Anyone who's part of the evolving tech economy where software often comes with built-in obsolescence, the only way to climb the corporate ladder is to harness skills.
And the way for tech professionals to climb that ladder, as trends indicate, is by gaining proficiency in networking and operating systems and security and programming training. In its latest report on learning and development in tech, Boston-based corporate learning company Skillsoft identified the most in-demand software tools to bridge the widening skills gap.
"The shelf life of technology today is around 2-3 years," said Mike Hendrickson, vice president of tech and dev products at Skillsoft. "The concepts behind the technology are changing and the way we learned in the past becomes old quickly, inhibiting us from using what we know in newer ways."
The company collected data on its training platform beginning February 1, 2018, through January 31, 2019, and found that tech workers prefer video to books and courses, defined as micro-learning modules. Skillsoft's clientele includes large to mid-size companies with a headcount of at least 100 people. A typical "learner" on Skillsoft's platform is someone within an organization re-skilling to work on a different project or a team.
According to the report, the most used content topics are:
• Data • Security • Microsoft (Windows, Azure, Server, etc.) • Server (Windows, Linux, CompTIA, etc.) • Manage (Devices, Services, Deployments, Performance, etc.) • Service (Microservice, SOA ) • Create (Networks, Applications, Instances) • Configure (Routers, Servers, OS, etc.) • SQL • Web
And the most popular topics are:
• Networking & Operating Systems • Security • Programming • Data • DevOps • Software Development • Cloud • Tech and Society
Other consumption trends highlighted in the report include:
- CompTIA certification training delivered the most hours of content consumed across the entire Skillsoft's platform: roughly 1.65 million hours.
- Python training jumped by 20 percent, nearly 200,000 more hours, from 2017 to 2018.
- Security certification preps are up by 58 percent YoY while Cloud certification preps are 53 percent ahead of 2017.
"Security and network and operating systems occupy 81 percent of the federal government tech learning market," Hendrickson noted.
Editor's note: Also read 'Want to Work At These Unicorns? Start With These Programming Languages'
