In a survey of more than 500 tech workers and employers, 37pc said software developer will be the most important technology job in the future.
They were polled by Remote, a US-based company that helps organisations hire remote workers. It asked more than 500 employers and employees who work in tech for their thoughts on in-demand skills for the future.
After software developer, the jobs deemed most important for the future were software engineer, workplace manager, digital workplace programme director, head of automation and machine learning engineer.
The respondents were also asked for their views on the most in-demand skills for tech workers. The top five in-demand skills singled out by those surveyed were social media skills, digital marketing, software development, programming, web and app development and software engineering.
[...] In June of this year, the Code Institute's digital content and production manager, Daragh Ó Tuama, wrote a piece for SiliconRepublic.com that outlined nine reasons to become a software developer.
From job satisfaction to great career progression opportunities and high salaries, it's a very good option for anyone who is considering their future at the moment.
Do our tech workers agree? (And when did "pc" start getting used for "percent"? Is "pct" too old fashioned now?)
Related Stories
As AI assumes more software development work, developers may eventually be working with training models more than they do with coding tools:
Over the past few decades, various movements, paradigms, or technology surges -- whatever you want to call them -- have roiled the software world, promising either to hand a lot of programming grunt work to end users, or automate more of the process. CASE tools, 4GL, object-oriented programming, service oriented architecture, microservices, cloud services, Platform as a Service, serverless computing, low-code, and no-code all have theoretically taken the onerous burdens out of software development. And, potentially, threaten the job security of developers.
Yet, here we are. Software developers are busier than ever, with demand for skills only increasing.
[...] Matt Welsh, CEO and co-founder of Fixie.ai, for one, predicts that "programming will be obsolete" within the next decade or so. "I believe the conventional idea of 'writing a program' is headed for extinction," he predicts in a recent article published by the Association for Computing Machinery. "Indeed, for all but very specialized applications, most software, as we know it, will be replaced by AI systems that are trained rather than programmed."
In situations where one needs a "simple program -- after all, not everything should require a model of hundreds of billions of parameters running on a cluster of GPUs -- those programs will, themselves, be generated by an AI rather than coded by hand," Welsh adds.
Although some of the article delves into businesspeak, it does speculate on what the roles of IT professionals and developers may be in a future where most of the code writing grunt work is done by AI.
Previously:
- Software Developer Named Most Important Tech Job of the Future
- Non-Programmers are Building More of the World's Software
- Want to be a Developer? These are the Coding Skills That Can Get You Hired
- Low Code And No Code: A Looming Trend In Mobile App Development
- Where Are the Jobs Really?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by arslan on Thursday September 01 2022, @05:13AM (5 children)
Its good they distinguish between the 2. Developer is at #1, Engineer is at #2, either way - they're still both at the top relative to everything else.
(Score: 3, Touché) by shrewdsheep on Thursday September 01 2022, @10:44AM (4 children)
Could you please enlighten me, what the definitions are exactly?
(Score: 4, Touché) by turgid on Thursday September 01 2022, @04:50PM (2 children)
An Engineer understand it. A Developer just does the typing?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday September 02 2022, @12:57AM (1 child)
And what is programming in this view of things?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday September 02 2022, @07:01AM
Programming's just typing. Have you never worked for a PHB?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday September 07 2022, @06:00AM
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=developer+vs+engineer [letmegooglethat.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2022, @05:14AM (4 children)
You mean, people that can actually do things will be rewarded? What insanity is this??!?!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by coolgopher on Thursday September 01 2022, @06:52AM (1 child)
Don't worry, it won't apply to the people at the top.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 01 2022, @12:34PM
Those people at the top are "over" a team, oftentimes "over" a team of people who each are "over" their own teams. By the time you have 100 people "under" you, don't you deserve 10x their individual compensation?
Obviously, I think not, but that's not how most companies are structured. The outrageous thing in our company is: when the "higher level" people have a happy accident of productivity, efficiency, good-whatever they get Peter-principle elevated out of that position where they might have been doing something right into a new and unfamiliar level where they get to roll the dice again. Similarly, people at a "higher level" who have several consecutive years of bad performance in their teams get "lateraled" to a position of equal compensation but lessened responsibility for others' productivity, efficiency, etc. as if: once promoted, they can never really be called out as responsible for bad performance of their teams, but we'll just put them aside and let somebody else try for awhile. Meanwhile, with an average of 6-1 reporting ratios, those seeking advancement can wait for a decade or more for their shot at accidentally presiding over a happy streak and then advancing to the next round of the lottery.
Actually, thinking about it, in 2005 our man with somewhat less than 1000 people "under" him was pulling $10M+ per year in average compensation, while his average underlings were somewhere below $100K - so that's a multiple of 100 for "leading" less than 1000 people. It's good to be king.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by Opportunist on Thursday September 01 2022, @01:26PM
Don't worry, it's just most important tech job. You know, not the really well paying ones where people don't do fuck all but count and waste money.
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday September 01 2022, @10:57PM
Don’t be too hasty, “workplace manager “ was in the list too.
(Score: 4, Touché) by istartedi on Thursday September 01 2022, @07:45AM (6 children)
There's even a symbol for percent: %, and it doesn't even need to be escaped. That's right up there with the whole "needs TLC" thing on real estate ads.
Don't these dumbasses realize how plentiful bits are? Back in the days of paper and ink, car ads would say things like, "nds brks", and we understood it, and it made sense. It had to be done because "bandwidth" of a classified ad was limited. Now the bandwidth is incredibly generous but you still see "needs TLC"? Not even "nds roof?" Sheesh! And let's throw this "pc" thing on the pile now too. I say again, bits are not scarce. They probably crap-flooded your browser with at least 200k of JavaScript bloat just to show you "pc". It's percent, mothafuckers! You can type it out. You have bits. You have bandwidth. You have computing power that would have made research physicists of 50 years ago drool with envy. Look, I can do it over and over again: percent, percent, percent, percent, percent, percent, percent, percent, percent, percent, percent, percent, percent, percent, percent, percent! So can you.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by inertnet on Thursday September 01 2022, @08:24AM
But that would violate Moore's law of web content. Bloated, unessential uselessness versus actual content must double every 2 years.
(Score: 5, Funny) by stretch611 on Thursday September 01 2022, @08:38AM (3 children)
Out of memory exception in line 12
Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to continue
Bastard!!! Don't you know that windows needs to use every last bit of RAM. How else would it force people to buy a new computer and upgrade to the latest version of winbloat?
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday September 01 2022, @10:18AM (2 children)
My team mates use Visual Studio for their dev work, they advised me that I should get 32GB of RAM in my new laptop if I want to build the project in a reasonable time....
My gcc build is running 13-15 minutes, but that's mostly because of the 20kloc .h file coming from a code generator... gcc does ok with it, but the lunker struggles.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday September 01 2022, @10:59PM (1 child)
Here too. I’m a Hardware eng, why do the sw guys use Microsoft tools? Back when I was doing software years ago, it was all vim, gcc and make.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday September 02 2022, @01:51AM
You trying to annoy the OP, umm, I mean the Original Poster, with those unnecessary abbreviations? ;)
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday September 01 2022, @10:42AM
It was against the Associated Press Stylebook until around 2019: https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2019/ap-says-the-percentage-sign-now-ok-when-used-with-a-numeral-thats-shift5/ [poynter.org]
compiling...
(Score: 3, Funny) by pTamok on Thursday September 01 2022, @07:58AM (3 children)
There's a perfectly good
emojiASCII symbol for per centum [wikipedia.org]: %Given the popularity of emojis, I would have thought having a standardized symbol one could use instead of old fashioned letters and words would be the preferred choice.
(Score: 5, Funny) by coolgopher on Thursday September 01 2022, @11:18AM
Maybe they were %-/
(Score: 3, Funny) by OrugTor on Thursday September 01 2022, @04:28PM
If you could put a face on the percent symbol and make it look sexual or fecal it would really take off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2022, @04:49PM
Thank you for being a smart-ass grandpa. Meanwhile, I only use the *cool* emojis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2022, @08:31AM
Most important, most deadly to other jobs, and the planet for that matter.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 01 2022, @03:40PM (2 children)
DC Lobbyist for Big Tech is the most important tech job of the future. It will also be the best compensated. The actual software developers will continue to make peanuts as H1-Bs are imported to keep wages low.
It has been the trend for 20 years, and there are no signs it has changed, or will change.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 01 2022, @03:45PM
Ditto science except replace H1B with J1 and lower the standards. In fact, standards are just govt bureaucracy, lose the standards.
(Score: 4, Informative) by SomeRandomGeek on Thursday September 01 2022, @03:59PM
I'm not sure that "peanuts" is the word I'd use.
The median software developer makes $110k/year. https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-developer/salary [usnews.com]
The median individual in the US makes $32k/year. https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?utm_medium=explore&mprop=income&popt=Person&cpv=age%2CYears15Onwards&hl=en [datacommons.org]
The median household in the world makes $10k/year. https://news.gallup.com/poll/166211/worldwide-median-household-income-000.aspx#:~:text=Worldwide%2C%20Median%20Household%20Income%20About%20%2410%2C000 [gallup.com]
Perhaps software developers should be paid more. But I wouldn't say that they don't already make a lot of money.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday September 01 2022, @05:50PM (1 child)
The most common tech job is probably the people who mine and process the raw materials for semiconductors. Without them, none of the rest of it matters.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Thursday September 01 2022, @10:29PM
I don't have the numbers, but mining and refining are equipment and capital intensive these days rather than labor intensive. I have a feeling that being directly connected to the wafer and dopant supply chain isn't that common.
Take boron [wikipedia.org] for instance and note that most of it isn't even used in electronics. One company in Turkey and another single mining operation in the USA produce most of it. The US mine produces 23% according to the link (and some lithium now too, which is interesting. I didn't know that). I've driven by there. It's a desolate place. They employ 978 [riotinto.com] but I doubt most of the people there think of themselves as tech workers.
That said, you're right insofar as the show can't go on without these commodities.
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