New research claims that the stress of filling developer positions with qualified and appropriately skilled candidates is holding many companies back from achieving complete success.
On top of the struggle to bring in new talent, existing developers are feeling the pressure, as companies struggle to recruit developers quickly enough.
Rapidly growing workloads are growing faster than the workforce can grow, Dynatrace points out, and if the problem isn’t addressed, it can increasingly lead to developer burnout, putting digital transformation at risk.
Developer jobs
But it gets worse, because this knife is two-sided. Dynatrace notes that companies are facing two opposing challenges: a pandemic-driven surge in digital transformation that is eventually opening up thousands of new jobs, and a worker shortage that continues to leave those positions unfilled.
Company research indicates that nearly three-quarters (72%) of technology teams have a skills shortage that they seem unable to fill. It is said that two million tech job vacancies were announced between May 2021 and 2022, and the reward has never been higher.
Tech salaries averaged nearly 80% higher than their non-technical counterparts, with salaries increasing by 22% among Developer and DevOps salaries. In an effort to make the transition more attractive, low-paying developer jobs have seen a massive pay rise of 40%.
“Developers are under a lot of pressure to keep up with innovation cycles, and a talent shortage is creating more work for existing teams,” noted Greg Adams, Regional Vice President, Dynatrace UK & Ireland.
“This leads to developer burnout because teams can’t handle the increasing workloads. Organizations need to do more than just raise salaries if they want to reduce developer burnout, or else they risk derailing their digital transformation journeys.”
Part of the solution, the company says, should include automation, which would allow developers to focus mostly on what matters, while spending less on “manual efforts to keep the lights on.”