In Depth

In Depth

IT careers and IT skills

• Clickwork and labour exploitation in the digital economy

  Often ignored or assumed to be work conducted by machines rather than people, Computer Weekly explores the hidden human impact of the ‘clickwork’ that underpins the global digital economy  Continue Reading

• Dutch PhD project aims to automate discovery and deciphering of steganography

  Meike Kombrink, a PhD student in the Netherlands, is focused on detecting hidden messages on the internet  Continue Reading

• How Sweden goes about innovating

  A country of only 10 million people, Sweden is holding its own in the international community when it comes to innovation – and it’s no accident  Continue Reading

• How can IT leaders tackle a toxic team environment?

  What can IT leaders do if they inherit a toxic team environment to ensure their team starts to function effectively again?  Continue Reading

• Accountability in algorithmic injustice

  Computer Weekly looks at the growing number of injustices involving algorithms and automated decision-making, and what can be done to hold governments and companies accountable for the failures of computer systems they deploy  Continue Reading

• Retail’s IT talent search intensifies

  Retailers from different sectors are on the hunt to fill similar IT job roles, but are all finding different ways to source the sought-after talent  Continue Reading

• Tech’s ongoing mental health crisis

  The pandemic shone a light on the impact long hours and high pressure can have on the mental health of technology workers – an issue that is at risk of continuing long after Covid  Continue Reading

• IT departments need holistic circular economies to fight climate change

  With sustainability moving up the boardroom agenda, IT managers should revamp procurement strategies to align with the principles of the circular economy, but what does this mean for managing the IT lifecycle?  Continue Reading

• Tech companies join UK four-day work week trial

  Computer Weekly speaks with tech companies taking part in the UK’s upcoming four-day work week trial, which will measure the impact of shorter working weeks on productivity, wellbeing and the environment  Continue Reading

• How to retain cyber talent in the Great Resignation

  The cyber security industry is experiencing alarming rates of resignations, leaving organisations vulnerable to cyber attacks. How can we better retain cyber talent?  Continue Reading

• Refugee support group works with tech startup on reporting system

  Computer Weekly speaks to a refugee support group about its ongoing collaboration with an academic tech startup to develop a digital human rights reporting system for refugees  Continue Reading

• How algorithmic automation could manage workers ethically

  Managing workers by algorithm and automated process has generated ethical problems aplenty. Can such means be pressed into the service for a more ethical mode of worker management? We find out  Continue Reading

• Recruitment risks: Avoiding the dangers of fraudulent candidates

  Tech companies are seeing an increase in fraudulent job applications, with associated impacts on risk and cyber security. So how can organisations protect themselves from fraudulent applicants while ensuring they recruit the best talent?  Continue Reading

• Why you need soft skills to excel in your tech career

  With deliberate practice you can hone your soft skills, increase the impact of your work and grow your influence in an organisation  Continue Reading

• How can I avoid an exodus of cyber talent linked to stress and burnout?

  Cyber security professionals have played a crucial role during the pandemic, yet many feel like their employers aren’t providing adequate mental health support and have considered quitting their jobs as a result. What can employers do to help them?  Continue Reading

• Why post-pandemic reskilling must focus on mainframes

  A major contributing factor to UK-wide skills shortages is the significant number of people who have left the workforce since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic  Continue Reading

• A plan for technical and security training

  An array of options is available to help IT leaders refresh security skills or update tech skills. We look at how to decide what is best  Continue Reading

• Christal Bemont, Talend CEO: Show up as yourself

  Christal Bemont, CEO of data management firm Talend, reflects on coming through difficult times in solidarity with co-workers, and how data quality assumes a heightened significance in the digital era  Continue Reading

• How to beat the heat: What can datacentre operators do to meet emissions targets?

  With new mandates around sustainability proliferating, datacentres must find ways to meet their environmental goals while remaining competitive and meeting customer service-level expectations  Continue Reading

• It takes a village: Protecting kids online is everyone’s responsibility

  The rapid uptake of smartphones among children has contributed to the increasing number of cases of cyber bullying and online grooming. Is this an educational issue or a cultural problem, and can modern enterprise help?  Continue Reading

• How Dutch hackers are working to make the internet safe

  We hear how the personal mission of a Dutch hacker grew into a serious organisation with international ambitions  Continue Reading

• What neurodivergent people really think of working in cyber security

  Many firms are filling cyber security skills gaps by hiring neurodivergent talent – but more support is needed for neurodivergent cyber security professionals, writes autistic tech journalist Nicholas Fearn  Continue Reading

• How Forensic Architecture uses tech to protect human rights

  Forensic Architecture speaks to Computer Weekly about how it uses various digital technologies to investigate human rights abuses around the globe, including the pushback of migrants over the Greek border and the killing of Mark Duggan by London ...  Continue Reading

• How to create a sustainable continuous learning culture

  How can organisations create a continuous learning culture that will militate against the so-called great resignation? We explore, using Vodafone and Deutsche Bank as cases in point  Continue Reading

• Accessible retail: Personalising the UX for disabled consumers

  An online marketplace built with an ‘accessibility-first’ mantra is set to go live in spring 2022 – and it comes amid several new inclusive retailing moves  Continue Reading

• Is the tech sector facing an IT skills exodus?

  Three out of five of tech professionals say they are looking to move jobs over the next year. Why is this, and how big a skills problem is the tech industry facing?  Continue Reading

• Bridging the gender gap in cyber security

  Some professional groups and companies in Asia are working hard to improve awareness of the cyber security profession and mentoring talented women in a bid to bridge the gender gap  Continue Reading

• Age discrimination: An overlooked diversity issue in tech

  When people talk about a lack of diversity in technology, age discrimination is not the first issue to come to mind, but it’s one that is prolific across the UK’s tech sector  Continue Reading

• Making a mark in cyber security

  Claudean Zheng’s knack for hacking landed her a career in cyber security, one that has been dotted by stints in both public and private sectors  Continue Reading

• How women can succeed in cyber security

  A cyber security professional at Australia’s IAG shares her career journey and insights on how women can succeed in the field  Continue Reading

• Considerations when deciding on a new SIEM or SOAR tool

  A successful deployment of any security tool very much depends on the maturity of security processes in the organisation  Continue Reading

• What steps can we take to finally close the tech skills gap?

  Despite ongoing efforts from government, education providers and industry to close the tech skills gap, not much has changed, so will new initiatives start to close the chasm?  Continue Reading

• APAC career guide on cloud computing

  Besides having engineering chops and certifications, aspiring cloud professionals should have curiosity and soft skills to succeed in the evolving cloud computing landscape  Continue Reading

• How to support a hybrid workforce

  As the economy opens up, organisations are rethinking the idea of office-based work – and a more flexible approach is on the cards  Continue Reading

• How do I get my users to pay attention to security training?

  As cyber security risks grow daily, businesses must educate staff about these through cyber awareness training. But how can they ensure this is taken seriously by employees?  Continue Reading

• Deploying productivity monitoring software ethically

  While software that tracks the activities of staff can be helpful to companies with a remote workforce, managers must consider employees’ concerns and privacy  Continue Reading

• Navigating the sticky issue of monitoring employee productivity

  With employees having shifted en masse to remote working during the pandemic, we explore how enterprises have maintained the productivity of their dispersed workforce  Continue Reading

• How AI and automation drive better customer service

  Forrester analysts explore the benefits of combining artificial intelligence with automation  Continue Reading

• A bottom-up and top-down look at intelligent automation

  We look at robotic process automation at a coding level and an organisational level, and see how artificial intelligence fits  Continue Reading

• Why some jobseekers have turned to cyber crime during the pandemic

  Research shows that many people have been seeking cyber crime-related work on the dark web, but why?  Continue Reading

• Starting a career in the digital economy

  What is it currently like for young people trying to hit the ground running with digital careers? What do employers want from them, and how has the last year of lockdowns affected their chances at a digital career?  Continue Reading

• Ecolabels and data sanitisation key to recycling and reusing IT assets

  Ecolabels on hardware and data sanitisation of devices are key to recycling and reusing old IT equipment respectively, helping enterprises avoid unnecessary asset destruction and contributing to increasingly high levels of electronic waste globally  Continue Reading

• How colocation fits alongside a cloud-native architecture

  IT departments are on a cloud-native roadmap to become more agile, but they are constrained by the risks involved in migrating core systems and data  Continue Reading

• Coronavirus: Managing software development during lockdown

  The Computer Weekly Developer Network examines the impact of Covid-19 on the software application development community  Continue Reading

• APAC career guide: How to become a DevOps engineer

  A DevOps career can be highly rewarding, as long as you are open to learning new things and collaborating with team mates to solve problems in software development  Continue Reading

• How the pandemic has affected women in the tech sector

  The coronavirus outbreak has created uncertainty across all sectors, but how specifically has it affected women working in the tech industry?  Continue Reading

• Learning on the job when working from home

  Learning a new job and inducting hires when working from home has been tricky for employees and employers alike. We look at what workarounds have been adopted that could become the post-pandemic normal  Continue Reading

• Lush’s 25-year journey to digital excellence

  Retailers are increasingly focused on using technology to better serve customers, but for high street cosmetic brand Lush, tech has always been part of the picture  Continue Reading

• What will increased remote working mean for tech salaries?

  As remote working becomes more popular because of the coronavirus outbreak, people have less need to be near city centres – but what might this mean for tech workers’ salaries?  Continue Reading

• The art of developing happy customers

  AI is playing a growing role in modern software development, but how well can an AI build applications that deliver great customer experience  Continue Reading

• Is the dial shifting for underrepresented groups in the UK’s tech sector?

  George Floyd’s death and the resulting Black Lives Matter movement has raised awareness about the disparity in many areas of society, including the tech sector. Many firms claim to be headed for change, but will this change be sustained into the ...  Continue Reading

• Storage skills in the age of the cloud and convergence

  Storage skills was a discrete area in the IT jobs market, but that’s being eroded by the cloud, hyper-convergence infrastructure, and virtualisation. So, what are the key storage skillsets today?  Continue Reading

• Auditing for algorithmic discrimination

  Despite the abundance of decision-making algorithms with social impacts, many companies are not conducting specific audits for bias and discrimination that can help mitigate their potentially negative consequences  Continue Reading

• Black Lives Matter, but do bots know that?

  The volume of content generated each day necessitates automated moderation to curate everything as it is published, ensuring offensive and objectionable material is blocked. But this only works if systems are adequately configured and reviewed  Continue Reading

• Will the Covid-19 crisis accelerate a shift in tech talent out of London?

  As the coronavirus pandemic has forced firms to work more flexibly, threatening traditional large office spaces in London, will tech talent make a long-term shift away from the capital?  Continue Reading

• Diversity in coding bootcamps

  Coding bootcamp operators must actively engage with issues of access, diversity and inclusion if they want to stop reproducing the same gendered, racialised and class-based outcomes the tech sector keeps promising to address  Continue Reading

• Making the most of coding bootcamps

  Computer Weekly explores how aspiring developers can make the most of coding bootcamps, with a focus on how to avoid being duped by a programme that promises more than it can deliver  Continue Reading

• Coronavirus: How to cope with the digital skills divide

  Since the Covid-19 pandemic started, employers need tech and digital talent more than ever. But how can organisations recruit and train the skills they need during a lockdown?  Continue Reading

• Designing software to include older people in the digital world

  The Covid-19 coronavirus crisis has accentuated the importance of including older people in the digital world. How can software firms design products to include generations that came to maturity before the internet?  Continue Reading

• Australian firms soldier on amid Covid-19 outbreak

  From the largest financial institutions to small companies, Aussie firms have been dialling up their use of technology tools to keep their businesses humming during the coronavirus pandemic  Continue Reading

• Malaysia’s digital transformation efforts progress

  Malaysian enterprises are taking steps to modernise their infrastructure, but many are still grappling with the lack of niche IT skills in key emerging technologies such as the internet of things  Continue Reading

• Three network technologies driven by cloud-native computing

  Networking technologies are being driven heavily by digitisation and cloud computing. Gartner picks three networking trends to watch  Continue Reading

• How to build the perfect tech team despite talent shortages

  The technology skills gap is growing worldwide, despite digital skills being as important as ever. So how can IT leaders develop the perfect tech team in the current talent environment?  Continue Reading

• From Pixar to GovTech: The inside story of Singapore’s AI whizz

  After nearly a decade at Pixar, GovTech’s Chong Jiayi is leading a team of experts to solve hard problems in robotics and artificial intelligence  Continue Reading

• Whisper it… but could a cyber attack be good for your career?

  All too often it’s the CISO who carries the can for an enterprise security failure, but this might not be a bad thing. There’s lots of evidence to suggest that falling victim to a cyber attack may actually enhance your CV  Continue Reading

• Virtuous circles: Skilling up for an ethical web

  Tim Berners Lee’s Contract for the Web aims to drive the internet in a more ethical, open and human-centred direction. What does this mean for the future of IT skills and governance?  Continue Reading

• Can the UK government’s efforts solve the cyber skills gap?

  There has been an active effort by the UK government to tackle the lack of skills in the cyber security space – but is it enough?  Continue Reading

• What are the key issues facing healthcare CIOs?

  Six healthcare IT leaders give their views on the major challenges for digital transformation across the NHS  Continue Reading

• Reskilling the UK in the face of AI growth

  The government has introduced the National Retraining Scheme alongside funding to tackle the UK’s growing tech skills gap, but will it be enough in the wake of artificial intelligence adoption?  Continue Reading

• Changes in the CI/CD pipeline

  Continuous integration/continuous delivery is responsible for pushing out a set of “isolated changes” to an existing application. We look at how big these changes can be  Continue Reading

• Do non-compete clauses risk stifling cloud innovation?

  Non-compete clauses in tech employment contracts are commonplace – and understandably so – but could they be limiting innovation in the public cloud?  Continue Reading

• Data management strategies are evolving – so must enterprises

  A growing number of data-driven initiatives, alongside heightened demand for security in governance, data management and compliance, has led to the rise of a more holistic approach – integrated risk management  Continue Reading

• What is UK plc doing to address the tech skills gap in the face of Brexit?

  The growing technology skills gap in the UK is widely known, with firms complaining of a lack of skilled workers – but what are they doing fill their empty roles?  Continue Reading

• Interview: Tapping into the invisible talent pool

  As the technology talent gap grows, charity Astriid aims to help organisations connect with people who are chronically ill to meet some of their mutual needs  Continue Reading

• Storage and DevOps: What is required for agile development?

  DevOps brings continuous and agile application. Storage has to fit in and make itself just as responsive to development that does away with the inertia of stifling hierarchies  Continue Reading

• Cutting the cord: Negotiating cloud contracts with problematic customers

  How accountable should cloud firms be for the actions of the customers that use their platforms, and how much thought should they give to aligning themselves with problematic brands before hosting them?  Continue Reading

• From cleaners to architects – lessons learnt by a serial entrepreneur

  After the emotional sale of her first company, Alex Depledge, co-founder of and CEO of Resi, explains the lessons she has learnt and what she will and will not do again  Continue Reading

• Finding a fix for the IT industry's recruitment woes: A datacentre perspective

  The datacentre industry is in the midst of a well-documented skills crisis, caused by a mix of sector-specific challenges and some more generalised ones  Continue Reading

• Retailers engineer new ways to recruit and retain IT talent

  Senior leaders at Holland & Barrett, Feelunique and BrandAlley offer tips on finding and keeping sought-after engineering and developer talent  Continue Reading

• Employee activism: How staff revolts are shaking up the IT recruitment landscape

  As staff at tech giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon continue to speak out about pressing social issues, pressure is growing on firms to better align themselves with their employees on ethics  Continue Reading

• Interview: Rackspace EMEA CTO on why it pays to put people at the heart of IT transformation

  Rackspace EMEA CTO Lee James opens up about how taking a people-first approach to digital transformation raises staff morale and engagement levels while helping the managed cloud provider win new business  Continue Reading

• Rise in business-led IT spend increases risks and opportunities

  Digitally leading businesses benefit from faster time to market, better employee experience and improved finances, but lack of partnership between CIOs and business units can jeopardise progress, says Harvey Nash / KPMG survey  Continue Reading

• Skills, digital and the manufacturing sector

  Manufacturing still accounts for a large amount of the UK economy, and when it comes to the fourth industrial revolution, the UK has aspirations to be a world leader – but does it have the digital know-how to back it up?  Continue Reading

• Regional differences in the UK’s computing curriculum

  Teaching young people about the importance of digital skills is a focus of the education system across the UK, but the delivery of these skills is different across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – who has it right?  Continue Reading

• How to find a much sought-after data scientist

  Every organisation seems to be hunting for a data scientist, but securing the right people with the right skills is a challenge  Continue Reading

• Is it too soon for AI in the education landscape?

  This year saw education secretary Damian Hinds call for more tech in schools to help reduce teacher workload, but are schools ready, and how do we fix the pressing issues faced by UK education?  Continue Reading

• Using simulated disaster management to tackle the security skills gap

  With the increasing need for cyber security professionals, organisations are turning to new ways to address the skills gap facing the security sector  Continue Reading

• Career choices for storage admins as technologies converge

  There is collateral damage in datacentre convergence, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for storage administrators to stick with storage-centric skillsets. Two solutions exist  Continue Reading

• How IT leaders can build great relationships with marketing leaders

  Experts dish out their advice on how to work better together with their marketing peers to deliver a high-quality customer experience  Continue Reading

• The nightmare driving test: How to make sure self-driving cars are safe

  Simulating realistic environments using deep learning to enable self-driving cars to learn the rules of the road will prove more useful than any amount of real-world practice. We find out why, and meet the people doing something about it  Continue Reading

• Ready, headset, go: Retailers racing ahead with VR for staff training

  Has virtual reality found its prime retail user case as a staff training tool? Recent moves from Costa Coffee and Walmart suggest it has  Continue Reading

• Managing digital change: The CIO challenge for 2019

  As technology changes have an increasing impact on organisations, 2019 is the year when CIOs must adapt their teams to better manage digital disruption and business innovation  Continue Reading

• A new era of collaboration for the NHS

  Great Ormond Street Hospital's new research and innovation unit, Drive, marks a significant shift towards greater collaboration between NHS organisations and third-party industry partners  Continue Reading

• University vs Apprenticeship: The education debate

  Traditionally, a degree is the preferred route into the technology industry, but many now believe an apprenticeship may be a more valuable path into the sector  Continue Reading

• Gig for victory: Addressing the stigma of the gig economy

  As companies continue apace with digital transformation, the need for ad hoc tech workers is growing. But traditional contracting is giving way to the looser idea of ‘gigging’ – and not just for low-level roles  Continue Reading

• Fighting fit: The ODI on courting startups to use open data to get the UK moving

  The Open Data Institute is aiming to change the fact that millions of people in the UK are inactive, and is using open data and startups to help engage citizens to exercise.  Continue Reading

• Interview: Dame Stephanie ‘Steve’ Shirley: 'Scared silly' by Brexit

  Renowned entrepreneur and philanthropist Steve Shirley talks robots teaching children, and why Brexit has her “scared silly”  Continue Reading

• Future tech cannot be ‘defined by a particular population’, says CA executive

  As new technologies are developed, companies could take the opportunity to hire more diversely to ensure offerings cater to a wider demographic  Continue Reading

• Spotlight on the Digital Career Institute, Berlin

  Digital Career Institute is teaching refugees and unemployed people to do web development in Germany  Continue Reading

• Is the UK’s computing curriculum too focused on coding?

  The government introduced its computing curriculum in 2014 to give young people the digital skills they need for the future, but is it fit for purpose?  Continue Reading