What can we do about the lack of programmers in Colombia and Latam?

Published in

IDx Transformación Digital

8 min readMay 27, 2017

Nowadays, digital transformation in companies is a present topic in every media agenda. In several articles, challenges, growth goals, and even survival strategies are accentuated to warn the emerging changes that technology brings.

Nevertheless, despite the increasing interest in this subject, very few emphasize in a problematic which we must pay attention and search for immediate solutions: according to MinTic data of 2014, there will be a deficit in 2019 of more than 90,000 engineers. What does this mean? Simply, that we will not count with people capable of building technology.

We, who have lived digital transformation processes, know the importance that programmers have in work teams because if their knowledge and experience lacking, it will all be a simple illusion.

I remember an article published July 10th 2014 in El Espectador in which it was announced that Diego Molano, TIC minister back then, proposed a measure to ease this problematic:

“[…] an investment of $50,000 million pesos annually during the next four years intended for digital talent, scholarships and conversion programs for 9.000 professionals. This means that a mechanical engineer, for example, could migrate to Computer engineer with state support.”

I hope this is being implemented; but –at least I– do not know that there´s has been some accountability about the number of formed professionals with that budget. I have researched and it was impossible to find results about that important investment for our companies and its competitiveness.

On the other hand, what we live on a daily basis suggests that calculation isn’t that accurate because the current demand for professionals in TIC seems to have exceeded the prediction made at that time. Finding those engineers or programmers has become a real challenge. In fact, companies like ours have chosen to train people who have innate or technical knowledge in order to strengthen human capital and develop impact technologies.

So, what are we going to do? This definitely affects the country´s competitiveness. Who is going to build us the dreams of doing the digital transformation in companies and industries? We tell them what ex-minister Molano proposed in 2014 through the mentioned article in El Espectador, in which he also revealed that back then there were over 15.000 engineer jobs but very few professionals to take care of them: “Let´s study engineering!”

“Let´s study engineering!”, that was the message of the Information Technologies and Communications Minister, Diego Molano, after revealing that there is 15.000 TIC related engineering jobs in the country, but that there´s no demand for professionals to fill this positions.

Ex-minister, with what money? With the annual $50.000 million pesos? Those that between bureaucracy and corruption are reduced to a 50%? And that, at the end of the story it ends like most high impact projects in Colombia; in nothing.

My invitation is to think of technology as the most important aspect of business nowadays, let´s not consider it like an isolated area in companies far away from the ones who run the business. Let´s prioritize the making of that human capital in our companies, which is essential to be active and participative in the current market situation and let´s invest in them in different ways so that, without having to be professionals, we can help them develop digital aptitudes that will give them growth opportunities in their lives.

But this can´t be possible if we don´t change our ideas regarding technological and human resources. An investigation performed during two years in more than 400 big companies known as The Digital Advantage: How Digital Leaders Out-Perform Their Peers in Every Industry, shows conclusive data about the importance of digitally transforming our companies and points out all of what we are missing and can not run as we hoped mostly because lack of vision, investment, and dedication to training programs that we could develop and establish our own companies.

“Companies that are doing a good digital transformation work have increased their income by +9%, while others are not doing so well. Besides, the profitability of that companies has increased by up to 26%”.

The amount of increment that the study drives is exorbitant given that companies in it invoice more than USD $500MM per year and are the first level, meaning that are from very developed countries, much more than ours or any other in Latin America. Furthermore, it should be noted that only a minority of companies from each industry are making real efforts to generate digital transformation.

The study also reflects that companies that are doing better things in digital transformation are the ones who belong in the technological sector –although only a 38% of them are considered “Digital Masters” –. In this category, companies from financial and insurance sections are the ones who follow.

What is shown above is that every company that manages to survive, is going to have to be or start being a digital company, they will have to have a digital core which allows them to change their user experience, their operations, and business models? However, what concerns the most is that today, despite the fact that companies that are digitally transforming in Colombia are minimal, there´s already a deficit of the most important resource: programmers.

This is a subject that interests us all, from programmers –who have opportunities like never before to progress as professionals and become leaders in companies–, up to companies ourselves that have to become more competitive to be able to compete globally and have the ability to create intellectual property in order to stand out to avoid becoming the world workers. The situation that countries like India have been noticing since a few years ago and by which they have been working hard in creating intellectual property to be able to compete with the most developed countries worldwide without falling behind.

The reflection, then, goes to knowledge management. From one side, knowledge and competencies related to engineering and software development are no longer futuristic careers but assets that we require today and are insufficient for the current demand. We will have to change deeply the academic training, 5 year long careers are not a solution anymore; we need efficient programs that form people in less time.

From the other side, we need committed companies in learning something new every day that also has the disposition of helping small and medium industries so that the resources they use bring some kind of benefit, this way, we all have how to invest in training.

Nonetheless, we must give time and space so that the things learned can be correctly applied to develop new abilities which, with the current rules, is very hard considering that companies which offer technological solutions play under the same conditions as a person. This complicates the opportunity of giving someone the chance of having a learning curve. In spite of what mentioned, several companies, like ours, do allow it.

It is a great challenge what lies ahead of us and there´s no doubt that we are an entrepreneurs’ country who will solve the problem. The solution does not lie in waiting for the educational institutions to form human capital, they´re too slow for the rhythm needed. Neither does it lie in government investment in education because, although it should, nowadays they´re other priorities that need its investment. The solution then lies in every one of us, in the companies where we work and where we, from the inside, can help support training and competence development initiatives to help build technology. We are more the 1,800 technology companies in Colombia and, for 2018, is most probable that this number will duplicate. If every company commits in training 60 people per year, 5 each month, we would be forming 108,000 people with the ability of software development, in that way we will be solving the problem.

For example, someone can become a software developer for free using YouTube if he or she are curious and have the de chance of applying what they have learned. There are free or very accessible courses to learn how to program in Coursera, edx, Udemy, Codecademy, Udacity, Lynda and hundreds of “MOOC” platforms more where anyone can learn code writing, be polishing it in practice, but be ready to start a professional life without having to go to any university o technical career which has been traditional solutions.

There are also specialized entities in certifying software developers, us for example, that have made an alliance with one of them in order to sponsor IOS, Android, PM and general capacity development programs. Through this alliance, we are going to train 10 people per month, with programs of 40 hours and for the chosen, we will guarantee a job opportunity when the program is finished. For those who want and are interested in applying, you can do it on our website in the section called careers.

In conclusion, we can´t keep waiting for others to solve the problem, especially we can not keep waiting for the government to do it because if we do, it will happen as with most of the country´s problems –we all know exactly how it works–. I hope you understand the importance of competence education and training so that people can have professional growth opportunities developing competencies that will allow us to be competitive worldwide in an accelerated growing industry that nowadays is where we should aim to keep existing.