Tech Connects: Recent Episodes
Nick Kolakowski
Tech Connects is where technologists, executives, hiring managers, recruiters, and entrepreneurs all gather to discuss some of the biggest questions facing technology and technologists today, with a special focus on tech hiring and careers. We'll discuss everything from the current state of tech employment to how organizations are adjusting to the ever-changing future of tech work. Along the way, we'll provide the insight that recruiters and hiring managers need to understand, attract and create the right environments for tech candidates, while technologists will find information vital to building their dream careers.
Tech Connects is a production of DHI Group, Inc., the parent company of Dice.com.
Our next 'Tech Connects' guest is Steve Ramey, who’s CEO of IronGate Cybersecurity, a digital forensics and incident response company. I wanted to talk to Steve because he has some unique insights into the current cybersecurity market, including ways to address the current cybersecurity job gaps and train the next generation of cybersecurity pros. Let’s listen in!
I love talking to Steve because of his ability to break down something as complex as the current cybersecurity landscape. Here are some takeaways from our discussion that could help your own thinking:
First, businesses are facing a growing number of cyber attacks, but many are not prepared. They need expertise to respond to these threats, which means allocating a long-term budget and commitment to bulking up cyber-defenses. Cybersecurity is an ongoing process, not a one-time fix, and businesses need to prioritize it to stay secure.
Second, individuals with transferable skills and a willingness to learn can break into cybersecurity careers. There are online courses, communities, and free training platforms to help you gain the necessary skills. Highlighting leadership qualities and initiative on your resume will also make you stand out to potential employers.
Third, the future of cybersecurity is uncertain. Emerging technologies like quantum computing will create new security challenges. The industry is working on solutions, but continuous learning and adaptation will be essential for cybersecurity professionals.
We covered a whole lot of other topics during the episode, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our latest ‘Tech Connects’ guest is someone we’ve had on the show before: Tigran Sloyan, who’s the co-founder and CEO of CodeSignal, a startup that’s trying to improve technical hiring at every stage of the process. CodeSignal’s products aim to present candidates and hiring managers with questions relevant to real-world scenarios, backed by research.
During our last discussion, we chatted about the need to apply A.I. to training and education. Since then, generative A.I. has evolved even further, so I wanted to sit down with him again to chat about everything from internal skills training to the best ways to build a chatbot to how artificial intelligence could fundamentally impact education. Let’s jump in!
Any discussion that takes us from an examination of the Prussian educational system to the frontiers of A.I. is a good one in my book. Here are some additional takeaways from our discussion:
First, while generative A.I. is a revolutionary tool, people have mixed feelings about it, and there’s still some misunderstanding about the nature and capability of A.I. and large language models. Organizations everywhere need to consider educating their employees about the scope of this tech, as well as what it can and can’t do.
Second, even with generative A.I. changing how we work, tech professionals everywhere still need to understand the fundamentals of what they do, and why code works. If you’re writing programming-related prompts, you need to understand exactly what you’re asking for and how it’ll be incorporated into a larger project.
Third, generative A.I. may have a huge impact on training and education in future years. Pay attention to the rise of chatbots as tutors. If you’re a student or a junior technologist, this technology could radically change the ways you learn and keep your skills up-to-date.
We covered a whole lot of other topics during the episode, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our next guest is Adam Seligman, who’s VP of developer experience at Amazon Web Services, or AWS. In that role, he’s been relentlessly focused on making software more accessible to everyone, no matter what their level of development experience. I wanted to chat with him for a couple of reasons:
First, AWS is launching a portfolio of A.I.-powered helpers and tools for developers, which could fundamentally change how thousands of people build the software of tomorrow.
Second, there’s a whole new generation of tech professionals who are scoring their first roles as interns, junior developers, and more. Meanwhile, the tech industry is changing rapidly thanks to the evolution of A.I. and other technologies. Adam has some interesting insight into how these new techies can use A.I. to accelerate their problem-solving and early careers.
Here are some additional takeaways from our discussion:
First, generative AI is being used by a wide range of people, from skilled data scientists to early career interns. Whether you’re an experienced tech professional who wants to speed up their coding, or an intern still trying to figure out how to use the building blocks of technology, A.I. can make things a little easier by automating tasks and suggesting improvements.
Second, if you’re running a team or project, consider allowing your interns, junior developers, and other tech professionals just starting out to use A.I. It could allow them to solve some challenges faster.
Third, A.I. as a technology is here to stay. It’s helpful at this point to figure out how it’ll best integrate into your current workflow, whether that’s designing solutions, writing code, or debugging.
We covered a whole lot of other topics during the episode, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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We have a very special edition of Tech Connects this time around. Dice’s latest Tech Salary Report just dropped, and we’re talking to Art Zeile, CEO of DHI Group, the parent company of Dice, about the report’s takeaways.
When it comes to tech professionals and salary, we’re in a very interesting moment. Last year’s average tech salary was $111,193, down very slightly from $111,348 in 2022. That’s a significant difference from a few years ago, when the average salary rose 9 percent between 2019 and 2021. However, widespread cutbacks in tech spending, combined with mass layoffs in late 2022 and early 2023, put some pressure on salary growth.
But as we get into with Art, there are lots of “green shoots” of growth when it comes to salary, benefits, and more. For example, although compensation has stagnated somewhat in well-established tech hubs such as Silicon Valley and Seattle, it’s grown in up-and-coming tech centers such as Houston and San Diego.
Here are some other key takeaways from the report:
First, organizations will pay a premium for tech professionals who can build out on-premises and cloud infrastructure, especially when that infrastructure powers cutting-edge initiatives such as AI and data analytics. Keep that in mind as you consider which skills to learn next.
Second, PTO usage remained steady in 2023. This suggests more tech professionals recognize the need to take full advantage of their allotted time off. If your workplace has a great PTO policy, take advantage of it; your work-life balance is worth it.
Third, if you’re looking for areas with the fastest-growing salaries, it’s clear from the report that organizations will pay a premium for tech professionals who can build out on-premises and cloud infrastructure, especially when that infrastructure powers cutting-edge initiatives such as AI and data analytics.
We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Data is the lifeblood of organizations everywhere. On the latest episode of ‘Tech Connects,’ we’re speaking with Steven Hillion, SVP of data and A.I. at Astronomer, a company that helps clients manage their data pipelines. Astronomer is a commercial developer of Airflow, an open-source platform originally developed at Airbnb as a way for that tech giant to manage all of its data platforms and data pipelines.
During our chat, Hillion provides some key insights into so many of the data issues impacting companies today, from verifying the quality of data to fine-tuning the large language models (LLMs) that power the current generation of generative A.I. products.
If you’re someone who works with data—and increasingly, everyone’s working with data—you may draw some useful information from this episode. Here are some quick takeaways from the discussion:
First, it’s important to define ‘data quality.’ Is there consistency in your data sets? Is everyone comfortable with the sources, metrics, and outputs? Everyone in your organization should have confidence in your data and the insights you’re producing from it. Fortunately, there’s a variety of tools that allow you to manage and evaluate data quality.
Second, when it comes to A.I., it might be best to proceed with caution. Embrace the technology, sure, but also keep an eye on what others are doing. It’s early days for A.I., which means it’s difficult for everyone to find truly the right way forward. Within a year or two, Hillion thinks there will be reference architectures and implementations that will establish some guardrails for A.I. development; but until then, it’s important to be careful as you build and test your own A.I.-based solutions.
Third, if you’re interested in data science as a profession, you’ll need to learn a core group of skills, including (but definitely not limited to) Python—which Steven calls the lingua franca of a data scientist—SQL, machine learning, and statistics.
We covered a whole lot of other topics during the episode, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our latest ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Jeanne Cordisco, Chief People Officer of O’Reilly Media, which produces books, tech conferences, and an online learning platform for tech professionals who want to upgrade their skills. As CPO, she’s focused on how HR can tie a company’s “people strategy” to its broader objectives.
She’s advocated for HR to participate in the highest-level decision-making to ensure the right people are being hired and retained, because that ultimately determines how well a company carries out its strategy and delivers for its customers. Let’s listen in as we break down everything from how businesses can retain their tech professionals, to the role HR can play in a company’s broader strategy:
Here are just a few takeaways from our conversation:
First, if you’re a manager or involved in HR, it’s important to recognize that talented, highly-specialized workers have their pick of jobs—and they’ll leave for a new employer given the right motivations. You need to be very conscious about whether you’re providing a memorable, valuable experience to your employees—and that goes beyond just salary. For example, collaborative cultures, flexible schedules, and continuous learning can all persuade valuable employees to stay onboard your company.
Second, it’s important to talk to your reports and team members about career progression. Where does an employee want to go? What training do they need to get there? If a tech pro feels like their organization is committed to their growth, they’re far more likely to stay and deliver their best work.
Third, HR is often considered a support function. But HR needs to play a key role from the beginning in strategic planning. They need to take a company’s existing skills and resources into consideration, figure out where there’s a gap, and help formulate a plan to close that gap.
We covered a whole lot of other topics during the episode, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our latest ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Tigran Sloyan, who’s the co-founder and CEO of CodeSignal, a startup that’s trying to improve technical hiring at every stage of the process. CodeSignal’s products aim to present candidates with questions relevant to real-world scenarios, and hiring managers with questions supported by research. He also wrote a recent piece for Fast Company about the need to apply A.I. to training and education.
I wanted to talk to Tigran about a number of topics, from training and technical interviews to how the rise of A.I. will impact tech careers. Here are some quick takeaways from our chat:
First, anyone who’s hiring tech professionals must think about skills as more than just keywords on a resume. Tech professionals must be truly competent, which means knowing how any skill—whether it’s a programming language, knowledge of a framework, or something else—interacts with other elements throughout a tech stack and ultimately yields results.
Second, it’s important for the hiring process to actually simulate the job itself. It’s not enough to ask a candidate brainteasers or math problems copied off another website: you want to see how the candidate would handle the concepts and tools involved in the job itself. Think about that if you’re currently thinking through how to create a great hiring process.
Third, education works best when it’s personalized. A.I. could indeed help us create personalized learning tracks for all kinds of students. While that might raise some questions about the accuracy of what an A.I. is teaching people, you could presumably sidestep that through a system of checks, balances, and evaluations.
We covered a whole lot of other topics during the episode, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our latest ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Sastry Durvasula,who’s the CIO and Client Services Officer of TIAA, the huge provider of financial services for those in academia, government, medicine, and other fields. It has more than a trillion dollars under management. As you can imagine, the tech infrastructure supporting all of that is quite vast, and Durvasula has an enormous job. In addition, he’s also guiding the organization through a digital transformation that includes generative A.I. and other cutting-edge technologies. Let’s listen in as he describes what it takes to grow into and thrive in a senior technology role, and the big changes he’s helping shepherd at TIAA.
If you’re a tech professional who’s interested in climbing the ladder into a senior management position, I hope you learned something from Durvasula’s story. Here are some quick takeaways from our discussion.
First, if you want to move into a managerial role, much less take the CIO or CTO seat, you have to focus on people. When you’re running an organization’s tech, you’re going to be building and decommissioning platforms, and instituting and unwinding processes. There’s going to be constant re-engineering. If you want to get through all of that smoothly, you need to invest in people and help them grow, so that they’ll help you and your organization grow in turn.
Second, the higher up you climb in terms of your roles, the more you need to embed yourself in the core business. You need to understand a business’s domain, its culture, and its problems. Being a technology leader also means often being a business leader. That’s a pretty hard shift for some tech professionals, but if you want to make a real difference, you have to take charge and become another voice at the table.
Third, if you’re helping shape your company’s A.I. policy, it always pays to think “safety first.” Start by thinking about the guardrails that need to be put in place, and the ways you need to lock down your company’s data. Once you’ve thought all that through, you can put A.I. into production in a safe way.
We covered a whole lot of other topics during the episode, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our next 'Tech Connects' guest is Tariq Shaukat, who’s co-CEO of Sonar, a company devoted to enabling developers and other tech professionals to write cleaner code. Previously, he was president of Bumble, and before that, he was President of Google Cloud, where he was responsible for product, engineering, and much more.
I wanted to talk to Tariq because the software industry is at an inflection point. The rise of low- and no-code tools, along with code-writing chatbots like ChatGPT, could fundamentally alter software engineers and developers’ workflows, and even enable people without much coding experience to produce acceptable software. With its tools providing analysis and coding guidance, Sonar could help developers navigate this interesting new environment. Let’s listen in!
Here are some quick takeaways from our chat:
First, while the current generation of code generators—say that five times fast—is exciting, the practice of coding is going to need human attention for quite some time to come. There’s every chance that auto-generated code could introduce security, compliance, and other issues into your tech stack.
Second, across every industry, more and more companies are becoming “software” companies. Developers are more important than ever to a company’s strategy and outcomes. If you can build software in a reliable and secure way, you’ll find a plethora of opportunities in a wide variety of places—you don’t have to focus your job-hunting efforts exclusively on the tech industry.
Third, tools such as Sonar will likely lead to even more people within an organization generating code, even if they don’t come from a traditional tech background. If you’re in any kind of management or team leader position, keep that in mind as you plot workflows for your future products.
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Our next ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Ed Frederici, who’s CTO of Appfire, which is a company that builds apps that boost enterprise collaboration and workflows. He’s focused on ways to enhance the functionality of companies’ software ecosystems, especially if they’re trying to manage projects and services across multiple platforms and tools. That gives him fascinating insights into key issues such as automation, democratizing data, acquisitions, and knocking down internal silos so tech pros can work more effectively.
Here are some takeaways from the conversation with Frederici that I found particularly interesting:
First, it’s important to keep in mind that A.I. isn’t going to instantly solve all of your problems and challenges. As A.I. tools and services become more sophisticated, you should think of them as force multipliers, freeing up time and resources so you can focus on things that truly matter. It’s an enhancement for work, not a replacement.
Second, scaling up is a key goal at many tech companies. However, scale isn’t something you achieve purely though tools or even tactics—instead, it comes down to building an effective culture that allows you to recognize great opportunities and work toward them. You ultimately need people who are engaged, well-trained, and who know what they’re doing.
Third, siloing is a huge issue. A lack of transparency and an inability to share learnings and data can prevent teams and companies from achieving their goals. In the end, it comes down to the three ‘c’s: communication, coordination, and collaboration. If teams can effectively communicate, coordinate, and collaborate, those silo walls will come crashing down.
Fourth, if you’re going through an acquisition or acquihire, you can make a difficult process a little easier by assuming good intentions. Don’t let the uncertainties of the situation drive you completely insane. Instead, making a point of asking questions and doing your best to keep lines of communication open.
We covered a whole lot of other topics during the episode, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our latest ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Ben Marx, who’s Director of Software at True Anomaly, a startup focused on space-based security and sustainability. Their current projects include Jackal, an autonomous orbital vehicle that can swoop close to other satellites and carry out surveillance imaging, as well as a new manufacturing facility in Colorado. As you’ll hear during our discussion, Ben has deep experience in software, which comes in useful when you’re trying to write code for something zooming around orbit—there’s not a lot of room for error, as you can imagine.
There’s a lot of buzz around space lately, and I was really curious about what it takes for software developers and tech pros to break into this rapidly evolving arena. Let’s break it down with Ben!
Here are some takeaways from the conversation with Ben that I found particularly interesting.
First, you’ll remember Ben mentioned he studied philosophy and economics, worked at a number of different startups, and experimented with different fields before finding his way to coding in the context of space. For software developers and other tech professionals out there, his experience just goes to show that your skills and experience can translate into many different fields—it’s all a question of what interests you.
Second, if you’re managing a complicated software project, it’s important to evaluate languages and tools in the context of what you need done. For example, Ben chose Elixir for True Anomaly’s space applications because it’s fault-tolerant, scalable, low latency, and more. Even if you’re new to a particular industry and you feel like you’ve been thrown into the deep end, you know how languages and tools work, and you can build your success off that.
Third, if you’re tasked with helping to develop an internal software culture, keep two things in mind. First, don’t be afraid to be expressive and speak up about what you think is working well (and not so well). Second, it’s important to know when to say ‘no.’ Sometimes you need to turn something down or go in another direction in order to succeed. Saying ‘no’ can save a lot of time and effort.
We covered a whole lot of other topics, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed.
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Our next guest is Jeff Spector, who’s co-founder and president of Karat, a cloud-based platform for technical interviewing. Karat conducts technical interviews on behalf of companies, making sure to align the interview process with the client’s needs. It’s designed to help companies rapidly scale their technical interviewing and, ultimately, their hiring.
I wanted to talk to Jeff because Karat recently released its latest hiring trends report, which offers a ton of insight into how tech leaders are approaching hiring right now. What are companies using to source their candidates, and how are they valuing the engineers they bring aboard? Let’s jump into the discussion!
It’s always interesting to take a top-level view of the tech industry, particularly the hiring aspect of it. Here are some quick takeaways from the discussion with Jeff:
First, when companies talk about employees that add significant value, they’re often referring to those who can solve very difficult tasks using their combination of skills and experience. These valuable employees often have a very deep understanding of a specific space. But there are also employees who are very good team members, who use their soft skills to make those around them more effective. When you’re hiring, you can adjust your hiring process to try to find employees who have some combination of these abilities.
Second, some companies are moving away from referrals as a way to source talent. This can open the door to companies creating more inclusive teams, because it opens the door to drawing talent from all sorts of places. While steering away from referrals might mean it takes longer to make a higher, it could also result in stronger teams.
Third, even though there’s a lot of chatter right now about how A.I. will impact the hiring process, it’s intensely important that human beings remain in the hiring loop. While A.I. could run a coding challenge or evaluate a technical answer to a question, you ultimately need human recruiters and hiring managers to figure out whether a candidate will fit in with the team, for example, or possess the ability to talk through concepts in an easy-to-understand way.
And that’s it, folks! Thanks for listening in. We covered a whole lot of other topics during the episode, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our latest guest is Lisa Gevelber, who’s Google’s CMO of the Americas and the founder of Grow with Google. If you’re unfamiliar with Grow with Google, it’s an initiative to give tech pros—and aspiring tech pros—the training, tools, and resources they need to grow their tech skills and land great jobs. Grow with Google has produced career certificates in data analytics and other industry specializations, which tech professionals can use to stand out in a crowded field of applicants when applying for jobs.
Let’s listen in as Lisa and I talk about Grow with Google, the program’s most popular certificates, how tech skills programs can boost diversity, employers’ desperate need for tech specialists, and much more!
No matter where you are in your career, learning new skills is absolutely vital. Here are some key takeaways from our discussion with Lisa:
First, as Lisa said, only a third of Americans have a four-year college or university degree. So, there’s a huge gap out there between what people are capable of doing and the jobs they can access. Certification and training programs can potentially close this gap. If you’re a tech professional or an aspiring one who’s strapped for time and resources, consider whether obtaining certs and training can open up job opportunities to you.
Second, data analytics is hot. Tons of organizations all over the country are increasingly mining their datasets for strategic insights, and they need tech professionals who are capable of storing, securely moving, and analyzing that data. If you’re looking into tech, consider a data-centric career.
Third, if you’re in the market for a tech job, keep in mind that durable skills are always key. Durable skills include problem solving, critical thinking, communication, and others. Before you head into a job interview, make sure you have some stories prepared about how you’ve used problem solving and critical thinking to move past challenges and help projects succeed. Recruiters and hiring managers will weigh such things just as much as your technical skills.
And that’s it, folks! Thanks for listening in. We covered a whole lot of other topics during the episode, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our next guest is Dylan Etkin, CEO and co-founder of Sleuth, a company that helps engineering teams measure and improve their efficiency. If you’ve used JIRA, the application that allows teams to manage projects and keep track of bugs and other issues, you’re already familiar with Dylan’s work, as he was the lead developer on JIRA for five years. He was also head of development and operations teams for Bitbucket, which I’m sure many of you are familiar with.
In other words, Dylan is uniquely positioned to provide some fascinating insights into making engineering teams more efficient, how development teams can make great decisions that take everyone’s views into account, and much more. Let’s listen in!
Here are some key takeaways from our discussion:
First, there’s a growing realization that engineering is a combination of the creative and the scientific. It’s not about how many lines of code you write or how many features you ship within a particular quarter; sometimes, the most effective developer or engineer on the team is the one who only writes a few lines of code after thinking very carefully for days or even weeks. As you figure out your team’s deliverables, KPIs and measures of efficiency, you need to think carefully about what actually matters in terms of goals and measurements, and plan accordingly.
Second, when it comes to project management, automation will only get better. In theory, project management tools will allow teams to hand off more monitoring and management processes to an algorithm, allowing them to focus more on important work. And that’s a good thing! But as we pursue automation, we need to be careful to make sure the proper “guardrails” are in place so that automation doesn’t mess up processes or make things overly complicated.
Third, it seems like big tech companies such as Meta are embracing efficiency and trying to take away layers of management. Across the tech industry, it’s all about smaller teams, fewer managers, and more individual contributors. As Dylan says, this is going to be an interesting experiment over the next few years. Do you really need a thick layer of middle management? How many managers are too much? And should managers actually be coding, or devoting all of their energies to actually running teams?
We covered a whole lot of other topics, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our next guest is Ted Hellmuth, founder and general manager of IQ Clarity, a talent acquisition and sourcing company based in Colorado. Ted has spent fifteen years helping companies throughout the state find solutions to their tech talent needs. Prior to that, he was a talent acquisition consultant for Comcast/NBCUniversal.
Given his current focus and background, I was really in interested in talking with Ted about the current state of the tech hiring market, how he sees the road ahead, and what companies can do to ease their sourcing issues.
Here are some brief takeaways from our chat:
First, the tech industry experienced a hiring surge during the pandemic. Now there are a lot of new macroeconomic factors in play, which are causing some companies to cut back on tech hiring even as others try to grab all the talent they can. But the net result is that it’s still a challenging hiring environment for companies, and they’ll still need to fight to secure the best tech professionals.
Second, numerous industries are interested in hiring lots of tech talent, including healthcare, entertainment, and manufacturing. Many organizations in these industries are increasingly curious about cutting-edge tech such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. If you’re a tech pro with specialized skills, don’t be afraid to cast a wide net—you could find some interesting opportunities in a whole new industry. For recruiters and hiring managers, landing talent is more than just offering high salaries—you’ll need to convince tech pros that they’ll find the right mix of benefits, perks, and purpose at your company.
Third, culture is extremely important when it comes to convincing tech candidates to join your company. It’s also a really difficult thing to get right. Companies need to define their culture, then figure out the best way to promote it via the channels available to them. If you can show a tech candidate that your company culture aligns with their own values, you’ll have a higher chance of hiring them.
We covered a whole lot of other topics during this episode, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Hello, and welcome to Tech Connects, Dice’s podcast where we dig into the topics on tech hiring, recruiting and careers that matter to you! I’m your host, Nick Kolakowski, and I’m going to talk to great guests every month about the current state of the tech careers world, including the tech job market, the hottest tech skills, what companies are doing to attract and retain technologists in a historically tight market, and much, much more.
Our latest guest is Mark Chaffey, who’s the CEO of Hackajob, which is attempting to upend the tech job market. With the traditional job hunting model, tech professionals apply for jobs. But with Hackajob, everything is inverted: companies must apply for tech professionals whose skills and experience match what they need.
It’s a fascinating idea, and the experience of spinning up Hackajob has given Chaffey some key insights into the tech job market at the moment. We’re going to discuss everything from the current state of tech hiring, to the most in-demand tech skills, to the potential impact of generative A.I. on the job market. Let’s get to it!
Here are a couple of quick takeaways from our discussion that could help you out as you negotiate the job market.
First, despite all the headlines about layoffs, companies are still having a hard time finding the tech professionals they need, especially when it comes to sourcing specialized talent. That makes some companies desperate, and more likely to spam candidates who might not fit their requirements. If you’re a manager or team leader on the hunt for talent, it’s worth taking a considered, careful approach to your sourcing—you may need a bit more time to fill the position, but the odds are higher you’ll find the right candidate for the job.
Second, A.I. is going to have an impact on hiring. But it’s going to be quite some time, if ever, before automation can potentially take over recruiting and hiring entirely—job candidates want the human touch, and it’s up to companies to provide that.
Third, there’s a lot of chatter out there about how A.I. will impact how tech professionals do their jobs. We’re already starting to see the effects of this, but it could take years—if not decades—for the impact of generative A.I. to fully play out. And while automation may eliminate some jobs, there’s every chance it could end up creating quite a few more, different ones.
Which leads us to the fourth and last point: soft skills such as communication and empathy matter just as much as technical skills. If you’re out on the job market right now, take the time to emphasize your soft skills in your resume, application materials, and job interviews—it could really set you apart from other candidates.
We covered a whole lot of other topics during this episode, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our latest guest is Shadi Rostami, who’s VP of engineering at Amplitude, which builds a unified data analytics platform, among other products. She’s built and run engineering teams and spearheaded the development of products and services incorporating Big Data, cloud computing, and much more. That background gives her spectacular insight into the rise of “data democratization,” which is the ability for employees throughout the organization to gather and analyze data without much training or assistance from data scientists, data analysts, and other experts.
Lots of companies over the years have pledged to design tools and platforms to make data democratization more of a mainstream thing, and I’m wondering about the current state of those efforts—is data democratization gaining momentum, or is there still much work to be done? Is it possible to make an entire organization data literate? And how does that change the jobs of data scientists and other experts?
If you’re interested in analyzing data for crucial insights, it’s more important than ever to be aware of how the push for data democratization and literacy are changing organizations of all sizes. Here are some key takeaways from our chat with Shadi:
First, as companies collect and analyze more data, there’s more pressure on data analysts and scientists to deliver results for the organization. This results in the “data breadline” in which employees are lining up for their local data expert’s precious time and expertise. It’s not necessarily a sustainable system, which is why many companies are actively trying to figure out how to best give their employees the tools and datasets they need to perform effective data analysis.
Second, companies need to walk something of a tightrope when it comes to empowering their workers and making them data literate. You can’t just throw raw data at someone untrained in analytics and expect them to mine crucial insights; but you also can’t just give them a dashboard and expect them to understand what’s going on. Easy-to-use tools for self-serve data analytics, combined with strategic help from data scientists, can go a long way toward helping an organization succeed on the data front.
Third, effective data analysis is also a result of a company’s culture. It’s not just about hiring the right data experts and signing up for the right tools; companies need to really think about practices and culture around data, and how to make sure everyone in the organization is best served by the processes in place. It means that data experts and their company need to examine usage metrics and pause to analyze results. A good feedback loop will ensure everyone is getting what they need.
We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our next guest is Tony Chan Carusone, who’s a Professor at the University of Toronto and CTO of Alphawave Semi, a tech company pushing forward a number of cutting-edge initiatives, including the design of custom silicon for artificial intelligence, hyperscale datacenters, and much more. Tony thinks the semiconductor industry faces a number of key challenges that will need to be solved over the next several years and decades, including a desperate need to grow the talent pipeline of tech professionals who specialize in all the various processes related to chip creation.
According to one recent report by Deloitte, the semiconductor industry will be short 1 million employees by 2030. And when you think about the centrality of chips to everything we do everyday, you realize that potential lack of talent is a critical issue. Let’s listen in as Tony breaks down both the current industry and solutions for the future.
Chips are so pervasive in our everyday lives, powering everything from our smartphones to our cars and appliances, that sometimes it’s easy to forget they’re even there. So it’s illuminating to talk to Tony because he illustrates just how central chips are to everyday life—and how quickly the semiconductor industry is evolving in new, interesting ways.
Here are a couple of other takeaways from our discussion:
First, if you’re interested in a tech career, think seriously about semiconductors, especially if you’re interested in hardware and electronics. You’ll have a real chance at making a huge difference in peoples’ lives if you help advance the semiconductor industry forward.
Second, the semiconductor industry is speeding up. As Tony mentioned, there are open source tools that enable microchip design. There are startups trying to create custom silicon for next-generation functions such as artificial intelligence. There’s a lot of opportunity there for anyone to have an impact and contribute critical ideas, even just out of school. If you want to break into the field, gaining a solid foundation in math and science is critical; from there, there are lots of pathways to specialize in different aspects of the field.
Third, the semiconductor industry will remain absolutely critical for a long time to come, but even with the attention devoted to building up a talent pipeline, there’s every chance that demand for tech pros will sustain well into the future. Keep an eye on how this field is evolving; it could make a good long-term play for your tech career.
We covered a whole lot of other topics, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our next guest is Kathryn Minshew, the CEO and founder of The Muse, a website devoted to providing jobs, coaching, and advice to the next generation of job seekers. The site’s content covers everything that job candidates need to succeed in a dynamic and often uncertain job environment, from common interview questions to the need for soft skills to overcoming imposter syndrome.
Her position gives Kathryn extraordinary insight into the job market at the moment. Let’s listen in as we talk about everything from the current economic environment to remote work to finding purpose in your job.
As you'll hear during the podcast, there’s a lot of reason for optimism out there. The news headlines seem focused on layoffs and the possibility of a recession, but companies are still hungry for talent, and job candidates have a lot of opportunities out there.
Here are a few takeaways from our discussion:
First, even though there are widespread fears of an economic recession, job candidates still expect to be able to vocalize their preferences and have their top priorities met. Many of them want a sense of purpose and an opportunity for growth. That means companies still need to provide the benefits, perks, and mission that candidates want.
Second, employees aren’t willing to stick in a job they hate, especially if they have highly specialized skills that make them valuable. Many employees are experiencing “shift shock,” where a new job’s reality doesn’t match up to their expectations going in; some 72 percent of those surveyed by The Muse had experienced this phenomenon at some point. To avoid this kind of mismatch, companies must be honest, accurate, and straightforward about company culture and what they’re offering candidates.
Third, if you’re a tech professional (or any other kind of worker) on the job hunt, take the time to do a personal inventory and figure out your career priorities. For example, do you want a position that allows you to engage in deeply focused work, or do you want to work constantly with a team? Are you willing to sacrifice a chance at higher compensation in order to work for a particular cause? Once you perform that sort of breakdown, you can get a better sense of the moves you need to make to have a truly fulfilling career.
And that’s it folks! We covered a whole lot of other topics, of course, so give it a re-listen if there was something you missed. We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our guest today is Sethu Meenakshisundaram, co-founder of Zluri, an SaaS management startup that offers ways for companies to make their SaaS spend more efficient. Like many co-founders and CEOs right now, Sethu is gearing up to welcome a new group of interns into his company’s offices, and I thought it’d be great to talk through how companies can find interns who match their culture and priorities, what potential interns should look for as they pursue opportunities, and how tech teams can ensure that interns access a company’s data in a safe and secure way.
Here are some key takeaways from our discussion:
First, if you’re an executive or team leader who’s hiring interns, keep in mind that interns want enriching experiences. If you’re committed to just having your interns do grunt work, chances are good the relationship won’t fully work for either you or them.
Second, companies should be prepared for their legions of interns. That means ensuring that interns can do meaningful work without inadvertently causing chaos. Review with your team what you need to do to ensure that everyone accessing company data does so in a safe, informed way, for example.
Third, keep an eye on your driven and engaged interns—they might end up becoming some of your best full-time employees.
And with that, we’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our next guest is Sachin Gupta, who is the CEO and Co-Founder of HackerEarth. We’ve had Sachin on the show before, and he’s always great at providing insights into the tech industry and how companies are hiring. A developer by trade, Sachin is passionate about the developer community and ensuring every developer is connected with the right opportunity.
During this episode, we’re going to dig into the current must-have skills, how tech recruiting has changed in the post-pandemic period, the best ways to survive a technical interview, and much more. Let’s listen in!
As Sachin mentions during our chat, the tech industry is experiencing a bit of turbulence at the moment. However, there’s still a widespread hunger for technology professionals, especially those who have mastered key skills such as blockchain, data science, and machine learning. By keeping your skills up-to-date and becoming comfortable with organizations’ hiring processes, you stand a good chance of landing a life-changing job interview.
Here are some other takeaways:
First, some of the biggest of the big tech companies have laid off thousands of workers, and some tech startups are having trouble getting funding. Nonetheless, multiple organizations across a broad swath of industries continue to hire aggressively. Sachin believes that much of the tech industry will rebound, as well, once we’re past all the turbulent events of the past few quarters, such as rising interest rates.
Second, there’s continuing interest among developers in cutting-edge technologies such as blockchain and machine learning. For example, even though the cryptocurrency industry has undergone some spectacular meltdowns, there are still significant business applications for the blockchain such as smart contracting. Staying aware of the latest, most cutting-edge tech can only benefit you.
Third, depending on the roles you’re applying for, chances are good you’ll face a technical interview of some sort. While these technical interviews are potentially intimidating, it’ll be okay so long as you follow some basic steps. Take as much time as possible to prepare, including reviewing the fundamentals of your particular specialization. Also, hiring managers and recruiters might be more forthcoming than you think about the contents of a technical interview; feel free to ask them about what any assessment will actually include in terms of concepts and tools.
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Our next guest is Errol Pierre, who’s a healthcare executive, professor, public speaker and author. He is a Senior VP at one of the most notable healthcare nonprofits in New York, and was previously COO at Empire BlueCross BlueShield. His recent book, “The Way Up,” breaks down how underrepresented groups from all walks of life can grow to their full potential and climb up the corporate ladder. He’s also a huge advocate for mentoring, and I wanted to speak with him about how mentorship had changed his life, and how anyone can use a mentor to achieve their goals.
It’s fascinating to talk to Errol because he’s thought so deeply about mentorship and how it can impact careers. Here are a few things to keep in mind if you’re seeking a mentor, or if you’re a tech pro who feels ready to mentor others who are earlier in their career.
First, it’s important for a mentor and mentee to have chemistry. If you’re seeking a mentor, make sure what they’re saying really resonates with you, and that you feel at ease while talking with them. As you deepen your relationship, your mentor may come to you with issues and questions of their own; take the time to listen and give them the best possible advice.
Second, you’re not going to have one mentor (or mentee) throughout your career. People grow and evolve, and you should pause to evaluate your mentoring relationship every so often. It’s perfectly normal to move on if you feel it’s time—but make sure to never lose touch with someone who’s helped you so much.
Third, you’re always potentially ready to mentor someone, just as long as you can devote the proper time and resources to the relationship. You don’t need to be a CEO or CTO to help someone along in their career; if you’re able to answer their questions and help them navigate at least some professional issues, you can mentor.
And with that, we’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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The next episode of the Tech Connects podcast is here! Every month, we have great guests who share their expertise about the current state of the tech careers world, from the hottest tech skills to the state of the tech hiring market to what companies are doing to retain and attract top talent.
Our latest ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Josh Millet, who’s founder + CEO of Criteria, which builds assessments and tools so that organizations can make objective, evidence-based talent decisions. When done right, good assessments should drive great hiring outcomes while reducing bias. But how do you create a truly objective assessment? How can companies adjust their hiring processes to boost hiring successes and retention while reducing turnover? Let’s listen in!
Even under ideal circumstances, hiring is a tricky and stressful process for pretty much everybody involved, so it’s interesting to talk to people like Josh who are trying to revolutionize the process. Here are some key takeaways from our discussion:
First, any company can set up a hiring process that minimizes the potential for bias, especially if they focus on a structured and rigorous process based around the job’s objective aspects. For example, the tools and languages involved in software engineering. Quantifiable assessments and an evidence-based approach can help organizations hire the most effective talent.
Second, even though offices are opening back up, many organizations have embraced the idea of doing at least some hiring interviews via video. As Josh explained, many are doing the initial interview over Zoom, then moving to in-person for the final interviews. For managers and tech professionals, that means maintaining and perfecting both your video and in-person interviewing skills.
Third, there’s a growing movement behind using assessments to inform growth, development, and teambuilding. If you’re a manager and you’re concerned about your team’s morale, consider an assessment-based approach to evaluating their happiness and willingness to leave.
We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Hello, and welcome to Tech Connects, Dice’s podcast where we dig into the topics on tech hiring, recruiting and careers that matter to you! I’m your host, Nick Kolakowski, and I’m going to talk to great guests every month about the current state of the tech careers world, including the tech job market, the hottest tech skills, what companies are doing to attract and retain technologists in a historically tight market, and much, much more.
Our next guest is Nick Durkin, field CTO of harness.io, where he’s responsible for the organization's worldwide field engineering team, post-sales engineering team, and a portion of product. Harness.io leverages artificial intelligence to streamline core DevOps processes, which gives him key insights into how automation is changing the nature of work for tech professionals everywhere. Let’s listen in as we talk about all things A.I., ChatGPT, and developers.
There’s been a lot of chatter lately about how A.I.-powered tools like ChatGPT can potentially impact software developers and other tech professionals. Some of this chatter is really negative, with developers fearing that chatbots will eventually take their jobs.
It’s fascinating to talk to Nick because he’s so positive about the effects of automation on software developers, especially their workflows. As he said, technology like this has the potential to eliminate some of the worst parts of your job.
As A.I. and chatbots become more sophisticated, it’s also important to keep in mind that machines can’t replicate human creativity and ingenuity. Even the best chatbot can’t make the same intuitive leaps as an experienced engineer when confronted with a particularly difficult challenge. If you want to truly future-proof your career, focus on skills like management, problem-solving, and strategizing.
That way, even if these A.I. tools gain the ability to execute on even more complex tasks, you’ll still prove vital when it comes to completing projects and moving your organizations forward. Plus, there’s always an upside: A.I. might free up more hours for you to focus on what really matters to you.
We’ll see you next time—and remember, Dice is your best resource to find the tech talent you need to fill your open roles, and for technologists, the best place to grow your tech career.
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Our guest today is Kaitlyn Albertoli, who’s CEO and co-founder of Buzz Solutions, which uses predictive analytics, A.I., and other cutting-edge technologies to inspect and evaluate the power grid. This is critical work, as power companies need this kind of data for everything from anticipating power outages to ensuring we can modernize the power grid and make it “smarter.”
It’s always fascinating to see how technologies like predictive analytics can not only be used to tackle intense, real-world problems, but to also update the aging, often antiquated systems that we depend upon for so many things. As Kaitlyn says during our chat, it’s going to be fascinating to see what happens over the next five to ten years as these technologies mature and end up applied to different industries.
Here are some other quick takeaways from our talk:
First, if you’re interested in launching a startup, take the time to identify the pain points in the market, and whether your idea is a real solution that can solve that pain.
Second, it’s still very early days for artificial intelligence and machine learning. If you’re in a business where you’re dealing with people who are unfamiliar with A.I. and its potential, take the time to educate them on how it works. By walking them through the strengths and weaknesses of the technology, you’ll get them onboard with your plans for using it.
Third, whatever your industry, a real key to success is effectively analyzing data. Without analytics, you’ll have a harder time achieving tactical and strategic goals, especially over the long term.
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We have a very special edition of Tech Connects this time around. Dice’s latest Tech Salary Report just dropped, and we’re talking to Art Zeile, CEO of DHI Group, the parent company of Dice, about the report’s takeaways.
When it comes to tech professionals and salary, we’re in a very interesting moment. For example, the Report revealed that average tech salaries trended upward, increasing 2.3 percent to $111,348… and yet tech professionals are more dissatisfied with their salaries year-over-year. What’s behind that dissatisfaction, and how can budget-crunched companies overcome it if they can’t actually offer higher salaries?
We’ll also dig into the layoffs at some of tech’s largest companies and how that contrasts with the low tech unemployment rate, the technologies that could define the industry in coming years, the nature of digital transformation, and much more. Let’s listen in!
Our guests are Jacob Little, Glassdoor Senior Head of People Experience and DEI, and Stuart McCalla, Evolution Managing Partner. I was interested in speaking with them because of their deep backgrounds in DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), particularly in how DEI programs can potentially improve a company’s internal diversity and culture.
Back in 2020, Glassdoor noticed that users were joining companies that had high ratings on its platform, but once they arrived at their new employer, they found an unwelcoming environment. Glassdoor then partnered with Evolution, a coaching, culture, and leadership development firm, on a two-pronged mission: to boost DEI within Glassdoor, and to better infuse DEI principles into the platform itself. It was a complicated mission that produced some interesting results.
Here are some key takeaways from our discussion with Jacob and Stewart:
First, DEI impacts everyone. Team leaders, project managers, and even C-suite executives might think they only need to be good at engineering products or making sure teams hit deadlines, but leadership is ultimately about having the skill and fluency to recognize diversity. You need to absorb and respond to peoples’ individual experiences and culture—if you can’t do that, you’re going to have issues with retention, and your best and brightest will walk right out the door.
Second, a formulaic approach to DEI just won’t cut it. You need to make sure that team members respond to DEI initiatives on an emotional level. That way, they’ll truly internalize what the organization is trying to teach. It’s more than just KPIs.
Third, DEI succeeds when it’s working on three levels: the individual, the collective, and the systemic. You have to make sure that issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion are being addressed on every possible level, from the c-suite on down.
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Our guest today is Anand Subbaraj, who’s the CEO of Zuper. Anand and his team build software that helps companies manage their field services. If you’ve ever had the plumber, electrician, or cable guy over to fix something, you might not have any idea about the amount of complicated tech that goes into ensuring they get to your door on time. With clients like Ikea, Zuper is also exploring how to use automation and pattern detection to make these kinds of everyday services even better.
I personally had no idea about the amount of tech that went into some kinds of field operations, but when you think about it, it makes perfect sense: whether you have a dozen or a couple thousand people in the field, their tasks and movements can quickly become exponentially complex.
Zuper is also just one example of how automation and ‘real time’ artificial intelligence (A.I.) are permeating pretty much every industry in a number of unexpected ways. No matter where you work—or what you’re working on—pay attention to how automation, machine learning, and pattern recognition could impact even the smallest parts of your daily workflow.
Michael Schutzler is the CEO of Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA), a consortium of 1,000 tech companies working together to build a robust, equity-centered tech sector that empowers thriving communities. A 30-year industry veteran, Schutzler has keen insight into how Washington State, one of the nation’s original and largest tech hubs, has evolved over the decades—and where it might go in the future.
In addition to talking about the factors influencing the growth of tech hubs at the moment, we’re also going to delve into remote work, the ways in which factors like the cost of living can seriously impact a tech community, and much more.
If you work in tech, you know that Seattle, Bellevue and other cities are synonymous with tech innovation and some of the biggest names in the industry, including Microsoft and Amazon. Washington State’s tech scene also has some valuable takeaways for other tech hubs across the country.
First, tech hubs, especially those on the rise, need to provide a reasonable cost of living for technology professionals and others. There also needs to be an attractive culture—people want to live and work in places that are fun.
Second, tech hubs and centers of innovation can spring up in all sorts of circumstances. We might be heading into a recessionary environment at the moment, but that’s when many technology professionals decide to strike out on their own and finally get their startup off the ground. If you have enough startups in the area, founders can connect with each other and with talent, and create a meaningful community.
Third, while tech hubs remain vibrant places, companies have discovered that an openness to remote and hybrid work can unlock a sizable talent reservoir. If you’re trying to put together a team of tech professionals, especially specialized ones, don’t discount how offering a remote job can help you land the talent you need.
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Dominique Bastos, senior vice president at Persistent Systems, is a cloud expert and three-time founder. We’re going to cover some key issues critical to companies of all sizes, including modernization and digital transformation, migrating to the cloud, and the need for diversity on teams.
Modernization and digital transformation are obviously huge endeavors with a lot of moving parts. It’s a challenge even for the biggest and most well-funded enterprises. So it’s great to talk to someone like Dominique that has a substantial grasp on it. We covered a lot in that conversation, but here are just a few key takeaways:
First: Startups have trained consumers to expect that companies will evolve, react, and adapt quickly. Digital transformation and modernization allows the biggest companies—some of which aren’t used to moving at speed—to accelerate their businesses and leap to meet consumers’ expectations.
Second: Any company undergoing digital transformation needs to ensure there are solid lines of communication and transparency. Expectations also need to be set, and there needs to be top-down support from the highest levels. Otherwise, such a complex effort may grind to a total halt.
Third: Diversity in teams is crucial. Although there’s been progress in diversifying engineering and other teams, there’s still much to be done. Adding other perspectives to the mix is crucial, because end users expect a product—whether it’s a service or app or anything like that—to reflect their world and needs.
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Our guest today is Saad Siddiqui, who’s General Partner at Telstra Ventures, a San Francisco-based strategic growth firm. He invests in HR tech companies such as Certn and Forage, which gives him some unique insights into talent acquisition, how technology impacts onboarding and training, and the future of work itself. He also previously served as an executive at Informatica and Cisco.
Here are some key points from the discussion:
First, the rise of remote and hybrid work is giving companies a lot more flexibility. It’s now potentially easier to recruit on a national and international basis, as well as find the right talent. But even though there are more opportunities to find the right candidates, a company needs its hiring, onboarding, training, and workplace arranged so that new employees can integrate into the company as smoothly as possible.
Second, a lot of workers miss the ability to collaborate in-person within an office. That’s a key reason why many technology professionals prefer hybrid work, where they go back to their offices a few days per week. Many companies are working on how to bring the collaboration, camaraderie, and spontaneity of the office to a virtual environment, in a way that’s not just giving a thumbs-up on Slack. Keep an eye on what tech companies are doing to make remote work more personable.
Third, startups are also trying to figure out how to help businesses manage rising employee costs such as healthcare. With inflation and other factors leading to rising prices, keep an eye on how emerging companies are trying to make company spending more efficient.
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Our guest today is Kevin Kelly, Director of Cloud Career Training Programs at Amazon Web Services. Those programs include AWS Academy and AWS re/Start, which collaborate with higher education institutions, non-profits, and government organizations to assist students launch into cloud careers. AWS re/Start is a part of Amazon’s commitment to provide 29 million people around the world with access to free cloud computing skills training by 2025.
As you’re about to hear, Kevin is on a mission to help close the cloud IT skills gap, which is growing year by year despite companies and schools dedicating enormous resources to training. We’re going to cover everything from the cloud as a growth industry, to the kind of knowledge technology professionals need to succeed in the cloud space, to whether certifications can have an impact on your cloud career.
Here are some additional key takeaways from the chat:
First, the cloud remains a growth industry. Whether they realize it or not, an incredible number of workers in virtually every industry rely on the cloud in some way. That’s helping drive the demand for those with cloud skills, and it means those who have cloud skills—and keep them up-to-date—will have lots of professional opportunities far into the future. If you can deploy, test, and maintain projects in the cloud, you’re valuable.
Second: In order to be an effective cloud professional, it helps to have a working understanding of compute, storage, network, database, and security. From there, things get a bit more complicated. For example, knowing what object storage is and how it operates in the context of the cloud, or immutable storage if you’re building a cloud-based blockchain app of some kind.
Third: Certifications are useful. Pursuing certifications allows you to learn the skills that you’ll need throughout your cloud career. Certifications are also attractive to employers, which is why hiring managers and recruiters will ask you about them when you’re applying for jobs. If you’re just starting out, foundation-level certifications can demonstrate you have a working knowledge of the cloud.
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Steven Brand is the head of employer brand at Mambu, a rapidly growing fintech company. Brand also has tons of fans online, including on LinkedIn, where he regularly posts his thoughts on the evolution of employer branding.
As a term, ‘employer branding’ has existed since the 90s, and it encompasses the steps an organization can take to position itself as a great place to work. When an organization’s employer branding succeeds, it helps bring in talent that not only has the right skills, but also integrates well into the company’s culture. During our chat, Steven’s going to break down why employer branding can serve as a company’s “secret weapon,” reducing attrition and dissatisfaction, boosting engagement and productivity, and ultimately helping drive an influx of great talent.
The employer brand has the potential to impact the bottom line of an organization. When you hire the right talent, they’re more productive and more likely to stay longer because they're happier. If you’re working in employer branding, it’s important to educate those around you – especially senior leadership – about the very real impact of your work.
But figuring out the ideal employer branding strategy isn’t something that will happen quickly. It takes time, patience, resources, and buy-in at all levels of the organization. If you’re interested in improving your employer branding, it’s key to foster a culture of experimentation around it: by figuring out what works and what doesn’t, you can eventually develop employer branding channels that work really well for your organization.
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Manish Narayanaswami is an associate director at Kissflow, which is a builder of no- and low-code platforms that enable business customers to build apps and workflows with a minimum of coding. He’s spent years refining how to use cutting-edge technologies to make things simpler for end-users.
I wanted to talk to Manish because I’ve been fascinated by no- and low-code tools for a long time. For businesses, no- and low-code presents the tantalizing possibility of allowing employees who don’t have a tech background to quickly spin up the apps and services they need. However, many technologists are also concerned about how no- and low-code workflows could potentially make it more confusing to manage an organization’s tech stack. Let’s listen as Manish and I hash out how these technologies could have a significant impact over the next several years.
On this episode of "Tech Connects," we're speaking with Mark Feffer, who’s the executive editor at Recruiting Daily; he’s also editor and publisher of the HCM Technology Report. He has a long, storied career as a journalist covering the technology industry, with a particular focus on hiring and recruiting trends and HR tech. Mark and I first met while he was the managing editor of Dice, and I’ve always found him one of the most insightful people in the business. We’re going to chat about a variety of topics, including the current economic uncertainty, the rise of automation in hiring, and even how companies are approaching next-generation technologies like augmented reality (AR).
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On this episode of "Tech Connects," we're talking with Sachin Gupta, who is the CEO and co-founder of HackerEarth, a tech hiring platform that also offers a coding assessment platform, help with hackathons, programming tutorials, and more. A former developer himself, he has a lot of insight as HackerEarth’s CEO into current hiring trends, including the skills that technologists need to succeed in this market. We’re going to talk about this current, really interesting moment in tech hiring, and touch on everything from the utility of hackathons to the rise of web3.
HackerEarth's website: https://www.hackerearth.com/
On our next episode of "Tech Connects," we're speaking with Katrina Collier, who wears many hats: she’s an author, speaker, mentor, and facilitator who specializes in the human side of talent acquisition. Her passion is ensuring that recruiters and companies deliver a great candidate experience. She’s also the author of the “Robot-Proof Recruiter,” the second edition of which rolled out at the end of August; it’s full of useful info about recruiting the right people and crafting the ideal candidate journey.
We’re going to talk about the Robot Proof Recruiter and a bunch of other interesting stuff, from why transparency and authenticity matter so much in recruiting, to how recruiters can effectively approach the current crunch for tech talent. Here's Katrina's website: https://katrinacollier.com/.
On this episode of "Tech Connects," our guest is Paul Farnsworth, chief technology officer of DHI Group, the parent company of Dice. We’re going to discuss his path to the CTO position, and the lessons he’s learned that can help you as you’re navigating your own tech career. As you’ll see, those technology professionals interested in a management track—whether that’s CTO or project leader—need to develop both their technical and “soft” skills, and focus on finding opportunities that match their skillset and outlook.
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On this episode of "Tech Connects," our guest is Michelle Marian, who’s Chief Marketing Officer at DHI Group, the parent company of Dice. Michelle's role in leading marketing for the organization gives her a view into not only what organizations must do to run effectively, but also into how companies shape the messages and stories they share with the world. Her expertise, combined with her passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion, provides her with unique insights into the technology industry’s attempts to more wholeheartedly embrace DEI.
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The first guest on 'Tech Connects' is Art Zeile, who’s the CEO of DHI Group, Inc., the parent company of Dice. Art is a technologist himself, which is one of the reasons why he’s so passionate about both advocating for technologists, and about helping organizations build the right environments and hire the tech professionals who will power their growth. After leaving the Air Force as a captain, Art founded tech companies, scaled tech companies, ran tech companies—basically, if it involves tech and a company, he’s done it. Which puts him in the best possible position, frankly, to talk about the state of the tech industry at the moment.
Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.