I underlined three words in the government's new tech jobs plan on the train this week, and they've nagged at me since. A named supervisor.
I read the Digital and Technologies Jobs Plan twice, once on that train with a cold coffee and once at my desk with a leaky pen. The headline is around 20,000 entry-level roles a year, agreed jointly with employers. Over a decade the aim is roughly 200,000. And the plan projects about 800,000 digital and technology roles to need filling in that time.
What did the government actually promise on 21st October?
The Digital and Technologies Jobs Plan, published by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on 21st October, commits government and employers to around 20,000 entry-level tech jobs a year. It launches with 10,000 work experience places from TechFirst partners, including Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Cognizant, Arm, Kainos, QinetiQ and AtkinsRéalis. Some of the jobs will be new, the government says, while others will fill entry-level vacancies that already exist.
It's a real commitment and I'd rather see it than not. To be fair, the plan doesn't ignore the people side either.
Employers need to be ready to host and supervise young people, it says, and it promises guidance on things like a named supervisor.
Who trains the people these jobs are for?
In most tech teams it falls to the same few experienced people it always does. A team lead already running a release. An engineering manager with eight direct reports and a budget review on Friday. A head of IT who answers the phone when the network falls over, and who was promised a deputy eighteen months ago and is still waiting on the paperwork.
These are the roles that can't be stretched any further. They sit among the hard to fill senior IT roles, and anyone hiring a cloud lead or a senior developer right now knows how long the wait runs. Every junior added to a team needs hours of review, patience and the odd awkward conversation. And those hours come out of a senior person's week.
A named supervisor has to come from somewhere.
I'm not arguing against it. More people getting a first job in tech is good for everyone, us included. What worries me is a plan that adds a layer at the bottom of a building when the middle floors are already creaking.
Why does this hit mid-sized employers hardest?
Mid-sized employers feel the supervision gap hardest, because the big names in the plan can absorb a cohort with graduate programmes, learning teams and people whose whole job is onboarding. But a software firm with sixty staff, or a manufacturer with a four-person IT department, has none of that.
Those are the employers I spend most of my time with, and the plan itself says smaller firms are central to whether it succeeds. Many will want to say yes when asked to pledge places. But the pledge is the easy part. Finding the person who makes it work is where it gets expensive.
A few weeks back an IT director told me about two trainees he'd taken on through a local scheme. He was delighted with both, but also working until nine most evenings with nobody senior left to share the supervision.
That gap sits underneath the plan, and the plan only half answers it.
What should an IT leader sort out before taking on more junior staff?
Start with the people you already have. If your tech lead is at capacity, a trainee doesn't make the team bigger, only the lead slower. Work out how many hours a week a new starter needs from someone experienced, then check who actually has them to give.
And if nobody does, you need a hire above entry level, ideally before the juniors arrive. A senior developer with patience, an engineering manager who enjoys developing people, a solution architect who sets standards others follow. Those searches take time, and the strongest candidates are rarely looking. When the process isn't ready, a search can run well into the new year.
Hire the person who supervises first.
It sounds obvious written down. Yet it's nearly always done the other way round, because the junior role is cheaper and easier to approve, and budget holders see a salary and a start date while the supervision cost stays invisible until somebody burns out.
Or at least be straight with candidates. The senior people you want will ask what they're signing up for, and if the job quietly includes mentoring three trainees, say so and pay for it. I've seen good people walk away because the mentoring turned up in week two. Ask yourself whether you'd have stayed.
Will the entry-level push make senior hiring harder?
For a while, probably, because more employers will be hunting the same pool of experienced people to lead their new starters, and that pool is already thin. Over the longer term the deeper pipeline should help.
The plan itself warns that shortages of experienced staff are likely to grow if entry-level roles get cut, which is fair. But the same shortage bites the employer who wants to hire the supervisor. Competition for tech leads and engineering managers should tighten before it eases. Expect a good few counter-offers to land on desks, and a few awkward Monday-morning resignations.
Today's juniors become tomorrow's mid-level engineers, and a deeper pipeline is what the sector has needed for years, though a decade is a long time to wait if your lead developer hands in their notice next month.
The employers who come out ahead will treat supervision as a role with a budget. They'll also start looking for experienced leaders early. I wrote recently about how cyber hiring got easier everywhere except at the senior end, and the pattern looks much the same here.
The people in that gap are the hardest to find and the easiest to lose.
I keep coming back to the train and those three underlined words. Twenty thousand new starters a year is a lovely number. Each of them will need someone who knows where the bodies are buried, and who still has time to answer questions.
When one of those experienced seats is on your mind, our IT recruitment team is a good place to start thinking it through.
