Good DevOps engineers are hard to find,DevOps ,DevOps Summit,Zurich Financial Services,Moneysupermarket.com,Thomson Reuters,skills,Recruitment<\/b>
Most organisations find it difficult to recruit people for DevOps. The role of DevOps engineer typically requires a mix of experience, technical ability and versatility that is rare and often comes with a high price tag.
Certainly it’s not about recruiting individuals purely for their skills, which may well be out of date within two years; it’s much more about their aptitude said Jim Davies, head of DevOps at Moneysupermarket.com, speaking on a panel at Computing ‘s DevOps Summit this week.
\u00ab\u00a0You’ll know the people in your organisation who are talented and interested,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0I used to look in recruitment agencies four years ago but they never had what I was asking for, someone who know networking and storage but could also write a mean Ruby script. \u00a0\u00bb
Instead of looking externally, Davies focused on building on the pockets of talent that existed in certain sections of Moneysupermarket’s IT team, such as the website engineers, and spreading their expertise further afield.
\u00ab\u00a0For smaller technology companies, T-shaped engineers [those with depth and breadth of experience] or E-shaped engineers [those able to execute on their plans] are the thing now,\u00a0\u00bb he said.
A short while ago the title \u00ab\u00a0DevOps engineer\u00a0\u00bb was scoffed at, but the panellists agreed that it is now a recognised role, and useful in that recruitment agencies know what to look for these days. Not everyone uses that label though.
\u00ab\u00a0We call them site reliability engineers,\u00a0\u00bb said Pritesh Devani, director of application engineering at Thomson Reuters .
\u00ab\u00a0We’ve tried recruiting externally but the market is really competitive. We haven’t been able to get the full wishlist of talent, so we’ve had to scope down a bit, but now we’re saying \u2018let’s develop our internal talent; they know the business and they have connections within the business, let’s develop them and get other talent externally from contractors when we need it’. \u00a0\u00bb
There is a high rate of churn among those with DevOps skills, particularly in India.
\u00ab\u00a0In Bangalore staff will stay for a few months then move on. That way they see their salary jump faster,\u00a0\u00bb Devani explained. For this reason, it is important to give employees something other than more money to tempt them to stay, Devani went on, because there is always someone who will offer them still higher pay. In order to keep staff motivated, Thomson Reuters worked on developing a culture of community and learning.
\u00ab\u00a0When we started with DevOps a couple of years ago we held internal ‘DevOps days’. We’d have other organisations come in to go over the benefits they’d found, we had solutions providers come in to tell us how their tools could help,\u00a0\u00bb said Devani.
Providing training on new tools is another good ploy, he went on, including encouraging self-education via online courses.
Rick Allen, head of delivery capability at Zurich Insurance, agreed.
\u00ab\u00a0You need something that creates a sense of community,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0That’s part of the reason to hire internally, because you hopefully build up some sort of organisational loyalty. We suffer a bit on the south coast because anyone north of Basingstoke goes north, and the money is better in the city of London. \u00a0\u00bb
Words count, he added, saying that Zurich uses the word \u2018council’ to give a sense of authority to the collaborative group of engineers.
\u00ab\u00a0The new stuff, the lighthouse projects, you have to make sure they don’t feel alone. And you need buy-in from the top because without that it’s going nowhere fast. \u00a0\u00bb
Allan is also a fan of the word DevOps.
\u00ab\u00a0It sounds new and sexy,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0Having something that sounds like it’s going forward, like it won’t be a cul-de-sac from a careers point of view, makes a big difference. \u00a0\u00bb
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