, cloud providers are hiring, and they are doing it with a vengeance. If you are not an expert at
, there is no time like the present to become familiar with the Cloud Crowd and its goings-on, as well as to become more conversant in "
, which just popped into my mind, as well as some other things which I can't discuss in this forum
). The name comes from the use of a
-shaped
symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in
system diagrams. Cloud computing entrusts remote services with a user's
data, software and computation.
(ITaaS), is used by in-house, enterprise IT organizations that offer any or all of the above services.
and
databases. The cloud providers manage the infrastructure and platforms
on which the applications run.
and user's data are stored on servers at a remote location. Proponents
claim that cloud computing allows enterprises to get their applications
up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance,
and enables IT to more rapidly adjust resources to meet fluctuating and
unpredictable business demand.
) over a network.
And Following is a wonderfully optimistic (and informative) article regarding employment opportunities in the Cloud from
When Ken Stephens, a senior vice
president of Xerox Cloud Services, tried to hire a product manager from
IBM recently, he had quite a shock. "I offered him a 40 percent raise,"
Stevens said in an interview. "But then IBM came back and gave him 20
percent on top of that."
Not every IT pro who has a résumé
chock-full of cloud-related skills will be the object of a bidding war,
of course. But in the last eight months or so, "the light has gone on in
the heads of
CIOs and
CEOs, and a gap between supply [of IT personnel
with skills for the cloud] and demand has opened up," says David Foote,
whose consultancy, Foote Partners, keeps close track of IT compensation,
certifications, and employment.
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Although salaries aren't spiking at the pace of the old dot-com days, times are good for
those with the right skills
and the flexibility to learn how to develop, deploy, and manage
applications and services in the cloud. Foote's observation regarding
the limited supply of top-flight engineers and developers to work on
cloud-related projects is borne out by interviews with six of the
leading public cloud providers. All are hiring rapidly; all say talent
is now at a premium.
Tim James, director of recruiting for
Rackspace, mixes his metaphors a bit, but is absolutely clear about the
search for engineers. "We're in a war for talent. Talk to Amazon, or
LinkedIn, or Salesforce. We're all fishing from the same pond," he says.
Cloud skills forecast: Hot
How many jobs are out there? The lines between the
cloud,
big data,
SaaS,
and more conventional architectures are blurred, but you can get a
sense of the breadth of demand by looking at Dice, one of the largest
IT-oriented job boards.
As of August, there were 10,771 jobs in
six categories that Dice deems cloud-related, compared to 8,217 the year
before, an increase of 31 percent. A look at the categories that
comprise Dice's cloud set --
vCloud,
cloud, VMware, virtualization, Xen, and Hyper-V -- shows how hard it is
to get an accurate handle on demand, as some also pertain to
traditional IT data center consolidation and other skills, such as Linux
and Python. They're often cloud-related but not classified as such on
the job board.
Wanted Analytics, a Quebec-based firm that tracks employment statistics,
believes the market for cloud skills is even hotter.
The company counted advertisements appearing in April for 12,000
cloud-related IT jobs, an increase of 50 percent over 2011, and 275
percent over 2010. Talent in many areas is so tight it's taking weeks to
fill positions. In Seattle, the area with the most pressing labor
shortage, cloud-related jobs are going begging for an average of seven
weeks, Wanted Analytics reported. A third job service, Indeed.com, says
that jobs with the keyword "cloud" in its database jumped from 18,862 in
August 2011, to 31,998 in August 2012, an increase of 70 percent.
So
pervasive is the cloud or, in some cases, the idea of the cloud, that a
recent analysis of national help-wanted ads by Wanted Analytics found
cloud computing is now entering the job description of non-IT positions, including marketing managers, sales managers, customer service representatives, and even cargo and freight agents.
Consider the huge demand for IT hires at
Amazon Web Services, the largest public cloud provider.
AWS currently has "many hundreds" of openings related to cloud
computing. At other times, it's had upward of 1,000, says Adam Selipsky,
Amazon's VP of Web services.
Despite the high demand, salaries
are hardly exploding. The average salary in Dice's cloud listings is
$86,300, an increase of less than 6 percent in the past 12 months. That
tracks with research InfoWorld has done since the recession bottomed out
two years ago: IT departments are simply unwilling to let salaries
escalate too rapidly.
Cloud novice? No problem
Because
the cloud is relatively new, executives at most of the companies we
spoke with say that the right candidates don't necessarily have to have
extensive cloud experience. "A great software engineer is a great
software engineer. We believe in
hiring great talent," says Amazon's Selipsky. He looks for "
bright, talented, motivated people who are the right cultural fit. Those are the people who generally succeed."
More
specifically, Amazon is hiring software development engineers,
including some with experience deeper down in the stack for
infrastructure services and networking. Other hiring needs include
developers who can work with AWS's point-and-click management console.
That's
not to say that working in the cloud is the same as yesterday's
software job. "Cloud offerings are intrinsically a service. There's an
emphasis on high levels of availability, reliability, and service," says
Selipsky. If you can demonstrate that you've built something that meets
those requirements, Amazon and other providers want to talk to you.
Some of the jobs have titles new to IT. "Lately we have a push to hire devops,
a hybrid of an operations engineer who also does scripting,"
says Rackspace's James. "They are really systems engineers who work in a
development environment." Rackspace isn't the only company hiring
devops. On any given day, there are roughly 200 listings for devops on
Dice, the jobs board reports.
Since
Rackspace emphasizes its open approach,
it's not surprising that experience with Linux is high on James' list.
He's also looking for hands-on scripting experience with Python and
Ruby, as well as a thorough understanding of networking and DNS. What
languages are preferred? "In no particular order,
Java, C#, C++, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails," he says.
What
James, who has a decade and a half of experience as an IT recruiter,
doesn't want to see are developers who are overly loyal to a particular
language or platform. That was OK 10 years ago, but now "we want to see
candidates that are more well-rounded. In the cloud space the folks we
seek always want to be on the cutting edge."
Similarly, Stephens
says, "Guys used to be in silos -- Wintel, Linux, and so on. But with
converged infrastructure we want people who have a broader skill set."
In the software development space, it's fairly easy to find people with
.Net and Java experience. But because so much integration is involved,
Xerox needs engineers who go beyond heads-down coding and can grasp
enterprise service bus development, for example.
Thinking outside the software box
According
to Stephens, Xerox customers demand updates every "two weeks, not two
months," which is why the company now uses an agile development
methodology. "It's hard to find people who know it," he adds.
Also
hard to find are people who know how to turn a service into a product
-- a key component of any cloud provider's business model. That skill is
still so difficult to pin down that Xerox "grows its own," Stephens
says. Not coincidentally, the IBM engineer who was the object of a
bidding war had those skills, though Xerox ultimately dropped out of the
fight.
At Hewlett-Packard, which
recently launched a full OpenStack implementation
under the HP Cloud brand, engineers with deep systems-level experience
and those with high-performance computing skills are in demand, says
Matt Haines, HP's vice president of engineering for cloud services.
Scalability, obviously, is a major cloud issue, and people with
experience in that area are in demand, as well as those with what Haines
calls "core computing and storage" skills.
Like other cloud
executives, Haines emphasizes the need for team members who put aside
the traditional developer mentality -- that is, build software, ship it,
and move on to the next project. "You don't have the luxury of putting
heads down on a hard problem and do nothing else for five months. You've
got to have the ability to focus on a number of little things at the
same time."
And while developers have often been called on to
help with some support issues, particularly in the enterprise realm,
customer support as a developer function is even more critical in the
cloud and it moves much faster.
At Microsoft, for example, Azure
developers are on call to help customers, says Mark Russinovich, a
technical fellow with the Windows Azure group. "It's hard," he says, "to
get out of the [boxed software] frame of mind." But that's very much
the nature of the beast. For many developers, the speed and constant
creative challenge is what makes jobs in the cloud rewarding, but if
that pace is not to your taste, stay away from cloud providers.
How to get noticed by cloud hiring managers
IT
pros looking to make the leap may be wondering how to prove they're fit
for the cloud. Those thinking a pocketful of certifications will help
should think again. "Certifications have not caught up," says
Russinovich. "When you're developing for the cloud, it is your
background and skills that matter."
Russinovich does not make an
exception for security certifications, although some other cloud execs
believe security credentials are important. On the whole, though,
certifications are not a significant hiring factor for the cloud, and as
Foote partners has found in its regular surveys,
the overall value of certifications in IT has declined for years.
.Net,
Ruby, Python, Java, C#, and C++ are among the most sought-after
languages for development in the cloud. Expertise with both SQL and
NoSQL are in demand, as well as deep experience with Linux. Knowledge of
distributed systems and asynchronous distributed systems is a huge
plus, says Russinovich.
Assuming you have those skills or are
willing to learn them in a hurry, how do you get noticed? At
Salesforce.com, for instance, "the best thing you can do is have a
friend or relative who already works here," says Monika Fahlbusch, who
carries the title of senior vice president of employee success. Although
that may sound like nepotism, it isn't. Salesforce is paying good money
for people who can start producing immediately, so a recommendation
from a trusted employee gives hiring managers an extra degree of
confidence, she says.
Beyond the old boys and girls network,
Fahlbusch urges candidates to "flex their social muscles." Salesforce is
hardly the only company trolling for talent on Twitter, Facebook, and
LinkedIn, of course. Having a presence on those networks and others is
advice repeated by all of the cloud executives we spoke with.
Additionally,
contributing to open source projects like Hadoop will get you attention
at Hewlett-Packard, as will posting contributions on
GitHub, says HP's Matt Haines.
With
all this emphasis on moving functions to the cloud, it's reasonable to
wonder if enterprise jobs are being lost to cloud providers, in much the
same way routine IT jobs have been outsourced to India. So far, says
David Foote, that doesn't appear to be the case. "In the longer term,
they will," he adds.
Foote also advises IT hands who want to work
in the cloud not to wait too long. The gap between the supply and
demand for talent is wide now, but he figures it will close in 18 months
or so.
This story, "Looking for a great job in IT? The cloud is hiring," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in IT careers at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter."
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The bottom line is that the cloud computing sector is the fastest-growing sector in the IT market at present, and the best credentials to have are strong IT experience, an eagerness to learn and to innovate, and conspicuous intelligence. You can boost your "conspicuous intelligence" by becoming more extroverted, more articulate (get out the dictionary and the thesaurus!) and more engageable in the back and forth of brainstorming conversations.
p.s. I would strongly advise you to start circulating your commentary and your credentials on LinkedIn (my favorite) and other business-related social media. Conversations lead to connections which, in turn, lead to opportunities. Ironically, you've got to get your head out of the clouds to get into the cloud.
