Dive Brief:
- Nearly half of job seekers interested in software development roles are coming from other career fields, up from just one-third in 2022, according to an Indeed report released Tuesday.
- By contrast, software engineers are less likely than last year to explore career opportunities outside their space, the report found.
- "The attractiveness of software development jobs appears to have picked up, even in the face of mounting layoffs and declining employer demand," said Cory Stahle, economist at Indeed's Hiring Lab, in the report.
Dive Insight:
Though a slew of layoffs roiled the technology sector earlier this year, the cuts mostly targeted roles outside core technology functions. Demand for software developers and other specialized technology roles remains high across industries.
Software development continues to attract job-seekers from a variety of backgrounds, according to the report. Workers from fields such as management, IT operations and help desk and information design show interest in leveraging related skills to enter a career in software development.
Alongside macroeconomic trends, technological developments are beginning to influence the software development function, as leaders turn to the emerging technology to boost efficiency.
GitHub, owned by enterprise software giant Microsoft, has persistently promoted AI as an augmentative tool for software developers. The business offering of its Copilot tool recently reached a user base of more than 27,000 organizations.
The full impact of AI on software development remains to be seen, according to Tim Herbert, chief research officer at IT trade group CompTIA.
As the technology evolves, AI could take over certain types of routine coding or low-level development tasks, giving companies a way to shift developers to more meaningful tasks.
"The net effect, though, is really tough to tell," Herbert said. "Does it result in freeing up developers to pursue other growth opportunities, or does it result in potentially some software developers losing their jobs to AI? That piece of it is really difficult to tell at this point."
Ethics and data privacy concerns give some executives pause when considering AI-driven software development. Since AI-written code is based largely on open source databases, human oversight is key to lower security risks, analysts say.
In the meantime, CIOs are looking inward to fill skills gaps. Nearly half of CIOs at large companies have plans to invest in upskilling or reskilling training this year, Gartner data show.
