CompTIA CEO Todd Thibodeaux delivered a powerful keynote speech at CompTIA ChannelCon at the Diplomat Resort & Spa Hollywood on August 2, giving a frank assessment of the state of IT – particularly its talent needs and challenges – and outlining next steps.
From the outset, Thibodeaux made it clear that his remarks would stress the human element of the IT industry and channel. “We’re all about the people in our industry,” he said.
Thibodeaux cited historical technological innovators like Benjamin Franklin and Alan Turing as “the original geeks” but added that today, in tech, we face “a different kind of challenge.” We used to have an unlimited pipeline of talent, he said, but today we have a talent gap and millions of IT workers set to retire, which will raises the stakes here.
“The bottom line is young people are just not that interested in a career in IT,” Thibodeaux said, citing competition with other industries as one reason. “The technology industry is not the only place you can interact with tech,” he said.”
Another factor here, Thibodeaux said, is diversity, specifically a lack thereof in IT. “We’ve taken a lot of black eyes in the press about diversity,” he said.
Thibodeaux added, “Working in our industry is still seen as too hard, antisocial, introverted and sweaty.” STEM programs aren’t helping either, as according to Thibodeaux they move young people into coding, not IT.
So what’s the solution? Thibodeaux warned that there’s “no silver bullet” that will fix this.
“No website, no social media platform, no YouTube video is going to convince kids to enter tech, and even if it did, a week later they’d see another YouTube video or another website and change their mind,” he said.
The answer, Thibodeaux said, is simply to encourage kids to find their passion. “When I talk to kids, I say to figure out what they’re good at.” He also stressed pointing young talent at the right people to model their lives after. “Role models rule,” he said.
Thibodeaux then introduced Super Bowl champion Peyton Manning’s keynote speech. Get full coverage of that here.
