Demand for developers remains high
Despite difficult economic conditions, software development and quality assurance skills remain a priority for businesses, according to a new study.
Research from the Qt Group looks at the number of vacancies for 'software development', 'software testing', 'software engineering', and 'quality assurance' positions at 30 tech companies which have made the most redundancies this year.
In total, 166,259 were laid off during the analysis period, according to layoffs.fyi, yet 23,426 developer-related vacancies remain unfilled on the companies’ websites. Current data for total layoffs in 2023 stands at 249,354.
One major tech employer made 27,410 redundancies, but still had 5,437 software development-focused roles advertised on its website as of 15th of November 2023.
"The developer skills gap has been well-documented, but with so many tech companies forced into making redundancies across the business, the requirement for developer talent is as urgent as ever," says JuhaPekka Niemi, senior vice president, product management at Qt Group. "Despite an uncertain economic market, companies are still looking for -- and struggling to recruit -- developer talent. To mitigate the skills shortage, companies must act now to refine their design and development process, and improve efficiency by harnessing cross-platform development frameworks and quality assurance tools. In doing so, developers can deliver improvements across development, testing and maintenance, and achieve quicker overall time-to-market."
It’s interesting that so many vacancies remain open despite the increasing adoption of AI. Given that over 90 percent of developers are using AI-powered coding tools at work, this demonstrates how developer skills remain in high demand even as AI adoption increases.
"The advent of AI has given rise to a lot of excitement around the capabilities of generative AI and large-language model (LLM) tools, but the demand in which software developers are sought after remains high," says Peter Schneider, senior product manager at Qt Group. "This highlights developers' integral role in innovation and creativity. Recognizing the burden placed on developers and the impact that this may have on their welfare, companies must arm their developers with the necessary tools to cope with the increasingly high demands of the job. Tools like cross-platform frameworks make it easier for developers to work across different platforms and fill talent needs."
You can see more on the Qt Group blog.
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