The 2020 Open Source Jobs Report reveals that skilled open source talent is hard to find. Corona hardly threatens the meanwhile experts.
Qualified open source Finding experts is becoming increasingly difficult. This is the result of a study by the Linux Foundation and the educational platform edX. 93 percent of recruiters say they can’t find enough people in this field, up from 87 percent two years ago. In addition, hiring is declining due to the corona pandemic and the associated economic restrictions in this segment.
Nevertheless, 37 percent of those responsible for hiring intend to hire qualified IT experts in the next six months. The number of open source experts who were laid off during the corona pandemic is only four percent. The study identifies DevOps and cloud as the most important skills when hiring. The former has become one of the most important areas of expertise: 65 percent of companies plan to hire more talent in this field, compared to only 59 percent in 2018. According to the study, the best qualification is knowledge of cloud technologies: 70 percent of companies are more likely to hire experts in this field – in 2018 it was 66 percent.
Online training and certification are becoming increasingly important . 74 percent of companies are willing to invest in employee certification. Further information on the study can be found here. At the same time, the EU Commission presented its new open source course. However, this met with sharp criticism: The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) thinks it is just a fig leaf, a clear commitment to use and concrete goals of the strategy are missing.
