Why the Tech Talent Problem is a Huge Opportunity for Enterprise Organizations

There’s a global shortage of tech talent and that’s a big problem for ambitious enterprise organizations.

To be an empowered, modern digital organization that’s optimized for today, tomorrow and long into the future, you need to start thinking about the tech talent problem differently. You have to think about it from the point of view of the tech talent, rather than the perspective of your organization.

Our blog post puts numbers to the severity of the shortage of tech professionals and highlights why candidates are in the recruitment driving seat.

We then provide a key solution for the tech talent problem, one that empowers you to maximize the value of your people and gives them the performance to drive momentum for your organization — developer experience.

Let’s get started.

Behind every great piece of technology or successful tech company there are highly skilled professionals, powering the products and services we use for pleasure and for necessity. The problem is that there’s a scarcity of these professionals and it’s only getting worse.

Right now, 77% of employers report difficulty in filling roles . By 2030, it’s predicted there will be a global shortage of 85 million tech professionals and that this will create an annual revenue loss of $8.5 trillion. These are crash-and-burn numbers for organizations that fall foul of the tech talent problem.

But the problem isn’t just that organizations can’t fill their existing employment gaps — this McKinsey article highlights that millions of people are leaving their jobs. That same article gives three reasons people are resigning: because they can, because they are upset and because they are exhausted.

It’s clear from the numbers that attracting and retaining talented tech professionals is a huge challenge, one your ​​enterprise must overcome.

Given the shortages in tech professionals, people have tremendous power when it comes to selecting their employer. They can pick the one that not only offers the best salary, but also provides the right culture, the right work, the right benefits, the right progression, the right impact, the right values, the right empathy and more.

Employers have a real challenge on their hands to make their organization the most attractive place to work. What makes this problematic is enterprises are getting their approach to attracting and retaining talent wrong.

Many employers look at this issue from a hiring perspective, looking inwards and focusing on things they believe make them great. But what really matters right now is the candidate’s view. It’s what they want from you, not what you want to give them. And have you asked the talent what they want?

There are many questions you can ask your prospective and existing employees, but perhaps the most important one is this: “What’s the main reason you’d leave a job?” This is crucial because the answer reveals how you can attract and retain the best tech talent.

According to Forbes , the main reason developers leave an organization is “They don’t feel like they are making a difference”. They spend too much time on what they perceive to be meaningless work that doesn’t get into the hands of customers.

The need to offer meaningful work is why developer experience (DevEx) is a key battleground for employers, both in acquiring and retaining talent — happy developers stay longer and build your organization’s reputation as a great place to work, doing so by sharing their experiences in the tech communities they’re part of.

Time is crucial to DevEx. This is because tech professionals don’t just want to do their best work, they want to do valuable work they care about. The problem is that many developers don’t have the bandwidth to do meaningful work because they spend too much time on mundane tasks.

Chances are your developers feel they spend a huge amount of their time on tasks that are essentially admin work, such as following manual processes instead of using coding techniques — doing the things they don’t like.

So, what do developers like? According to Zenhub’s 2022 Developer Happiness Report , the three things developers like doing most at work are software design, coding and debugging, and deployment. However, that same report says 38% of developers think they spend too much time on admin tasks.

You can bring a good DevEX to your developers by giving them access to tools, processes, services and approaches that reduce the amount of time they spend on necessary, but unexciting tasks. This means they have more time to focus on work that makes them feel like they’re making a real difference to your organization, such as building new products and features. But it’s not just your developers who benefit from cutting out mundane tasks.

The benefits of putting focus and investment into improving your DevEx stretch far beyond making your developers happier because they spend more time writing well-crafted code — it makes your organization more efficient and profitable. This is something we know enterprise organizations want and that we see when working with them.

As our General Manager for EMEA, Colin Houlihan, says: “Our clients see developer experience as a key factor, not just in retaining top talent, but in driving efficiency and impact right across the organization.” Our Head of DevOps and Platform Engineering , Luca Lanziani, adds to this by highlighting that cutting the time spent on mundane tasks can “reduce the speed to production from multiple months to weeks”.

What we’re saying is that if you increase your DevEx then you’ll increase your DV (Developer Velocity) and this will improve your market performance. And it’s not just us saying this, with McKinsey making it clear that companies in the top quarter for DV outperform rival companies by up to 500%.

This is where the opportunity comes from solving the tech talent problem. Improving DevEx not only makes your organization better at attracting and retaining talent, it also makes it more efficient, productive and profitable. That’s a great experience for everyone.

Enterprise organizations the world over are affected by a shortage of talented tech professionals. There aren't enough people to close existing gaps in recruitment and departures are creating bigger holes to fill.

By improving your DevEx, you can make your organization the place the best tech professionals choose to work at. You’ll then have happier developers who are able to do more revenue-generating work, making your enterprise more profitable. It’s a win-win.

So, start your DevEx improvement journey today and you’ll be on your way to outperforming your rivals by up to 500%.