Workforce

What employees want: Developers spending more time firefighting issues than delivering innovation, need AI

According to a survey by Cisco, developers are spending over 57% of their time on reactive work, such as debugging and being dragged into war rooms, instead of creating code and building new applications.

The findings indicate that the current pace of innovation isn’t sustainable unless IT teams are equipped with the tools they need. Developers are expected to deliver new functionality at even faster speeds but are stretched thin with endless demands to help IT teams manage the availability and performance of applications. They are pointing to full-stack observability as an essential tool to help them better focus on accelerated innovation.

While most IT departments have deployed a multitude of monitoring tools across different domains, they simply fall short when it comes to today’s complex and dynamic IT environments, leaving technologists unable to generate a full and unified view into their applications and the supporting IT stack
Shannon McFarland, Vice President, Cisco DevNet

“While most IT departments have deployed a multitude of monitoring tools across different domains, they simply fall short when it comes to today’s complex and dynamic IT environments, leaving technologists unable to generate a full and unified view into their applications and the supporting IT stack,” said Shannon McFarland, Vice President, Cisco DevNet.

“When things go wrong, it’s incredibly difficult to quickly identify where the root cause lies, often resulting in panic war room situations and developers having to spend hours trying to help their colleagues in IT operations identify the quickest path to remediation.”

The results point to a need for visibility to keep pace with digital demands, with 77% pointing to mounting pressure to deliver seamless and secure digital experiences, while 67% state that their organization doesn’t have the right tools and visibility to understand the root causes of app issues and to effectively resolve them.

Also, 78% believe implementing FSO within their organization would be beneficial in gaining the real-time insights needed, and 75% fear that the lack of visibility is increasing the chances of their organization suffering from downtime and disruption.

There is evidence of low developer morale, with 82% admitting feeling frustrated and demotivated, 54% reporting they are more inclined to leave their job, and 91%

feeling that they should play a bigger role in shaping and deciding on the solutions needed within their organization.

Opportunity for AI

Many developers (39%) also feel that their organization (and they themselves) would benefit from deploying AI to automate application issue detection and resolution. Rather than relying on manual processes, AI can enable IT teams to cut through overwhelming volumes of application data to identify the most serious issues and apply fixes in real-time.

In addition, developers are ready to embrace new ways of working within the IT department to drive greater efficiency and productivity, and a more streamlined approach to managing application performance. The majority (57%) believe that there needs to be greater ongoing collaboration between developers and IT teams. This is already being seen in shift left testing and widespread adoption of DevOps and DevSecOps methodologies, so that application availability, performance and security considerations are embedded into the development lifecycle from the outset.

At a time when developer talent is in such high demand, organizations must do everything they can to empower their teams with the tools they need to be able to perform to their full potential and maximize impact
Shannon McFarland, Vice President, Cisco DevNet

“At a time when developer talent is in such high demand, organizations must do everything they can to empower their teams with the tools they need to be able to perform to their full potential and maximize impact,” added McFarland. “Full-stack observability has become mission-critical – without it, IT teams simply cannot deliver the levels of digital experience that consumers now demand.”

Modern Engineers Want More Learning

Tech like AI, microservice architecture and Java might be in high demand among what engineers seek to learn, however, the career aspirations of modern engineers vary with age.

According to a study by EPAM India 57% of modern engineers aged 25 years or under look for faster career promotions, whereas more than half of those between 26 and 30 are more invested in exploring career expansion opportunities through learning.

Expectations Regarding Ways of Working

While modern engineers want upskilling opportunities, they also look for a competitive work environment and access to modern tech while achieving a bigger purpose and meaning from their careers. They look for agile and flexible ways of working to stay ahead of the curve.

48% of survey participants find design thinking and nearly equal share said opportunities to express their creativity as key elements of a competitive modern work environment. New-age collaboration and real-time monitoring tools and techniques are considered essential practices for creating an agile working environment by 46% of modern engineers. Nearly half of the respondents stated that a work culture supporting flexibility and work-life balance is crucial for them. Certain aspects, like the flexibility to work from anywhere and anytime, were found to be more critical to modern women engineers than their counterparts.

When asked about their existing companies, the most positive views captured were about the use of real-time monitoring tools and techniques at the current workplaces, as cited 78% of modern engineers. However, survey responses were much less positive regarding a few of their other top expectations. A two-thirds majority of the respondents feel that their existing companies require to focus on working with the latest technologies. Nearly 60% of the participants think their workplaces need to offer more space to express creativity and promote design thinking.

Navanwita Bora Sachdev

Navanwita is the editor of The Tech Panda who also frequently publishes stories in news outlets such as The Indian Express, Entrepreneur India, and The Business Standard