Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash
 

Companies have cut back on computer programmer hiring in most subspecialties—but not all. That’s an insight that leads to more questions, such as whether businesses’ technical debts will drive a job rebound now that hiring is easier.

Employers today search hard for two types of tech expertise: artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. (This article uses “tech” to refer to computer programming, though many other scientific and engineering tasks are certainly technical.) That insight has not been easy to glean from available data. Many tech jobs are at non-tech companies; if there is a horse-and-buggy company still in business, they may have a web developer. And “tech companies” employ accountants and marketing specialists who are not tech employees. Official data on employment by occupation (as distinct from industry) comes out with a substantial time lag, which prevents us from understanding current patterns.

Recruitics, a company that describes itself as a “Talent Attraction and Conversion Platform,” has developed their Talent Market Index with fine-grained detail on hiring efforts. In an oversimplified nutshell, they compute the cost of getting an application for a particular type of job.

CEO Adam Stafford, in a video call, told me that talent acquisition spending is down for general tech jobs. They were, however, seeing strength in AI and cybersecurity. Although their index does not explain the corporate justification for the change, our conversation plus other information points to two factors. First, many corporations have held the line on employment spending in 2024. They may have been worried about the recession that was commonly predicted last year. Second, in past years tech companies that were flush with cash hired people for highly aspirational programs that did not generate profits. Reversing that spending, layoffs were announced at Amazon’s Alexa, Microsoft’s Blizzard and various Google divisions, and they were not the only cutbacks.

Weaker demand for tech talent that results from less optimistic expectations for the future is not a shock. What has surprised me, though, it that employers have not used the softer hiring conditions to work down their technical debt. That concept describes software features and fixes that were not performed on early versions but are now holding back performance. Examples abound, which readers can verify by going to almost any website to purchase something, schedule an appointment or search for an item that is not the most commonly searched variation of the item.

In recent years, businesses that knew they had poor software were hesitant to hire the talent needed to improve it. They couldn’t compete with tech titans that were paying top dollar for programmers. Companies chose to live with poor software rather than pay high salaries to fix it. My surprise is that we have not seen many companies praise the heavens that they can now find affordable people to upgrade their systems.

The future for coders is brighter than the current status. First, companies are likely to loosen their purse strings now that recession seems unlikely. Second, that technical debt will be repaid. One company will improve its system, compelling competitors to match features and ease of use. Third, implementation of artificial intelligence will require programmers who are not AI specialists. I wrote earlier, “Most business functions will not be improved by simply using a chatbot connected to a large language model. Instead, the big gains will come from specialized applications that solve a very specific business problem.” Programmers will write code to connect user input with the AI, and then return the AI results in a form that the user can easily apply.

At the same time, programmers will use AI to become more productive. Programming was the first occupation to enjoy large benefits from AI. One the one hand, greater productivity means that fewer programmer hours are needed for a given task. It also means, however, that the cost of adding a feature or fixing a bug is much lower than before, even without lower programmer wages.

Businesses can take advantage of the present situation by being early to staff up. Out-of-work programmers are generally available and many will work for less money than they received last year. Improving tech functions will benefit sales and often lower costs. Those other costs include employees spending time on inefficient processes and fixing problems raised by customers and suppliers.

Programmers looking for work would do well to feature their ability to connect users to AI services, as well as their skill in fixing buggy old software.

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