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Now everyone is hunting for IT specialists. It is hard to believe that under some circumstances this hype can end. But is this scenario so unbelievable?
Is there a future for programmers?
In recent years, the well-known futurist Gerd Leonhard warned that the extensive development of technologies (for example, artificial intelligence) would soon simply “swept away people as unnecessary” – including programmers. In his opinion, if earlier such a threat concerned mainly routine and low-skilled work, now those whose work is considered highly intellectual and creative may also be out of work.
Leonhard is not the only one who is skeptical about the future of IT people. According to Forrester data, by 2030 many IT professionals will lose their jobs: developers, testers, technical support employees. The irony here is that those who are directly involved in its creation can also be under attack by AI.
Let’s look at three main scenarios in which programmers can be left without work.
Hyper-automation will bury many IT specialties
Hyper-automation is a set of technologies and tools based on AI, machine learning, cloud technologies and big data, which allows you to automate not just local processes, but the entire company or even the entire industry.
Gartner has listed hyperautomation as one of the top 10 technology trends for 2022, with hyperautomation already reaching over 50% of companies, according to its data. And if earlier it concerned only routine operations, now the most complex processes are also being digitized, such as web development and online product support. For the Russian market, this trend has also become one of the key ones: both in the IT sector and in others, for example, in retail. In total, according to McKinsey, total digitalization will affect up to 50% of the global economy and more than 1,2 billion employees.
The first to fall victim to hyper-automation will be technical support specialists. Over time, technical progress will reach data specialists (data-science and data analysts): already now much of data collection and analysis is automated, and the task of an employee is to skillfully manage the results obtained and apply them for the benefit of the business. Finally, the turn will reach the programmers.
Vivid proof of this is the mass layoffs of IT specialists in Indian companies. For example, Infosys Corporation fired 11 thousand out of 200 thousand people, replacing them with algorithms and special software. The third largest IT company in India, Wipro, laid off 600 employees. And DXC Technology plans to get rid of 10 of its 170 employees and reduce the number of offices from 50 to 26.
Developers in their pure form will not be needed
Another threat that the developers themselves talk about is related to the fact that the demand for highly specialized specialists is falling on the market: those who program in 1-2 languages or are engaged only in front-end or back-end development. Programmers in the classical sense will soon become a thing of the past, and in their place will come multidisciplinary engineers, technical managers and those who are able to create turnkey products – as Steve Jobs did. To do this, you will have to master not only new trends in mobile or web development, but also related fields of knowledge – up to the humanities and natural sciences.
Development engineers and testers already exist at Microsoft. In the near future, developers will have to master the knowledge of Internet protocols, security certificates, database structures and management systems. And then we will come close to the fact that the line between developers and web designers will become thinner. The former will also be required to have a deep understanding of UX interfaces and content, while the latter will be required to create sites and applications with elements of ready-made interfaces and functions. Those who cannot adapt to changing demands will have to leave the market or urgently retrain.
The trend for no-code products
Services based on Low Code/No Code (literally “no code”) allow you to create a website, an online store, a database, or implement a separate function using ready-made templates, without developers and Q&A. Initially, such solutions were popular for the simplest online services of small companies, companies that cannot afford expensive developers. But now, according to IDC forecasts, by 2026 more than 40% of companies will use such services, optimizing the costs of launching digital products by 33%. From the simplest templates for sites like Tilda or WordPress low-code services have gone to complex neural networks that can completely replace web developers. Such solutions are available, for example, from DeepMind (Alphabet), AWS (Amazon) and Sber AI. Chris Wanstrath, CEO of GitHub, is confident that this trend means that in the very near future, programmers will no longer be needed to create code.
However, the developers themselves are skeptical about them (Facebook is owned by Meta Platforms, recognized as extremist and banned in our country). They point out the disadvantages of low-code and no-code – such as weak functionality that is not suitable for complex and large-scale projects, and also does not allow many important options to be implemented. In addition, the service can delete or block your product at any time, and with it all the data. Launching a unique service and customizing it for your target audience with the help of such solutions is also unlikely to succeed.
Which scenario is most likely
Top IT managers believe that the global digitalization of all processes will most likely lead to a redistribution of roles and the emergence of new specialties. For example, in the near future, demand will increase for those who will develop and configure solutions based on AI and machine learning, as well as be responsible for collecting and processing data from smart devices within the Internet of things. According to Cisco, IoT devices are already generating 40 times more data than the largest data centers in the world.
Sergey Markov, Head of the Department of Experimental Machine Learning Systems of the SberDevices Department:
The introduction of systems based on the latest achievements of AI is not the first technological revolution in history and not the first time that the threat of technological unemployment has arisen. However, the employment rate has not fallen significantly since the start of the industrial revolution. Thanks to new technologies, new professions and entire industries have appeared. The electronics industry, the software industry, internet marketing, and retail are all areas that have emerged from the information technology revolution.
The deep learning revolution is also creating new uses for human labor, including jobs for AI professionals, in training, in data labeling, in machine learning software development, testing, and implementation. New services need designers, marketers, economists, DevOps specialists (development engineers) and so on. The development of AI technologies is not a “zero-sum game” – along with the growth of labor productivity, social needs also grow.
Of course, the skill requirements of new employees do not always match the skills of those who lose their jobs due to automation. Therefore, society must find ways to mitigate the social consequences of the elimination of old professions.
In October 2020, experts from the World Economic Forum presented an analytical report on the future of jobs, which presents the results of a study of the dynamics of the global labor market. The authors come to the conclusion that the rate of creation of new jobs as a result of technological progress will prevail over the rate of liquidation of old ones in the medium term. It is assumed that from 2020 to 2025, 85 million “old” jobs will be eliminated and 97 million new ones will be created. At the same time, the need, first of all, for skilled labor will grow.
The authors of the report also refer to an article by Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank analysts “Forced Automation Under the Impact of COVID-19? Preliminary Trends in Data from the Current Population Survey”, whose conclusions are broadly similar.
The key skill in an era of change is the ability to change – a number of “meta-professions” have formed in the labor market, suggesting the ability of workers to transform along with the industry. People involved in IT have long been accustomed to the fact that everything can change – some programming languages leave and others appear, libraries, frameworks, development paradigms, equipment change, emphasis shifts, tasks change – an experienced specialist accepts these changes, follows them, and, therefore remains in demand. Similar phenomena are observed in other areas – in pedagogy, in medicine, in electronics, in the banking sector.
In the 1950s and 1960s, most software was developed in machine code. High-level languages made it possible to get rid of complex low-level manipulations and greatly increased the productivity of programmers. And it did not lead to mass unemployment. On the contrary, due to the increased availability of information technologies, the scope of their application has expanded. Since the 1960s, the number of people employed in IT has increased by several orders of magnitude. Most likely, the spread of “smart” development tools based on deep neural networks will have a similar impact on the industry.
Automated code processing is one of the fastest growing areas of machine learning, which has been boosted by advances in natural language processing. Zero-code and Low-code tools, models for intelligent code completion (Github Copilot, Tabnine, JARVIS from Sber, etc.), finding defects in program code, semantic search – all of them help programmers write better code with more low labor costs, lower the threshold for entering the industry, but we are not talking about a complete replacement of programmers. The nature of the work of programmers is being transformed – routine tasks are leaving (writing the same type of code blocks, searching for program snippets, etc.), programming is becoming more creative, and it becomes possible to create more complex information systems. In a word, a catastrophic development scenario in which a lot of programmers lose their jobs is something from the realm of non-science fiction. But this does not mean that IT professionals can refuse self-development. The entire technological landscape of modern development is likely to change beyond recognition in the coming decades.
In other words, even if it is still very far from the complete disappearance of IT specialists, you definitely shouldn’t relax: you will have to constantly adapt to the new demands of employers who have long been looking for a cheap alternative to the most expensive employees.