# Why Are So Many Developers Out of Work in 2024?  - Author: [[The New Stack Podcast]] - Full Title: Why Are So Many Developers Out of Work in 2024? ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Uneven Distribution of Developer Talent** - The developer workforce is unevenly distributed globally, with some regions having a surplus while others face shortages. - Despite a growing number of developers, many tech jobs remain unfilled due to a mismatch in skills. Transcript: Heather Joslin Some countries and regions have lots of developers, others not so much. And there have been, obviously, massive layoffs at a lot of tech companies. So there are a lot of world-class developers and engineers who are on the job market right now. And believe me, I've met a lot of them at KubeCon and other events this year. But at the same time, there's a lot of jobs that sit empty because of a mismatch of the workforce skills and the things that are needed. ([Time 0:01:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/24c72ce1-20cf-4f77-b479-1224473ceed3)) - **Global Talent Marketplace** - Traditional recruitment focuses on local talent pools, limiting access to skilled individuals. - Andela provides a global talent marketplace, connecting companies with skilled developers regardless of location. Transcript: Heather Joslin Like, what are you seeing overall the landscape? Where do we have lots of talent? Where do we have not so much talent? Yeah, it's a good question. Ross O'Neill So I don't think it's a matter of scarcity and like particular skills. So what we find is and that reasons why lots of companies come to Andela specifically is that they're all accessing the same talent in the same talent pools one of the reasons why they Come to Andela is that they can access talent no matter where it is and access the right skill based on their requirements and demand. So if, for example, if you are an engineering manager and you're creating a role and the prerequisite of that is like somewhere nearby you in terms of where your office is, then your talent Pool is a lot more constrained. While at Andela, it's what we do is we match according to that skill and find you the right talent based on your needs and requirements no matter where they are in the world so yeah so I think That's kind of where scarcity might be experienced for lots of companies is because they're finding that experience where the traditional element of recruitment is based locally Rather than based on skill a complete in a borderless environment because tech the you know the tech workforce is global you know and we know that since the pandemic that we can yeah uh You know that tech talent can provide uh the right skills and uh the right, you know, can deliver effectively. ([Time 0:03:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d7bd6cd7-e085-49c4-9495-6732068d601c)) - **CNCF and Andela Partnership** - CNCF and Andela partnered to train 20,000 African developers in cloud-native skills over the coming years. - This initiative addresses the high demand for Kubernetes skills and aims to promote global inclusivity in cloud native technology. Transcript: Heather Joslin Yeah. And I just want to get into some of the news at QCon about the program to train developers in Africa. Can you, Chris, maybe you want to start with that? Chris Aniszczyk Yeah, you know, from a CNCF perspective, like, you know, we're one of the largest open source organizations out there in terms of community and a lot of our members out there have a demand For cloud native talent like if you know we're here at kubecon and if you walk over to the job board that we have there's tons and tons of jobs boasting people dying to hire a cloud native Talent and you know we've done a decent job as an organization kind of trying to expand our training certification programs to, you know, kind of certain regions. Right. You know, obviously the organization started in North America. We expanded Europe. We started to do events in China, you know, now in India. And, you know, I'm very excited that, you know, we're partnering with Andela to kind of expand, you know, training and certification to the market in, you know, Africa. So that's kind of what we're announcing here. AccuCon is an expanded, you know, partnership with Indela to kind of bring cloud native talent and skills, especially around Kubernetes to engineers and developers that are burgeoning In Africa. I've had a couple of fun times visiting the region. There's an incredible amount of enthusiastic talent there. And I feel like if you kind of look at our data when we're crunching numbers of amount of people that were certified and trained on Kubernetes, the African region was by far the lowest On the list. And we're like, what's going on? How can we fix this? CNTA is a global organization. In order for Cloud Native to be global and ambiguous, we have to be everywhere. So I'm very, very excited they were able to partner with Indel and expand on this. And hopefully Ross can speak a little bit about. Ross O'Neill Yeah, we're super excited. This building off a long legacy of us investing in talent in Africa. So as I mentioned, we were founded in Nigeria. We're around 10 years old and every subsequent year since our founding we've been, we've invested in learning and upskilling opportunities for talent in Africa. And we've worked with lots of different organizations from Google, AWS, Nvidia, Salesforce, across many different technology. And this is just a build on from that legacy. And it's one of our largest programs from day one. So we're really, really excited. In terms of what Chris mentioned, like that keyword you mentioned about brilliant, like there's some brilliant talent there. Like Andela's mission is to connect brilliance with opportunity. And that's what we're doing here in terms of like some insights in relation to Kubernetes. So we're going to train around 20,000 to 30,000 talents specifically in Africa over the next number of years in KCNA and CKAD. And in relation to Andela, which we connect talent with jobs, with companies, 90% of the roles that get created by companies request Kubernetes. And so it's not just like, you know, coming out of nowhere. It's an in-demand skill. We want to, you know, equip our talent to succeed. And it's also to grow the community. Yeah. So we're very, very excited. ([Time 0:05:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4b3da2ba-5069-4ea1-bb37-d87c27dc645c)) - **Master the Fundamentals** - Focus on fundamental Linux and networking skills before diving into Kubernetes. - Mastering these basics makes learning distributed computing concepts significantly easier. Transcript: Heather Joslin Would you say, we've talked a little bit about AI, we talked about Kubernetes, we talked about a couple other things. What are, what are, what are skills that you think um if i let's say i'm a developer i'm on the job market what what are some or an operations engineer on the job market what are some things Chris Aniszczyk That you would say right now this person needs to be upskilling so you know it's funny as i you know i come across people that are so enthusiastic about learning kubernetes and they dive In heads first and they don't actually have the fundamental like Linux or even operating skills. I always tell people, get a solid grasp of how Linux and operating systems work and networking because at the end of the day, Kubernetes is all about distributed computing, you know, Connecting a bunch of computers together, things fail, things get rerouted. If you don't have fundamentals down of like how Linux and networking works, it's going to be significantly harder to learn those skills. So I was like, start with the basics, learn Linux, play with it, you know, learn how to contribute that, that foundation makes it significantly easier to learn, you know, Kubernetes And distributed computing skills. In my opinion, I love that people are enthusiastic, but learn, learn, learn the basics first. ([Time 0:14:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9394b5e2-9b5f-4b9b-a5c4-754c91ca2e2b)) - **Soft Skills Matter** - Develop strong communication and leadership skills alongside technical expertise. - Proactivity and problem-solving are also highly valued by employers. Transcript: Ross O'Neill One of the areas that like we work with in terms of andela like we do a lot we do a lot of matching with our companies and it's not just uh hard skills as well there's a lot of soft skills professional Skills yeah i think they tend to get overlooked as well like yeah you have great technical yeah depth shoot but like you know in terms of communication skills leadership skills proactivity Proactivity is a big one like you know, yeah, you're able to solve this problem, but like in relation to, are you coming to me with problems you have found? So there's elements of that too, that I would say if you want to be a successful developer engineer, that's an area that can tend to get overlooked. Chris Aniszczyk It's basically like communication skills. Are you a good communicator, a good presenter? One of the things I love about open source events like this is you'll meet people and they're new to the community and they're contributing and part of contributing is sometimes speaking About what you contribute and being able to present on a topic and contribution improves your communication skills and presenting and that it makes you better prepared to work in a Modern workforce environment if you have strong communication and presenting skills on top of technical skills, that is truly ([Time 0:17:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/eaec2d70-e4c7-4a35-bed3-936951898660)) - **Emerging Trends** - Security skills are in high demand due to increasing security incidents. - Platform engineering is another growing area, focusing on optimizing developer tools for faster innovation. Transcript: Heather Joslin To challenge your ideas yeah exactly um uh one last one last question based on the conversations you've been having and things you've been seeing what do you see um what do you think is Going to happen the next year in terms of what companies are going to be looking for what's you know what what things are going to be overall in the developer job market? Chris Aniszczyk I'll do this very simply. A, like, big soul hole to feel with just Kubernetes talent in general. But if you look at overarching themes, not just like a project-specific talent, engineers that have security skills. You know, there's been a lot of crazy security incidents that happen in the open source. Not even open source community, but in general, right? We had Heartbleed. There was a crazy XE backdoor. There's the old SolarWinds. A lot of companies are investing heavily in hiring security talent. So security is a broad thing. Having security skills, very, very important. And then back to my previous point, platform engineering. There's a lot of companies now building platform engineering teams because, you know, platform engineering, it's really about optimizing and building tools to make developers More efficient so you could ship faster and innovate faster. All companies to remain competitive need to be able to ship faster and iterate faster. And platform engineering is a big enabler of that. So Kubernetes security, platform engineering is kind of what I see. Ross O'Neill I think it's kind of stole my answer, but I think, particularly on platform engineering, but I think more macro level, I would say, like, I'd say in industry terms, we've seen a tale of Two job markets. Like, yes, there's some scarcity going on, but there's high demand. And as we said, there's a board down there with just, we're hiring, you know. So I think there's just overall just strong in cloud-native technology specifically. 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