DevOps talent "hard to find". Is that it's globally accepted that automating continuous delivery, deployment and operation is so important to the success of any modern company that it's such a competitive market.?

How Do We Solve This Issue?

The simple answer is that right now we can't solve the talent shortage until we have more DevOps Engineers available. This will stem from software engineer's reskilling, but we will also have to wait some years for the junior DevOps Engineers to gain the experience to become senior. I have written numerous articles on my Linkedin on how you can reskill and move into the freelance market. Whether it is DevOps, SRE or Cloud Platform Engineers I always suggest to my clients to revise their job specs, often when whittled down companies only need a handful of skills. In this market, you cannot be too picky when trying to attract specifically junior or medior talent, and these job specs can scare away potentially good talent. If you need Senior SRE, Cloud and DevOps Engineering talent please feel free to reach out to Foxtek.?