5 Insights for ABQ Tech Companies
Every year Stack Overflow’s annual survey gives tech companies insight on the state of developers. This year, the survey included over 100k respondents, compared to 64k last year. For those that don’t know, Stack Overflow is the premier site for developers to help each other with coding and other IT related questions. Part of my work at Deep Dive Coding is to keep an eye on trends to help put New Mexico on the map.
Here are 5 insights from this year’s survey that I believe will help tech leaders in the 505 tech scene to take their company to the next level.
Hire a DevOps person
DevOps (Development + Operations) is a trend that continues to grow in the tech industry. Compared to last year’s survey there was a large growth in this position as companies realize they need tech talent that understand both development and IT admin skills. Several New Mexican companies have been hiring DevOps Specialists including Aviata in Albuquerque and DeployHub in Santa Fe. Kubernetes is all the buzz nowadays in our tech scene. In fact, one CEO informed me that if there was a local developer that had a Kubernetes cert they would hire them right away.
Elevate your Junior Devs rapidly
There are more junior developers than ever. According to this survey, junior devs are the highest percent of the people coding professionally now (30.1% for 0–2 years and 27.4% for 3–5 years). This means over half of coders have less than 5 years experience. If your company doesn’t have peer programming system and other methods to help juniors grow quickly, then you might consider investing in incumbent training programs or even budget for your own internal “university” for the first few months like some of the larger tech companies do.
7000 survey respondents attended a full-time training bootcamp
If you have hiring policy that limits alternative forms of education, you might consider altering the language to help great tech talent get into your organization. From consultations with large employers, I know they struggle to find local tech talent because their hiring policy requires a formal degree in a STEM field. Some employers are expanding their options by adding language such as “or equivalent experience” to the job description.
Less than 50% of computer science majors said their degree was important to their career
Without out a doubt, getting a CS degree is the most straightforward path to becoming a programmer. Yet, it appears that about half of CS graduates don’t feel like it was important to identifying and receiving career opportunities. This stat makes me wonder about the role of privilege and access to formal college programs.
Keep an eye on the most loved computer languages
Like it or not, your developers will code in the languages they love. Python and Kotlin were on the rise last year and now they are in the top 3 in this survey. Python seems to have found a home in the data science and machine learning arenas. I find in New Mexico, many enterprise companies working with C have developers writing in Python and compiling it down to C with Cython. The Android community fully embraces Kotlin and will only use Java if they must.
If you haven’t already, I encourage you to check out StackOverflow’s survey. It is jam-packed with information that may just help you make your next executive decision. If you are in the central New Mexico area and want to grab a coffee to consult, I would love to learn about your technology stack and your tech talent needs. Feel free to shoot me a message at employers@deepdivecoding.com or message on Twitter @SuperHeronDan.
