One of the biggest challenges that we as a business are currently facing, is that of the fact that on the sales side we have great opportunities; but our limit is now the fact that many developers are busy. In some cases, developers are exhausted because they have taken on more work than they should because the demand is so high. While it is not true for all techstacks, the most common techstacks such as React, Ruby and Python have a shortage of developers, and DevOps is really in demand as companies adjust to new traffic loads on their digital products.
The 2020 Worldwide Developer Population and Demographic Study by Evans Data showed the worldwide developer population continued to grow by 500,000 in 2020, reaching a total of 24.5 million. But as Covid caused many businesses to realize that their digital products needed to be improved since the pandemic eliminated the in-person sales channels; developers became increasingly busy. According to CodinGame’s latest developer survey, 61% of HR professionals said that finding qualified developers would present the biggest recruitment challenge of 2021, and we are also seeing that challenge as well.
The CodinGame survey also revealed what developers are most interested in when looking for new work: 20% of respondents said that having interesting technical challenges to solve was the most important factor when considering a job offer. After that, developers mostly wanted flexible hours and a healthy work-life balance (18.5%), salary (13%), and company culture and values (10.9%). This lines up with the feedback we have been getting from our own developer pool.
According to a LinkedIn data, senior director Janine Chamberlin said that US demand for software developer roles such as web developers, full-stack developers, and cloud engineers grew nearly 25% from April-October 2019 to April-October 2020 and that “Technology roles have proven to be pandemic-proof as companies accelerate digital transformation and evolve their business models to respond to COVID-19. We’ve seen growing demand for software engineering specialists, machine learning engineers, and back-end developers across a range of industries.”
It is currently a good market for senior developers, but that doesn’t mean junior or mid-level developers with less than 3 years experience are finding work easily. Those level developers are still having a harder time finding work as a direct employee or contractor, but they are able to join larger development teams as a supporting developer and gain experience that way.
We are still very optimistic that the development boom will continue throughout 2021, and I believe 2022 will also be a busy year for developers. Right now, our limit for growth is the availability of developers and finding new developers who are available. A nice problem to have, definitely better than the opposite.