The tech sector confronts a talent deficit for the second consecutive year, despite recent lay-offs in 2023, as revealed by Infragistics' recent Reveal survey, which encompassed 2,228 software developers and IT professionals. This persistent shortage continues to hinder organizations' abilities to fill developer roles with suitable candidates.
A considerable 37.5% of the survey's respondents foresee skill gaps plaguing the tech industry in 2023. Among the hardest-to-fill positions are DevOps Engineer, Data Analytics Developer, and IT Security Engineer. To address the skill shortage, a significant percentage of organizations (76.8%) are resorting to employing low-code/no-code tools such as AppMaster.
Casey McGuigan, Product Manager for Reveal and Slingshot at Infragistics, underscores the struggle to recruit skilled workers for software development as companies race to digitize their operations. He stated, “Organizations are turning to new solutions like low code/no code tools that require little to no up-front hand-coding to address insufficient skills, solve problems and save money.”
Another major issue in 2023 is the communication and collaboration difficulties within remote and hybrid teams. With many organizations adopting remote or hybrid working arrangements and 18.6% of developers and IT professionals working fully on-site, new challenges have surfaced in collaboration and communication among team members.
While 57.9% of participants claim to have more time to complete tasks due to reduced commuting times, 42% experience difficulties in keeping track of projects, while 31.9% feel less productive in a hybrid environment. In 2022, software developers (31.5%) incorporated new software for remote and hybrid workers, aiming to optimize productivity. A majority (54.4%) expressed their preference for a single tool to facilitate collaboration and solve issues, 47.5% wanted automation for workflows and processes, and 43.7% preferred eliminating manual file sharing.
McGuigan elaborated, “This is where all-in-one digital workplace tools benefit organizations by eliminating time-consuming app switching, incorporating project and task management, content management, collaboration, data analytics, and data catalogue capabilities, allowing teams to manage workloads more intelligently, stay on top of deadlines, and make smarter business decisions that are backed up by hard facts.”
The Reveal survey also identified other pain points faced by developers in 2023, including keeping pace with innovation in developer tools, managing workloads, handling security threats, and coordinating project management.
Software developers intend to address these challenges in 2023 by improving project management (30%), fostering better designer-developer collaborations (30%), adopting software compatible with citizen developers (27%), leveraging remote staff (25%), and implementing data catalogues and analytics catalogues (25%).
Additional impediments in 2023 listed in the survey include the inability to adopt innovative developer tools (27.7%), difficulties with third-party integration (26.7%), workload management struggles (26.2%), security threats (26.1%), project management difficulties (26.1%) and high client expectations (26%).
According to the survey, embedded analytics and business intelligence are growing in popularity, with 80.8% of software developers incorporating these tools into their products in 2022, a 3% increase from 2021. Developers are increasingly embedding analytics into client apps, with an impressive rise from 30.8% in 2021 to 48% in 2022. Furthermore, 74.9% of developers anticipate their organization's emphasis on business intelligence to expand in 2023.
McGuigan observed, “Embedded analytics help end-users uncover insights without the help of data analytics experts. More and more organizations will be embracing embedded analytics tools in 2023 because they are the key to improving productivity, increasing sales/revenue, understanding business problems and making better business decisions.”
Survey data shows that revenue growth saw a slight dip in 2022, with only 18.8% of respondents reporting an increase, compared to 25% in 2021. A decrease in developers taking on new projects was also recorded in 2022, with 33.3% reporting new endeavors, as opposed to 36.22% in 2021. Expansion into new markets witnessed a decline of 8%, with 25% of firms expanding in 2022.
McGuigan acknowledged the challenges faced by tech companies: “Tech companies expanded rapidly during the pandemic and although some are restructuring and belt-tightening in the wake of overexpansion, digital transformation initiatives provide new opportunities for growth and revenue. During the slowdown, businesses will continue to invest in IT infrastructure, applications, customer experience and digital transformation initiatives.”
