Narrator: You're listening to the Humans of DevOps Podcast, a
podcast focused on advancing the humans of DevOps through skills,
knowledge, ideas, and learning, or the SKIL framework.
Jeff Weber: To me, things like Scrum and DevOps are really
critical and touch everybody. And they're just, we just need
to continue to find how we develop that talent and give
people with the right technical skills, some of that process
framework knowledge.
Eveline Oehrlich: Hello, I'm Eveline Pehrlich, Chief Research
Officer at DevOps Institute, and welcome to our Humans of DevOps
Podcast. Today, I'm excited to tell you that I am with a
friend, actually, I consider Jeff a friend. Jeff is Executive
Director at Robert Half Technology. And he is here today
to help us understand what's happening in this wild market of
hiring and recruiting and skills. Hello, Jeff.
Jeff Weber: Hello, everyone. How are you doing today?
Eveline Oehrlich: I'm doing great and I hope you don't mind
that I call you a friend, because I think we are friends.
We are colleagues. in IT right where we've met many, many years
ago. So I'm excited that you're here. Thank you again,
Jeff Weber: It's great. I was just telling someone how we have
careers that mirror each other in many ways from our original
beginnings in the 80s to now so always look forward to talking
with you.
Eveline Oehrlich: Yes, likewise. And our title today is
Navigating the Hot Labor Market from Both Sides, the Employers
and Employees. And as I just mentioned, Jeff and I actually
met a while ago when we at the DevOps Institute did our second
year of research on upskilling 2020 and Java was 2020. We're
two years older, we're two years wiser I think and since then a
lot of things have changed. But before we go into that, let us
know, share with us, because I'm not sure how familiar folks are
with Robert, Half Technology and I'm not sure what people think
of what an Executive Director does. So tell us.
Jeff Weber: So thank you. So Robert, Half Technology, Robert
Half is an organization that helps provide talent solutions
and consulting solutions on a global basis. So we, on our
talent side, we help people get permanent placement jobs, as
well as provide contract resources. We do that in many
different ways. But we also have employees that we provide,
right, so we've built our own and our own consulting team as
well, in talent, and then we own an organization called
Protiviti, which is a business and technology consulting
company. Together, we then serve our clients on a global basis.
So in my role at Robert Half, as an executive director, I'm
responsible for helping to set the vision and strategy for the
technology work we do globally. There's an operational side of
that, how do we do the work we need to do better, but then
also, what things do we really want to do, what types of roles
we place, etc. And I'll just finish with saying we provide a
full spectrum of technology roles. We do an awful lot of
infrastructure and operation, everything from user support,
and desktop work all the way up to cloud and infrastructure
engineers and then on the application side, we do a full
suite there as well from data and the development web, from
intro developers through senior software engineers.
Eveline Oehrlich: Excellent. So you serve both those who are
looking for work and those who are having openings to fill
within the technology sector across all the different
personas and roles fantastic.
Jeff Weber: And we work globally, we work across most
industries, we work across all company sizes, we serve and
provide resources to very small organizations that normally need
someone for a short period, as well as very large organizations
have quite sophisticated programs on how they acquire
talent. So it's an interesting challenge really accelerated by
all the changes that have happened over the last two years
and just where we are in labor markets today.
Eveline Oehrlich: Yeah, absolutely. In that labor
market. I was just looking at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Of course, that's the US data. In Europe, that's a little bit
difficult to to get the data. But if we look at the
unemployment rate right now, as of whatever, I think this was
August 4%, less than 4%. And I also saw that they're announcing
October 7, I think is the next data point coming out. So that's
an interesting data point. That's very, very low. Right.
Then when we think of our research we just released Our
2022 upskilling research and during that work, we found that
the number one challenge was to find the right skills within it.
That was what over 2000 survey respondents had set. And second
to that, when we asked as you, you might remember, we talked
about the skill categories, right? Must have skill
categories. This year, the number one skill category was
price and framework skills, then followed by human skills. And
then by technical skills were last year, it was a little bit
different last year in 21, we had human skills first, and then
the process and frameworks, and then technical skills. So that's
another important detail. And I got a couple more until before I
pose a question to you. I also checked the nation of national
Sorry, I've been in France for the last week and my seems that
my English is getting worse. 10 National Federation of
Independent Business shows the business owners plans to staff
oak positions to remain elevated, of course, right
folks, are they looking for people and 94% of owners hiring
are trying to hire report few or no qualified applicants for the
positions to trying to staff? Wow, I am glad I am not needing
to find somebody, but I'm sure it would be in good hands with
Robert Half now. You guys, just I think you and another
gentleman did a blog. It was called the hard labor market
continues. Don't let a good hire slip away. I love the title, by
the way. And there you say in biannual job optimism survey,
that four in 10 US workers. So 41% are currently looking or
planning to look for new role in the second half of this year, I
think there was 22. So that's now. And it also says that
research shows that finance and technology professionals are
among the most likely to make a move. So we've got low
employment, we've got a whole bunch of people, at least here
in the US who are looking to change the jobs, what is
happening, what can you shed some light on what's going on?
Jeff Weber: I think we have a lot of factors that drive some
of the data that you're you're citing there, you know, clearly,
the market remains strong, we would often talk with our
clients that unemployment in technology, and even some of
those specific areas of technology is much lower than
that macro, right, that you're talking about. 4%. You know,
it's, it's really there's more available jobs, than there's
people looking for work. And that's both at a macro and
within technology. And I think that's, that really does
exasperate then the question when you're really thinking
about it from the context of, you know, the amount of
technology change driven, coming out of the pandemic driven by
ongoing digitalization of kind of the entire enterprise, and
all businesses, right, that's not a new phenomenon. I think
what the newness is, is the scale of it. And that just
creates, then pressure. So clearly, companies are hiring.
We'll probably talk through this discussion of a little bit of
the noise right now in the US, at least on on hiring, but most
of these positions are looking to acquire talent that they
think is important for them to achieve their strategic
objectives.
Eveline Oehrlich: Are there any specific roles you'd say are
extremely hot? I mean, I'm hoping you would say DevOps, but
obviously, there's other things, but there's some specific ones,
you're saying, yeah, those, those are really top top top.
Jeff Weber: So I agree completely, we don't necessarily
bifurcate between frameworks and, and process, human and
skill set the way you are in our language. However, I agree with
what those are. I think the, in our world today data continues
to be the thing and what that means, right, this idea of
information and everybody trying to both consume vast amounts of
data, but yet gain analytical capability. So there's sort of
across the spectrum from just straight data, data analytics,
to the whole are AI and machine learning. I think companies are
just now figuring out how to be strategic in those areas. And so
that senior data talent, you know, the true data scientists,
the true you know, AI architects, they're, they're
probably be the most difficult to find. To me things like Scrum
and DevOps are really critical. And they're kind of they touch
everybody. And they're just, you know, we just need to continue
to refine how we develop that talent and give people with the
right technical skills, some of that process framework
knowledge, four or five years ago, when I started in my role,
we weren't talking DevOps every day. Today we do, right. There's
not a developer that we place that doesn't at least have a
discussion with what's your knowledge and experience with
DevOps.
Eveline Oehrlich: Yeah, we've we're seeing the same thing.
It's, I wouldn't say yet. It's over the hype cycle, right, if
we think if we use Gartner language, but it's certainly on
its way up on the mountain on the left hand side, sometimes
called the hype cycle, a mountain.
Jeff Weber: You know, in all those curves, and all that kind
of discussion, you clearly end up with, when is it hype and
when is it just part of the enterprise? I think we're
migrating to where it's just part of how technology or the
business achieves its objectives. You know, we had to
be missionaries of DevOps five years ago. Today, we just need
the capability that DevOps is an example that gives us right,
this ability to truly operate and change our environment on an
ongoing and continuous manner. So that's, that's just a
continued challenge and that does affect how we then develop
the skills and the experiences that companies look for and
talent whether to hire or to contract with.
Eveline Oehrlich: Right, so this phenomena of people are shifting
out of their roles, and looking for other. I heard the great
reshuffle, of course, as a great resignation, right? There's all
of that. Is that in you're looking at it from a global
aesthetic, global phenomena or is it just more so in one region
versus the other? Because sometimes I hear my colleagues
here in Europe saying, "Well, this great resignation, I think
that's just in the US" I'm like, Well, I'm not really sure. So
what are your thoughts on that?
Jeff Weber: I think we would say it is global. Like you mentioned
a moment ago, we don't have great data that gives us that,
but anecdotally, our teams around the world say the same
things and see that I think the, you know, to me, there's two
phenomenon going on in that whole question of reshuffling
and resignation, right? There's the what type of work people on
how they value work, and how they look at work in their
roles. You know, younger generations are looking for
various opportunities, and they're not beholden to their
career of choice in their 20s, and their 30s and 40s. Right.
And so I think they built into the cultural fabric change,
which is new for many of us, that have been around for a
longer time. And the other phenomenon, it's really then
driven by the pandemic, I think that is really true and real is,
especially in technology, our ability to work from anywhere.
That isn't new, right. But it wasn't really applicable to most
technology professionals for many, many years, right remote
or at home, as an exception, was viable, became viable over the
last 10 to 15 years, but very few roles truly were remote. And
today, such a large end of the development space, maybe 65 to
70% of roles would allow for especially senior level
development roles would allow for remote if not all time, full
time, a majority of the time. And as that permeates through,
people have now become accustomed to their work cycle,
which is very, very different from Monday to Friday. Yeah,
full days. And that's really creating a challenge. It's, you
know, once we talk through how we retain talent, that cultural
shift is dramatic, and they value things differently than
how we've always really addressed with the people we
work with and hire.
Eveline Oehrlich: Right? And I was just reading an article, I
think, I'm not sure if it's HBR, or one of the other journals I
typically read, had worked from home and opened up a lot of
opportunities for a home, you know, typical like mothers of
children who actually are also in professional roles. And
that's fantastic. Or I another data point there was for people
who have some kind of physical handicap where they are not able
to actually go into in the US this is much better. There seems
to be a lot more awareness of that. But in Europe, having a
workplace where you find an elevator to get up is still very
difficult. I noticed that when I had my kids and in the little
stroller I could never go anywhere in your home with a
stroller because it was really really hard. So that's that's a
good Rate opportunity for those folks.
Jeff Weber: And in many ways that that dynamic is great for
many, many people because it allows them to be in the
workforce. And I'll just add to it, then this, this acceptance
of variable labor, you know, we might call it gig labor, those
kinds of things. In our careers, people have done contracting
professionally, right, where they wanted to work for
themselves or work interative internally, but that was the
exception. And I think it's becoming more more accepted both
by the individuals that want to do that work and have
flexibility and control as well as then the company's hiring it
right. And that then is still, you know, an ongoing change
that's happening that we haven't gotten through, probably we're
going to be dealing with over the next several years.
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Eveline Oehrlich: Right, yeah, I mean, when I joined Forrester in
2006, I had a home office, and I left in 2018, I still had a home
office. So that role is as the Vice President and Research
Director, they're allowed me because it was I used to say, I
work at United Airlines or my location is United Airlines.
Seed to a because my, at that time, we were doing a lot of
travel. All right I have one more question on a term, which I
shake my head because it's just so flabbergasting, quiet
quitting. What are your thoughts on that? What's what's
happening? I mean, I remember back when I was Hewlett Packard,
we had quiet quitters. This was this is just 20 years ago. So
it's nothing new. Right? There's always people who kind of
checked out because they were not engaged. They didn't care.
Why is this right now coming up? Is it just press who is pushing
that? What are your thoughts on that? I'm curious thing.
Jeff Weber: It's like a term like the great resignation, that
term can become globally known within days. Right. So quiet
quitting is now that that trend, I agree with you completely, I
think there's always been the phenomenon. But you had to be
really good at it to do it when you were in an office
environment on a consistent basis. Right. And I think today,
the idea of variable and there's distrust, right, we don't
necessarily have employers that trust their, their workers and
workers don't always trust their employers. So they're trying to
take on that control. And it's a function of what are they
looking for, they're looking for compensation, they're looking
for opportunity. But that opportunity is not necessarily
long term and short term. And they're looking for flexibility.
So we have to label everything. I think it's real. And probably
it's always been there, I don't know that it will, in and of
itself, you know, be a trend that we see that we have to kind
of address systemically on an ongoing piece, but it's
obviously an issue that we're dealing with today.
Eveline Oehrlich: If I have a job, and I am unhappy, let's say
I'm somewhere and I have actually met some of those
folks, right? They're working somewhere in an IT organization,
they're on call, they're, they're stuck, they can't really
develop their training budget is low. They work really, really
hard. What would you advise those folks to do? I mean, of
course, trading, right. But what can an individual like that?
What options does this person have? In this hot market?
Jeff Weber: Yeah, well, they clearly have potential
opportunities to get another role and I think because of the
openings, most everybody if they have the skills that we'll talk
about, right, they are able to go find a different role that
oftentimes that frustration now is something that they think the
better answer is a new place. And sometimes it is right. But I
think it's a real challenge, because, you know, no different
today than what we would have seen over the last many years.
The next place, you know, has its own culture and has its own
requirements. And I think that's really what we've seen in the
last couple of years of not the breakdown of the culture and
accompany but the changing of that culture to where it's You
know, you don't really build the relationships by sitting with
and being with, in the same way face to face like we've had. So
that's making it you feel like you're doing it on your own. You
really, and I think that's a real challenge in there.
Clearly, they're going to ask for more training, they're going
to ask for more money. But at the end of the day, there's only
so much that that will do for their satisfaction. And maybe
the last piece there is burnout. You know, that's not a new
concept, either, right? Yeah, he's burned out, but our
awareness of it, because of how we live our life, right, we just
think of all the time, we all have gotten back from commute,
and all the different things. But now we're working it at
home, a large majority of people a large majority of the time.
And so you're working at whatever those hours, and we
don't really understand how that's going to impact burnout.
Right? You're online at 6am, or online at 8pm. It may only be an
eight hour day, but it feels very, very different. Right. So
the opportunity of remote and the opportunity of the
technology to enable all that is great. The impact of that I
think we're still starting to understand on younger people.
Eveline Oehrlich: Yeah, absolutely. So if I am in a
position where I either have desires to move, what are some
of the hot skills? What should I stress as an individual? What
are some of the things you guys are looking for or what are
your companies who are coming to you say, hey, we need some we
need some hot shots, what do these hot shots need to have?
Jeff Weber: So there's, you know, there really isn't any one
technology that I would say today is the hotspot, but you
need software engineers, you need data engineers, you need
those cloud engineers, so all three of those things, you know,
the ability to adapt the skill sets, right? Clearly, every
business processes training, transforming every external
client facing process continues to transform. And we just don't
have enough talent with the skill sets that enable all of
those process changes, right. So whether it's cloud, whether it's
data, whether it's applications, and the integration of all of
those, that's clearly a challenge. That's typically how
we get requested for talent. I think it's really, we our
clients then would assume that we're screening for human
skills. And they probably add the requirements of the process
and the frameworks. But they don't start with that they start
with, do you have the right cloud infrastructure? Do you
have the right experience in React or Angular? Or what are
all the various technologies that are the application
frameworks, which I view those application frameworks different
than process frameworks? Right? Yeah, right, are very, very
different. So it's a challenge for how organizations go look
for talent is embedded in, especially in big organizations
is how they've always looked for talent. Right? And I think
companies have to continue to figure out, is it? Are they
buying the skill? Or are they hiring the person with the
skill, because those are two different approaches. But when
you end up with a high trend, you know, high volume of people
you're looking for, you get you get really problematic. The
other thing is, maybe as we do that, it's what are the skills
that you have to have from the beginning capability, right,
that then enable you to grow into, you know, you don't train
to be a software engineer, or a software architect, you learn
how to be an architect, you learn how to you get trained on
how to develop, and then you have lots of experience in
developing and you can apply that from cloud and data and all
the different capabilities. And so we continue to see a
challenge with organizations on whether they train their own
people, or whether they need to enable entry level talent that
will eventually have those skills. That's just an ongoing
challenge for many companies, not just what we might view as
the higher end engineers and architects.
Eveline Oehrlich: Yeah, we've seen that great point. Of
course, we've seen that in our research as well, that there is
a significant uptick in how these organizations are
developing their individuals. Like you said, you don't have a
degree as a software architect, right? There's not a in any
university, you come out of computer science or you come out
of computer information systems, but to become an architect, an
enterprise architect or a software developer or any of
those you actually started at a particular level that makes me
think of one very interesting, funny situation, when I got my
degree from Colorado State University go CSU. In in the US,
I was a 4.0, master student computer science computer
information systems. And I've worked down towards my customer
and the customer looked at me and he said, Are you my new
programmer? And this was in this was in 1994? Of course, I
didn't, I thought programmer was very derogative. At the time,
nobody wanted to be a programmer right. Now, if he probably would
now say, are you my new software developer, I would have probably
smiled and said yes. So that that how it changed right from
then to now is quite, quite different
Jeff Weber: than we see. That's an interesting story we see for
us, whether you call it some people call it programmer, some
call it software engineers, some would call it you know,
application architect, there's so many different software
developer, web developer, they're all really different
ways to express the same thing. Right. And so there's some of
that's very cultural, some of that's just how that company has
evolved. You know, I think, when we often talk with people that
have concerns, we use the word advancement, in my mind in a
very historical way, and assume people want to advance. I think
advancement for many today is a new skill, or a changing skill,
or not necessarily from programmer to senior programmer
to, you know, that was my generation of growth. They want
to try a new framework, a new application, a new industry, and
so they're changing. And that's their frustration. What we have
here is advancement, and what they're looking for his change
in diversity of opportunity, diversity of challenge. And
that's, that's, that puts stress on all of us, the individual got
that not sure how to articulate it, and the person those of us
that are hiring, that are trying to understand that that message?
Eveline Oehrlich: Yeah, yeah. Great point, I have two more
questions for you and then I'll let you go to the rest of your
day. So one is around retention. So if I have a great team,
right, I have wonderful individuals, I have implemented
the foosball table, I have the the beer, things wide, where we
have after work, fun and all of that. But I still have a
challenge with retaining some of my really good people, what are
some ideas for our listeners here? Who might have that
challenge? What retention strategies have you seen? Or
would you suggest,
Jeff Weber: I think those are consistent, whether it's
compensation, recognition, you know, professional development
opportunities, some of those kinds of things. Flexible work,
I would say many companies struggle with really earning the
trust of their employees that they're committed to all all of
those. Right. So they give, they might, they might have attacked
compensation, but they really are trying to limit flexibility.
They might have done some, some things for training, but it's
only temporary and that the employees don't trust it. Right.
So I think that's really one challenge is that we have to be
as hires of talent or retainers of talent, we have to be
committed to all of those and understand that flexibility and
recognition are really critical and important to a vast number
of the people that work for you. In today's environment. We at
Robert Half are continually challenging ourselves, how to
build a recognition program that resonates with the people being
recognized, not the way necessarily people want it to be
recognized in prior in prior eras, and compensations a
challenge everybody, many most organizations have increased
their compensation. Right. In today's world, very few
employees, employers, employees, excuse me think it's enough.
Right. But as that changes, right companies are going to be
faced with I have my cost of labor has gone up significantly.
And what am I doing? So compensation is always a part of
that. It's just not by itself enough. I don't think there's
any one great idea that people aren't trying I think the
important thing for employers is to to be creative and listen to
their employees, but also then be committed. Right? So the
ability to not necessarily just get new experience, but then
have the opportunity work in those roles. Right. Those are
challenges companies struggle with the learning factor for
their own employees. Yeah. And so that's that's just a real
challenge. But I think it's a really important one for
companies to deal with.
Eveline Oehrlich: Great, great advice, Jeffrey. All right. I
have one more question has nothing to do with what we
talked about, what is your favorite weekend activity?
Jeff Weber: So one of the things before the pandemic, I traveled
continuously, since the pandemic, I've traveled very
little, and my wife and I have decided we're going to be
country lovers, right? We've always been in suburban suburban
US cities. But we have a cabin, we build a log cabin, for the
last 18 months out in the mountains of the state of
Pennsylvania, where I live. So our our whole goal is to figure
out I'd love to be doing a call like this. Three miles from the
cabin, you know, internet has made everything great. So I can,
you know, watch the bald eagles soar over the mountain and or,
you know, go trout fishing in the morning, and yet still, so
it's something I never would have dreamed I would have
enjoyed is just sitting in the mountain by the stream and, you
know, enjoying nature. So it's been a big shift for us. But
it's the one thing we like to do now more than anything.
Eveline Oehrlich: That sounds wonderful. Well, let's make that
our goal. Our next call will be from the mountains, you'll be
somewhere in Pennsylvania mountains, and I'll try to be
either here in the south France Alps or somewhere in Colorado
mountains, something like that. Well, thank you, Jeff, this has
been great and thank you for doing the hard work, helping
people finding the right spots and helping companies hire the
right people to fulfill themselves and their business
goals. This was great. Thank you to all the listeners. If you
want to know more about Robert Half, it's easy to find them
just Google them. Stay safe, stay human and hope that you
tune in next time.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to this episode of the humans of
DevOps podcast. Don't forget to join our global community to get
access to even more great resources like this. Until next
time, remember, you are part of something bigger than yourself.
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