Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2022.  Read them in this 14th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

IT Leaders Should Prepare for The Great Reshuffle, Increased Software Deployments, and No-Code/Low-Code Hitting a Fork in the Road

By Rob Zuber, Chief Technology Officer at CircleCI

This past year has put an emphasis on the importance of today's developers to every organization in every industry. Businesses have realized that regardless of the products or services they provide, they are a software business at their core. Developers are now integral to their company's success and nearly every transformation effort.

In 2022, developers will be more important than ever as organizations continue to focus on digital services and projects. Below are some of my predictions for 2022.

The Great Resignation Will Become The Great Reshuffle: 2021 was the year of The Great Resignation, but the dust hasn't settled just yet. Last year, many engineers and other software professionals changed jobs or roles in need of a new change of environment, and the pandemic was the catalyst for them to make the change. But in 2022 many employees are going to realize their new gig isn't quite the right fit.

Next year I expect a Great Reshuffle, where engineers look for opportunities that are more in-line with their long term goals. My advice to IT leaders is to embrace this shuffle. Be honest with what you're looking for, as well as be honest with what exactly the job entails. Honesty not only leads to a better employer and better employee matches, but it also builds a good foundation for the culture you're driving to build.

Software Deployment Rates Will Drive New Delivery Models: Deployments used to be a big deal. It was exhilarating, a bit frightening, and often meant late nights. But these days, many teams have achieved the goal of making deployments a non-event and are deploying all day, every day. Companies that haven't embraced this model of work are feeling the competitive pressure. In 2022, I expect that the rate of deployments will only keep increasing, as the later adopters catch up and the leaders try to stay ahead.

We're going to push the boundaries of the tools that we've been using and continuously evaluate our approaches. Embracing the necessary complexity behind today's best experiences-from massive datasets and AI/ML to networks of 3rd-party services-will force developers and stakeholders alike to adopt tooling and processes that help them fine tune the risk /innovation trade off.

No-code and Low-code Will Reach a Fork in the Road: Companies are under constant pressure to innovate faster, and the competition for developer talent is getting tougher. That pressure is leading organizations to invest in helping developers get more done with no-code and low-code solutions. This will lead to a split in the category of no and low code solutions - those built specifically for the people who already know how to make software and solutions that can serve the folks who don't actually want to be programmers.

We've been at this since the late '90s, when creators were all trying to use Dreamweaver to build enough of a website to get their content online. Then along came Blogger, Flickr, and YouTube and those folks ditched their sites and went back to focusing on content. Someone soon is going to stop banging their head on the problem of turning creators into programmers and rethink the paradigm to ship tools that let creators build experiences.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rob Zuber is a 20-year veteran of software startups; a three-time founder, and five-time CTO. Since joining CircleCI, Rob has seen the company through multiple rounds of funding and an acquisition, while leading a team of 200+ engineers distributed worldwide.