There’s a lot of coding happening at the telecom TELUS. And Nate Axcell, technical lead at TELUS Digital, wants to guarantee his programmers aren’t squandering their talents on projects that don’t require them. To that end, Axcell has started using a tool called Skill Exchange to kickstart a mentoring initiative.

“We’ll have junior devs paired with a senior dev directly so they get ongoing and consistent support, and ensure that we’re…growing our developers in a more purposeful way,” Axcell told IT Brew.

Skill Exchange, an internal “Find people who can help” directory of developers and their skills, is one of five new plugins offered by the media-services provider Spotify as part of its internal developer portal tool Backstage. The enterprise package exists alongside other industry tools aimed at supporting customers implementing new code, SaaS products, or open-source components—and who are working through the confusion.

“You’re seeing a lot of flexibility in what development teams can do to experiment and expand the services and products that they’re creating. But without the right tools…managing it can become a bit chaotic. That introduces inefficiencies in the way development is executed,” said Erik Brown, senior partner at the consultancy West Monroe.

No ‘pane,’ no gain. Spotify’s Backstage platform features a microservices catalog, software templates, tech documentation, and open-source “plugins.”

In December 2022, Spotify announced commercial plugins, including tools for role-based access control, performance monitoring, and R&D surveys. Other companies, like Atlassian, Cortex, and OpsLevel, offer developer portals, which provide one location for software-development’s many outputs.

Keep reading here.—BH

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected].

How does the C-suite view layoffs, budget cuts, and the short-term future of the IT industry? IT Brew asked CIOs from around the industry about their outlook, and where they see the tech job market moving in the next six months.

These conversations have been edited for length and clarity.

With layoffs and budget cuts, it seems inevitable that we’re headed toward some belt-tightening across the industry. What do you see in the future for the IT side of things?

Rich Fusinski, H.W. Kaufman Group: I think [it seems like] there were a lot of these big tech companies that hired because there was seemingly no end to appetite, when in reality, we all scaled to what we needed. That just didn’t happen in perpetuity, the growth curve didn’t happen in perpetuity. So, they’re resizing back to what reality is.

It doesn’t matter what you are, you can be in insurance, you could be in banking, you can be in automotive, you can be in anything: The future of almost all business is digital. So, if you stop making those investments, or if you’re cutting back, one of your competitors—or many of them—are not.

It’s not like you’re kicking the can down the road saying, “I can pick this back up later.” For every year that you’re not making that investment and your competition is, you’re losing.

Read more here.—EH

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected].

IT Brew readers use authentication apps for two-factor authentication by a wide margin over SMS and physical keys—that’s according to a poll in last Wednesday’s newsletter, where about 60% of 342 respondents reported using apps, compared to 26% for SMS and only 12% for physical keys.

Those results are sure to be encouraging to CIOs and IT team leaders, as companies struggle to encourage users to implement the extra security feature.

When Elon Musk announced last month that those not using his Twitter Blue service would no longer have access to SMS authentication, many users rolled their eyes at the billionaire’s latest scheme to wring dollars out of the social media site. But the reaction from tech professionals was tempered by the acknowledgement that text-based security doesn’t work as well as third-party apps or physical keys.

Still, it’s better than nothing. As IT Brew reported in February, only 28% of Microsoft users have two-factor authentication enabled. That low number had Alex Weinert, Microsoft’s VP of identity security, concerned about the lack of adaptation of “one of the most basic defenses against identity attacks today.”

“With such low coverage, attackers increase their attack rate to get what they want,” Weinert wrote in a January blog post about the low Microsoft adaptation numbers.—EH

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected].

Today’s top IT reads.

Stat: 100. That’s how many times three separate cybercrime groups claim to have breached T-Mobile’s internal systems in 2022. (Krebs on Security)

Quote: “The burden is being placed on the user, and that’s what we have to stop.”—CISA Director Jen Easterly, advocating for legislation that would hold software developers liable for insecure products (the Washington Post)

Read: Elon Musk is reportedly launching a competitor to OpenAI—which he helped co-found—because he thinks it’s too “woke.” (The Information)