The need for SMAC workers

Last month I went to a university/industry consortium to discuss the industry needs and university training direction. Ross Burkhart, a software industry representative, gave a talk about the industry needs. He said:

“Our industry is changing fast, every company, regardless of their business, is becoming a technology company. Therefore, the industry will need to hire more technical graduates in the next five years. We are planning to hire 30,000 to 50,000 technology graduates per year. But the most important skills that we need is technical graduates with the ability to communicate in the business language. Today, most technology students are good in technical but not in communication. Most business students are good in communication but do not have technical skills. Having both skills are rare, but that what we need. I am asking you and your schools to provide training in these skills.”

“Today SMAC (Social Media, Mobility, Analytics, and Cloud computing) is the most important skills, but only a few schools are teaching them. I would like to ask you and your schools to focus more on these technologies because they are the skills of the future. We believe that most innovations in the next ten years will come from SMAC technologies. As more companies are moving to Cloud Computing, we need graduates who not only know the cloud technology but also can explain them to business people so they can use it to gain competitive advantage. Today most companies are collecting data from multiple sources, they need graduates not only know how to analyze them but also can explain the benefits of big data to business people so they can use intelligence information to make decisions in the fast-changing market. We know that technical students are busy with technical works and do not have time to develop soft-skills. But we believe a balance of both business and technical is desirable.”

“We will work closely with universities to make sure that they are producing the skills we need. We are willing to hire students in the summer internship program and evaluate them for full-time positions after they graduated. One of our biggest challenges is the shortage of skilled workers. Since universities cannot produce enough skilled graduates, we have to hire workers from outside the U.S. Currently we are hiring in India, China, Malaysia, the Phillipinnes, but we will consider other countries as our needs are increasing. There are plenty of foreign programmers and testers available, but most lack the skills in business communication. As our demand is shifting to SMAC technologies, there are not many foreign workers in these skills area from anywhere in the world. It is a major issue to our industry as it prevents our business growth. Since every company will need SMAC skills, competition for workers will be high.”

Sources

  • Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University

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