Putting this into hard numbers, the Department of Labour’s Critical Skills list published in Nov 2020, estimates a shortage of 432 100 skilled ICT technicians, 216 200 managers and 178 400 professionals.
Tech employers/entrepreneurs – such as Jason Suttie of Devson and Dave Prosser of ComUnity – confirm this acute market shortage of good, home-grown developer talent.
“I would rather take a young, bright mind straight from high school,” Dave says, “who can show me what they can code and is hungry to learn. Then I can mold them to do the job I need.”
The problem here, however, is that there are many gaps in the cutting-edge technology education offered by high schools.
Talking with students I’ve found that they’re totally enthralled with everything tech. They’ve grown up with it and they know that it’s the future. But they don’t always know what different career pathways there are in tech – it’s a big black hole to them.
Equally, IT teacher Sam Perry of Marist Brothers Linmeyer shares that because she’s teaching and not working in the industry she doesn’t always know what cutting edge skills are required for many of the up-and-coming career pathways out there.