The market for public cloud services is predicted to hit $331.2 billion by 2022. If you’re keeping track, this would make the cloud services industry three times bigger than IT services as a whole according to a new study from Seen by Indeed. Seen by Indeed also reports that between October 2015 and October 2019, the share of cloud computing jobs, per million, increased by 55 percent.
Although this seems like good news for cloud-savvy workers now on IT career paths, there are downsides to explosive growth that both enterprises and those managing their own IT career don’t typically consider. As somebody who’s lived through many times of rapid growth, a few words of advice:
Watch out for overhiring. Enterprises in a panic to hire cloud computing professionals can overestimate the number of employees they will need. For example, it may take 500 AWS developers and architects to migrate workloads to the cloud, but once it’s done, are that many still needed? Some can be reassigned to cloudops, but the lack of internal demand means that the cloud pros who cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire just a few years ago now need to be let go. Instead consider contractors. They typically cost more, but they expect that their gigs will end at some time, unlike most employees.
Cloud pros need to be aware of this as well. You need to ask questions about what occurs when the migration ends. If they don’t put a sound plan in front of you be very suspicious of your future there. Good cloud migration projects come with a plan for assimilating most cloud pros within new operating models. Lacking that, perhaps look for another place to work.
Watch out for changing cloud technology solutions. The popularity of multicloud changed the skill mix required in most enterprises using public cloud computing. Many started down the AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud paths alone, but now there is likely a mix of two or three of the most popular public clouds.
Enterprises that employ cloud pros and cloud pros themselves need to be aware that demand for specific skills will likely change a great deal during the next five years. Not only are most enterprises moving from a single public cloud solution to plural cloud solutions, but there is also a rising need for architects who understand how to configure multicloud.
No easy answers here, other than enterprises changing technology directions like shifting winds has its drawbacks. Cloud pros need to reskill as things change, and if they do so too much it could have a negative effect on morale. Enterprises will also notice a higher cost in adapting to heterogenous from homogenous cloud computing. Multicloud is just more expensive, not considering the benefits.
It’s a good time to be working in the cloud computing industry, but be aware of the longer view.