Perspectives on Technology Skill Development [Audiobook]

A brief overview of Perspectives on Technology Skill Development.

By Aaron Skonnard, co-Founder and CEO of Pluralsight "You can’t hire your way out of a skills shortage. Your team can’t Google their way to proficiency. If you held in-person training before every new project, you’d never deliver anything."

By Tony Saldanha, President, Transformant. Former Vice President of IT and Global Business Services, Procter & Gamble. If your company is going to survive the fourth industrial revolution, you’ll need to upskill your people. If that sounds like an absolute statement, it’s because my research and experience as a Fortune 25 executive over three decades has taught me that without company-wide, continual commitment to technology skill development, chances are that your organization won’t survive.

By Amanda Richardson, Chief Executive Officer, CoderPad It’s funny to me that businesses need to build a case for investing in tech skill development. In the reality of our industry, why wouldn’t we want to learn new things? Why wouldn’t we want to learn how to do things better, how to keep our teams engaged, how to keep people growing and evolving?

By Gary Beach, Publisher Emeritus, CIO Magazine. Columnist, WSJ and CIO Journal. Author, U.S. Technology Skills Gap. All is not well in the global talent arena. The digital “skills gap” that emerged last decade is widening into a chasm. According to International Data Corp’s FutureScape 2019 report, two million jobs in artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things, cybersecurity and blockchain will remain unfilled by 2023 due to a lack of human talent.

By Stacey Rivers, Director of Tech Human Capital Management, WarnerMedia How effectively you acquire a new skill is specific to your learning style, which is the ability to retain information in a way that is practical and adaptable. “Learning” is not passive; it’s a skill that requires the same retention process you endured as a child, just at a faster pace.

By Nate Walkingshaw, Chief Experience Officer, Pluralsight If you’re asking yourself more and more often, “Why are we not shipping? Why are we not communicating? Why have we slowed way down?,” then you’re experiencing misalignment. And while it can be caused by a variety of factors, you should also know that misalignment is a strong indicator of an unhealthy team.

By KC Jorgensen, Chief People Officer, Textio Talking about “training” is pretty much standard operating procedure in the tech industry. But training doesn’t go far enough when it comes to upskilling technology teams—and that’s a big problem.

By Isaac Strack, Head of Professional Services, EMEA/APAC, Pluralsight Building skills in your organization is just like The Emperor’s New Clothes. There is a difference—and not a small one—between those with real skill development practices, and those with imaginary skill development who pretend their strategy will lead to real results.

By Hope Gurion, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Fearless Product Skill gaps—the ones that keep teams and individuals from accomplishing goals—need a critical eye. As a leader, your job is to decide which skills are most important to your business objectives and how best to develop them. That’s pretty obvious.

By Tanya E. Moore, Partner Talent & Transformation, IBM Services Technology, and the world at large, is changing so fast that traditional methods of hiring and training are no longer enough. One person, or one group, can’t shoulder the responsibility for the skill set of the organization. Managing talent and skills has become a collaborative effort with both Board and C-suite giving it priority focus.

By Eric Geis, Vice President Clinical Product Development, Cerner Driving any kind of initiative in a large or growing company can be a challenge. This especially holds true for implementing tech skill development programs at scale. We’re tempted to build a distinct organizational structure to oversee the program—or else wrap it into Human Resources, where they already know how to implement training programs—and we’re often inclined to ease the effort by making it uniform throughout the org.

By Don Jones, Vice President for Content Partnerships, Pluralsight One of the worst ways to manage technology skill development in an organization is to simply let employees find their own way. That doesn’t mean learning should be top-down or a strict mandate by a leader. But it’s important that, as a leader, you guide your team to the right skills for their career and for your business.

By William Peachey, Executive Vice President, Group People Supply Chain Officer, Capgemini Ten years ago, tech leaders focused on procurement and running data centers and networks. 80% of the spend was directed at supporting legacy; managing software licenses was a major task. But the advent of cloud freed up the tech leader’s agenda for the new. And the new talent.

By Amy Larson, Chief Technology Officer, 1-800 Contacts The great brands—those that thrive and maintain relevance long after their competitors lose steam—are born from this idea. They start with the customer and think, “What could be better about their buying journey? What product could fulfill their needs better than what’s currently available? There has to be a better way.”

By Anita Grantham, Chief People Officer, Pluralsight Forward-thinking technology leaders continually assess the roles they have and don’t have in their organizations. But even the most cutting-edge may overlook one critical role that’s emerging: technology skills director. This role will be a game-changer for organizations.