Navigating the Talent Crunch: Effective Reskilling Strategies for Software Engineering Talent

Software engineering entails creating experiences that are feature-rich, consumer-grade, secure, and resilient. The cloud-native era has increased accidental complexity, putting software engineering departments at odds with talent management teams that want to hire cost-effectively. Hence, it is a critical talent management measure to upskill existing talent.

Read more @ https://draup.com/talent/whitepapers/navigating-the-talent-crunch-effective-reskilling-strategies-for-software-engineering-talent/

Transcript

1. 1 Reskilling: Building Cost- effective Software Engineering Talent (Focus on the US) Copyright @2023 Draup. All rights reserved Conceptualised and Developed: May – 2023 This document aims to showcase the evolving complexity of software engineering and the growing demand for New age skills and further provides an overview of cost-effective reskilling strategies to navigate the hiring budget challenge
2. 2 Growing Complexity of Software Engineering (SE) due to: • Advancements in Generative AI and Automation • Constant Upgradation of tech stacks Hiring challenges: • Scarcity of Talent with emerging skills • Inflated talent cost due to hiring competition Cost-effective strategies to fill talent gap: • Upskill Software Talent: Save 10%-50% on the cost • Reskill Adjacent Tech/IT Roles: Boosts employee retention • Recruit to Reskill: Save $40K - $70K/ FTE Executive Summary
3. 3 Source: Draup 3 CONTENTS This section covers: • Key trends impacting Software Engineering job function • Impact of trends on the skillset of Software Engineering job roles • L&D strategies becoming critical for building Software Engineering teams • Emergence of New Age skillsets in ‘Software Engineering’ Job family 4-6 Pages • Actionable L&D strategies to build Software Engineering workforce with emerging skillsets 8-14
4. 4 Software Engineering DevOps & DBMS Cybersecurity Blockchain Low-Code/ No-Code Crucial technologies with base as Software Engineering Tech. & Methodologies supporting SE Building resilient systems to strengthen Cyber Security Building decentralized and secure software ecosystem through application decentralization Generative AI automating code building, supporting Software Engineering Cloud integration with Microservice to enable agile, scalable, and flexible applications Automated CI/CD with AI-based monitoring for detecting issues, speeding up deployment Internet of Things Software Engineering is central to multiple technologies as it enables the creation of sophisticated, powerful, and user- friendly systems Critical role of Software Engineering Currents Trends in Technologies leading to major changes in Software Engineering AI/ML (Generative AI) & Other Technologies Cyber-security to Cyber-Immunity Blockchain Oriented Software (BOS) Generative AI Based Software Dev. Assistant such as ChatGPT Note: Insights have been extracted from Draup’s ML model which analyses 2 M+ publications, Industry reports, and news articles on a weekly basis. Data has been collected from publicly available sources such as Government portals, news articles, and recent reports on the Global Market Growing complexity in Software Engineering (SE): Evolving trends in technologies such as Cybersecurity, Blockchain, and AI are increasing the complexity of Software Engineering Server/Cloud Operating System Industry - Cloud Integration AI based Automation in DevOps Metaverse
5. 5 Leadership Business Acumen Negotiation Skills Time Management Cognitive Flexibility Presentation Skills Empathy Strategic Thinking Customer- Centricity Decision-Making Organizational Skills Emotional Intelligence Analytical Skills Problem Solving Collaborative Skills Critical Thinking Communication Skills Detail-Oriented Software Design, Development & Documentation Programming Languages (JavaScript, Java, C++, PHP, Python, Go) Software Systems & Frameworks (AnglularJS, Git, .NET) Computer Ar., OS, And Data Structures Front-end Technology Stack (ReactJS) Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) Ruby on Rails GO language Containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) Systems Design Interfaces Source Code Management & Revision Control System Databases And Object- relational Mapping (ORM) Frameworks IoT & Wearable Devices Mobile App Development (WebRTC, RTSP) Build Automation Tools (Gradle, Maven) Version Control Software Tools (IBM Rational Clearcase, Git) ORM Frameworks (Hibernate, Apache OpenJPA) Development Frameworks (ReactJS, AngularJS, Node JS, Next.js) Emerging functional skillsets and tools in Software Engineering job family Tools addition due to emerging skillset Source: Draup’s AI-Driven Talent Intelligence Platform Note: Above mentioned skillsets are not exhaustive. Draup analyses 30K skills for 4,500 job roles from 350 Mn Job description Databases and 750 Mn+ Talent profiles. Soft skills required at each level of Software Engineering job family Traditional Functional Skills Emerging Functional Skills Software Engineering Emerging Skillsets in Software Engineering: Increasing complexity is expanding the Software Technology stack, leading to demand for emerging and New Age skillsets Job Role Maturity Soft skills SDE or ‘Software Development Engineer’ is one of the critical role (analyzed further in detail)
6. 6 Internal Upskilling • Identify emerging skillsets required in firm • Assess the current gap by mapping skills • Develop custom L&D programs Internal Reskilling • Identify adjacent talent within the firm • Simulate the feasibility of reskilling transitions • Reskill with targeted L&D modules Actionable & Cost-effective Reskilling strategies to overcome lateral hiring challenges Recruit to Reskill • Identify low-cost locations with high availability of adjacent talent • Recruit talent with high skills overlap • Reskill with emerging skillsets Challenges in building a Software Engineering team by hiring Note: Draup has a dedicated ‘Reskilling Navigator’ module that tracks 4 Million career paths to understand the Reskilling feasibility between job roles. Using Machine Learning models, Draup analyses the skills gap and suggests targeted learning modules from a corpus of 300K+ courses. Sample Visual representation of decreasing talent availability, actual data may vary Inflated software talent salaries and budget cuts are prompting enterprises to adopt ‘Reskilling’ as a sustainable and cost-effective alternative to ‘Lateral hiring’ Low High Low Moderate Moderate Moderate High Moderate High Time required Cost effectiveness Scalability Emerging/New Age ..Skillsets requirement by companies Highly inflated Talent cost for the existing talent pool Limited talent availability in hiring location A B C Narrowing hiring pipeline Total Tech talent Note: Illustrative representation Number of Bubbles indicates talent availability
7. 7 Source: Draup 7 CONTENTS This section covers: • Internal upskilling for SDE or ‘Software Development Engineer’ talent with New Age skillsets • Internal Reskilling: • Job role assessment • Transition analysis • Recruit to Reskill: • MSA assessment across the United States • Deep-dive analysis for adjacent talent in Atlanta • Cost analysis of Reskilling vs Hiring • Emergence of New Age skillsets in ‘Software Engineering’ Job family 4-6 Pages • Actionable L&D strategies to build Software Engineering workforce with emerging skillsets 8-14
8. 8 Source: Draup 8 Draup analyzed 100+ companies to understand the emerging and in-demand cloud skillsets of a sample role - ‘Software Development Engineer’ Source: The represented data has been derived using Draup’s Proprietary Talent Database which tracks 30,000 skills. Note: The research is based on internal analysis. The list of skills is not exhaustive. Software Systems And Frameworks Debugging Database Management Systems Data Engineering & Infrastructure Management Application and Web development Cloud Computing DevOps GPT Prompt Engineering for Developers (AutoGPT , OpenAI etc) Front-end or Client-side Technology Stack (Reactjs) Performance Tuning (Profiling Tools, Code Optimization & Load Testing) Non-relational Database Mgmt.: MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis, Elasticsearch) Data Warehousing: (Amazon Redshift, Google Big Query, Snowflake etc.) Natural Language Processing Tools (NLTK, spaCy) IoT Protocols and Frameworks (MQTT, CoAP, AMQP, LoRaWAN,etc ) Low-code or No- code Platforms (Appian,Mendix, Kisslfow etc) Serverless & Hybrid Cloud Computing Programs- (Lambda , EC2 etc) Debugging Serverless Applications (AWS Lambda & Azure Functions) Ruby on Rails GO Language (and other in-demand languages ) Understanding of Data Structures And Algorithms (Leetcode, Etc. ) Cloud Debugging (CloudWatch Logs, Azure Application Insights, & Google Stackdriver) NoSQL Databases (Cassandra, Aerospike, DynamoDB) Big Data Processing and Analysis Tools (Hadoop, Spark) Machine Learning Algorithms: (Decision trees, Linear & Logistic Regression, etc. Cross-platform Development: (React Native, Flutter, Xamarin) Wearable Devices & Mobile App Development (WebRTC, RTSP) Containerization & Orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, etc.) Continuous Integration/Conti nuous Delivery (CI/CD)(Jenkins, GitLab,CircleCI,etc) Software Systems & Frameworks (Anglularjs, Git, Github, and . NET Security Debugging (penetration testing, static code analysis, etc.) Database- Processing Engines (Presto.etc) Machine Learning Frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch) Advanced Code Editors (IntelliJ, Eclipse) Serverless Architecture & Platform (AWS Lambda, Azure Functions) Infrastructure as Code Tools (Terraform, CloudFormation, & ARM templates) Programming Languages (JavaScript, Java, C++, PHP, Python) Familiarity with Software Dev. Methodologies (e.g., Agile, Scrum) Profiling (Visual Studio Profiler, JetBrains dotTrace, and Apache Jmeter) Databases and Object-relational Mapping (ORM) Frameworks Source Control Mgmt. Tools (GitHub, Bitbucket) Microservices Architecture Tools (Spring Boot, Apache Kafka) Basic Web Development Tools (HTML/CSS, JavaScript) API Development: (REST, GraphQL, OpenAPI, Swagger etc.) Platform & Infrastructure as- a-Service tools (Heroku) Configuration Management Tools (Chef, Puppet) Computer Architecture, Operating Systems & OOPs Operating Systems Knowledge (Linux & Windows &other OS-tech) Debugging Tools and Techniques (Visual Studio Debugger, GDB, and LLDB, etc.) Basic Relational Database Mgmt. Systems (MySQL, PostgreSQL) Big Data Querying and Analysis Tools (SQL, Hive, and Presto, etc.) Data Integration and ETL (Apache NiFi, Talend, and Informatica) Front-end Development: (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Angular, Vue.js) Back-end Development: (Node.js, Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET, Django, Flask, etc.) Cloud Platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Platform, etc.) Emerging Skillsets: Roles such as SDE are evolving rapidly. New-Age SDE skills such as Containerization, NLP tools and Microservices architecture are in high demand A. Internal Upskilling(1/2) B. Internal Reskilling C. Recruit to Reskill Emerging skills Existing skills
9. 9 Source: Draup 9 Saving in talent cost Improved efficiency for organization Competitive advantage Traditional Software Development Engineer Software Development Engineer with emerging skills SDEs with emerging skillsets can leverage new tools to build better products faster and with fewer resources. Talent cost with emerging skillsets Companies with emerging skillsets can gain competitive advantage by offering cutting-edge products and services Draup’s analysis of SDE that can be upskilled into In-demand Software Development Engineer (SDE) job role with emerging skillsets Benefits of Upskilling A. Internal Upskilling(2/2) B. Internal Reskilling C. Recruit to Reskill Generative Deep Learning with TensorFlow AWS Fundamentals: Building Serverless Apps Event Monitoring and Alerting with Prometheus MQTT Masterclass Smart Contracts Natural Language Pro. with Attention Models Upskilling analysis: Upskilling Internal SDE talent can meet the requirements of emerging skill sets; Saving up to 50% cost on Lateral hiring and boosting employee satisfaction Introduction to ZigBee Decentralized Applications (Dapps) Note: *Sample Learning modules mentioned. Source: Draup’s dedicated Reskilling module ‘Reskilling Navigator’ intelligently prompts targeted courses for 4,500+ job roles from a corpus of 300K courses Coursera 16 hours 10 hours Coursera Pluralsight Udemy Udemy Coursera 5 Hours 35 hours Coursera 17 hours 17 hours 4 hours 9 hours Standard SDE talent cost (base pay) 95th percentile Median salary Employees with new-age skill have high talent cost which can be saved by upskilling the current talent with emerging skills Cost savings ~$134,000 ~$150K-$200K Learning modules* required to acquire missing skills
10. 10 Source: Draup 10 Identifying and Reskilling low-demand and low-cost adjacent talent (with high skills overlap) Key Insights Top reasons to choose Database Administrator, IT Service Manager, and System Engineer:- • Moderate talent cost • Moderate to high talent availability • Low to moderate talent demand • High-Cost ROI compared to hiring • Provides viable and disruption-proof career path Top reskilling areas include: • Programming Language & Algorithms • Agile/Scrum Methodologies • Software & Web Development Notes: Above analysis is done using Draup’s ‘Reskilling Simulator’ and ‘Reskilling Navigator’ features. Existing Skills and Core skill gaps for Reskilling propensity have been identified for 4,500+ job roles through the analysis of relevant JDs from a dataset of over 350 Million+ Job Descriptions. Identifying adjacent talent: Reskilling adjacent (disrupted) talent to SDE can also help meet future demand if the hiring challenges persist Reskilling Propensity A. Internal Upskilling B. Internal Reskilling(1/2) C. Recruit to Reskill Talent Size in United States K = 1,000 Low High Desktop Engineer Maintenance Engineer Server Engineer Network Engineer Database Administrator Firmware Engineer System Support Engineer Mainframe Developer Technical Support Specialist System Engineer IT Service Manager .NET Developer​ Network Administrator​ Linux Administrator​ Technical Support Engineer​ Middleware Engineer K 50K 100K 150K 200K 250K 300K 350K Bubble Size denotes ‘Job Role’ Talent Demand in United States
11. 11 HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for Web Developers Coursera Software Development Engineer (Basic Proficiency) Troubleshooting & Debugging Techniques Coursera Programming for beginners with C++ | C# | Java | Python Udemy Software Design and Architecture Udacity Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Coursera Software Development Lifecycle Coursera Software Development Processes and Methodologies Coursera FS Web Development with React, React Native, Bootstrap Udemy Developing Cloud Native Applications edX The Complete Full stack Web Developer Course Udemy Advanced MySQL Topics Coursera Note: Draup performs complex assessment around various other critical Reskilling parameters between existing and desired roles to understand skill gap and match it with relevant learning modules. The path showcased are not exhasutive Source: Draup’s dedicated Reskilling module ‘Reskilling Navigator’ intelligently prompts targeted courses for 4,500+ job roles from a corpus of 300K courses Advanced SQL Queries in Oracle and SQL Server Pluralsight Reskilling transition: Identifying skills gaps and Reskilling with targeted modules can reduce the transition time drastically. Reskilling can future-proof job roles which are prone to disruption Database Administrator System Engineer IT Service Manager Database Skills Software Development Programming Language Agile/Scrum methodologies Web Development Sample suggested courses for each skillset Sample Job roles Desired Job role Database skills training not required Flow of learning to bridge the gap for missing skills A. Internal Upskilling B. Internal Reskilling(2/2) C. Recruit to Reskill Software Development Engineer with emerging skills Transition analysed in slide-9 in detail
12. 12 United States – SDE Talent Hotspots and skills overlap at top MSA Relevant Talent Availability Size of bubble represent Talent with adjacent skillset High Medium Low Leveraging cost-effective locations in the US: Leading firms are evaluating emerging locations such as Atlanta (with abundant adjacent talent) to hire and reskill them into SDE Note: Above mentioned Hiring locations are not exhaustive. Source: Draup Talent Intelligence Platform which tracks 750M+ professional profiles, 30,000+ skillsets across 4,500+ job roles was leveraged to find talent skill breakdown A. Internal Upskilling B. Internal Reskilling C. Recruit to Reskill(1/3) Total Relevant Talent Availability > 120K 60K – 120K < 60K H M L Talent with Adjacent Skillsets H M L Talent with Emerging Skillsets > 10K 5K – 10K < 5K H M L SDE Talent Hotspots with relevant, adjacent and emerging skillsets MSAs Total SDE Talent Availability Talent with Adjacent Skillsets Talent with Emerging Skillsets New York San Francisco Seattle Washington D.C. Los Angeles Boston Dallas/Fort Worth Chicago Atlanta Austin Tulsa Detroit Denver Philadelphia Deep Dive Location > 120K 60K – 120K < 60K Talent with Emerging Skillsets Chicago Los Angeles Washington D.C. Austin Detroit Denver Philadelphia New York Atlanta Dallas/Fort Worth Tulsa Seattle San Francisco Boston Established location
13. 13 .NET Developer​ C, C# Developer QA Engineer QA Test Automation Engineer Database Administrator System Engineer IT Service Manager Programmer Analyst Network Engineer System Analyst Linux Administrator​ Middleware Engineer 80K 90K 100K 110K 120K 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 6,000 7,000 8,000 Atlanta – Assessing Talent landscape: Though the SDE talent pool is limited, The adjacent talent pool (with high skillsets overlap) is relatively higher Note: Above mentioned job roles are not exhaustive. Source: Draup Talent Intelligence Platform that tracks 700M+ professional profiles, 350M+ Job descriptions across 4,500+ job roles was leveraged to find talent with adjacent skillsets. Draup’s dedicated Reskilling module ‘Reskilling Navigator’ intelligently prompts targeted courses for 4,500+ job roles from a corpus of 300K courses A. Internal Upskilling B. Internal Reskilling C. Recruit to Reskill(2/3) SDE with Emerging skills Software Development Engineer Transitioning to SDE will include acquiring skillsets such as: • SQl • Java/ Python • Full Stack dev. • Software Design • SDLC (sample, not exhaustive) Acquiring Skillsets in • Ruby on rails/Go • Virtualization(VMware), • CI/CD Automation(CircleCI) • Cybersecurity framework (sample, not exhaustive) 10-12 weeks Draup’s analysis of adjacent job roles available in Atlanta Case study of transition from QA Engineer to SDE Low Talent Demand Medium High QA Engineer Talent Size Bubble Size denotes ‘Job Role’ Skills Overlap with Software Development Engineer K = 1,000 Limited transition possibility as the basic SDE skillsets are needed to learn the emerging skillsets Talent Cost (In USD)
14. 14 Increased talent pool Creativity and Innovation Cost savings Improved diversity and Inclusion K 20K 40K 60K 80K 100K 120K 140K 160K 180K Base Pay Non-Recurring cost Incentive Reskilling Cost Updated base pay Cost of hiring new SDE-1(<5 years experience) with emerging skillset Cost of recruiting adjacent talent and reskilling to SDE ~$158K ~$128K Benefits of ‘Recruit to Reskill’ strategy $139K ~$118K $102K $9.8K Base pay saved on every FTE $19K $16K One-time cost saved on FTE ~$21K ~$9K Overall cost saved by company** ~34K Talent base pay Note: * Non-Recurring Cost: one-time expense during the hiring process, including advertising costs, background check fees, travel expenses for interviews, sign-on bonuses, relocation expenses, etc. Non-recurring cost is only indicative(might vary depending on location, company, skills, etc). Source: Draup analyses 16+ Million data attributes for 4,500+ job roles daily to help global HR leaders in Planning, Hiring & Reskilling their Future-Ready Workforce. ** Indicative, for first year only. Cost analysis of ‘Hiring SDE’ vs. ‘Recruiting QA Engineer and Reskilling to SDE’ in Atlanta ‘Recruit to Reskill’ vs. Hiring in Atlanta: Companies can save ~18% cost (per FTE) by recruiting an adjacent QA Engineer and Reskilling to an SDE role ~$30K A. Internal Upskilling B. Internal Reskilling C. Recruit to Reskill(3/3) Adjacent talent can bring fresh perspectives and ideas to the organization ~18% cost saving by reskilling adjacent talent into SDE job role ~$5K higher median salary in Atlanta as compared to overall US High availability of Talent with adjacent skills in the ecosystem Non-traditional hiring location can have diverse talent landscape Cost savings compared to overall US up to ~$70K
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16. 16 Draup leverages Machine learning models to curate data provided in the report. Similar analysis can be performed for 4,500+ job roles or any job family Digital Transformation University Relations Peer Intelligence Talent Acquisition Strategic Workforce Planning Reskilling & Upskilling Diversity & Inclusion Career Path Development Draup Capabilities & Data Assets EMPOWERS DECISION MAKING IN ROLES & SKILLS TAXONOMY DIGITAL IMPACT ON TRADITIONAL ROLES TALENT INTELLIGENCE PEER BENCHMARKING UNIVERSITY INTELLIGENCE Explore Diverse Job Roles, Locations and Ecosystem Insights DIVERSITY ACQUISITION CAREER JOURNEY MAPPING LOCATION INTELLIGENCE COURSES/ CERTIFICATIONS and diverse other use cases…
17. 17 Draup for Talent: Draup analyses 16+ Million data attributes every day to help global HR leaders in Planning, Hiring & Reskilling their Future-Ready Workforce 750M+ 350M+ JOB DESCRIPTIONS 4M+ CAREER PATHS ANALYZED 75+ MACHINE LEARNING MODELS DEYELOPED 16M+ DAILY DATA POINTS ANALYZED 100+ LABOR STATISTIC DATABASE 1,000+ CUSTOM TALENT REPORTS 30,000 SKILLS 47,000+ DIGITAL TOOLS & PLATFORMS 300,000+ COURSES 2,500+ LOCATIONS 14,000+ UNIVERSITIES JOB ROLES 4,500+ PEER GROUP COMPANIES 500,000+ INDUSTRIES 33 175,000+ UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS PROFESSIONALS
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