The fortunes and future of many businesses will become increasingly tied to the robustness of their cloud strategy. Over the past few years, cloud technology has emerged as a critical capability for innovation and productivity. From the deployment of AI-powered customer service chatbots to the development of a new generation of vaccines, cloud technology is powering applications at the bleeding edge of digital transformation. A February 2021 analysis by McKinsey estimates that seizing the opportunities presented by cloud technology might be worth over a trillion dollars by 2030.
“In recent months, cloud technology has been gaining greater relevance in Europe, which was years behind the US in terms of adoption,” explains Andrea Del Miglio, senior partner and a leader in McKinsey Technology. “As a consequence, the competition for talent has intensified.” Across the continent, major corporations have been scaling up their cloud hire plans, Del Miglio says. “Throughout Europe, many companies’ investor relations communications show that they’re going to hire thousands of technical experts to reinforce their own cloud technical team,” he explains.
As many CIOs can attest, the scramble for top cloud engineers is intense, with companies having to compete for a pool of talent that is relatively small with the likes of US tech giants, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft. These tech leaders boast massive cloud capabilities and pay hyper-competitive salaries to attract the best and brightest.
Traditional companies can be successful finding and keeping cloud talent. What it requires, however, is more fundamental rethinking of how to reskill, retain, hire, and attract the best talent in the cloud.
Companies are looking more closely at the reskilling of a company’s existing IT workforce so as to develop cloud-specific competences. German software company SAP, for instance, orchestrated a vast upskilling programme of 20,000 employees—starting in 2017—with a view to equip them with cloud skills. “Many companies are launching upskilling and reskilling programmes, and it’s great—it’s one way to make the most out of the talented people you already have in the company,” Del Miglio says. To encourage broad participation in cloud upskilling programs, including for non-tech people, McKinsey’s experience has shown that companies should build in incentives, including mandatory and tailored cloud learning journeys, supported by individual performance evaluations. “But there are limits here too,” Del Miglio adds. In other words: most companies will still have to hunt for new talent.
Simply ponying up more money to lure star engineers away from Silicon Valley is unlikely to solve the problem. A more thoughtful approach to what these highly coveted professionals care about is necessary to win them over—a change all the more difficult given that in many businesses, the IT team is often far from the spotlight. “In some of the cloud companies, as a cloud engineer you are sitting at the centre of the business, you are very high profile, and you also get a lot of great tools at your disposal,” says McKinsey partner Thomas Delaet. “Whereas in many traditional companies, engineers often have to deal with more red tape and outdated technologies.” McKinsey research shows that nearly 95 percent of a business’ IT processes got in the way of cloud talent doing their jobs effectively.
Hence, the priority for a company looking for—and keeping—top cloud talent should be, says Delaet, optimizing the “developer experience”. In other words: a company needs to foster an experience where technology professionals can thrive and grow. Creating this environment boils down to providing your cloud engineers with the best tools, eliminating procedural flab that causes delays and frustration, and giving them greater autonomy and the most important work. The Dutch bank ING, which embraced a more fluid organizational structure that encourages the ownership of individual projects and employee empowerment, has earned dream-job status for European engineers.
Hand in hand with building a more developer-friendly culture is an overhaul of HR policies. Important changes include making the hiring process quicker (with the race for cloud tech talent now white-hot, each extra day of waiting can be a critical setback), finding ways to reward brilliant coders that do not entail moving them to managerial positions, and embracing flexibility and remote working. “Covid made everybody more aware that working from anywhere is possible,” Del Miglio says.
Another effective way of attracting cloud tech specialists is making sure “anchor hires” are in place: Coders and engineers who enjoy national or even international reputations. These tech luminaries are attractive to other talent because they want to work with and learn from the best. “If I’m a great engineer, and you hire me, I need to see that you have a couple of people in your company that I really look up to, because they are known in the community,” Delaet says.
The creation of such a developer-friendly culture might sound like a daunting task, but it is far from the preserve of tech giants or high-tech companies. Organizations will need to get creative about not just how they find cloud talent, but how they keep them happy and growing.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
