81% organisations facing dearth of ‘power user/developer’ tech skills

In recent times, roles such as software developers, IT engineers and function-specific non-technical roles have evolved into ‘power’ software developers, ‘power’ IT engineer and business application ‘power’ user roles respectively.

A whopping 81 per cent of organisations admit in an industry survey that they are presently witnessing low availability of ‘power user/ developer’ tech skills, while 14 per cent said they expect to experience it in the next three to five years. About 5 per cent are sure they will face a shortage in the next two years!

So what is the different between a ‘power software developer’ and a normal software developer as we have known for years now?

While typical software developers will have the usual software-development skills such as languages, databases and so on, with manual code writing, design and testing, the new-age ‘power’ software developers will have the ability to execute end-to-end SDLC1 across design, architecture, development, deployment and maintenance. They will be able to enhance productivity using AI tools such as ChatGPT, Co-pilot and so on.

While IT engineers are known to have expertise in isolated tools and skills such as OS administration, application support, DB administration and so on, the ‘power’ IT engineers are expected to possess expertise in multiple tools along with usage of AI-based tools for IT support, reporting, diagnosis, monitoring, customer management and so on.

Similarly, non-technical business users possess non-technical function-specific skills with basic usage of software applications for decision making such as spreadsheets. However, business app ‘power’ users in this new age are possessors of technical expertise on usage of multiple function-specific business applications, and design and development of business operating systems using low code/nocode tools.

A report on tech skills transformation reveals that application developers and business app users are in high demand among 76 and 62 per cent of organisations surveyed, respectively.

Dearth of talent with application-development skills is higher in the US and Europe compared to India. However, the availability of business application power users is less across the US, Europe as well as India.

Clearly, with the sudden surge in the usage of different tools, complexity of skills across functional areas (software engineering, IT, and business application power user) is also going up. This increase in complexity of tech skills demands that organisations invest in revamping their talent for the future.

No wonder a majority of the organisations surveyed are facing a shortage of ‘power user/ developer’ tech skills, and many believe they will face a shortage in the next three to five years. About five per cent feel they will witness a scarcity in the next two years.

Not surprisingly, about 28 per cent of organisations believe that over the next couple of years, they would need to revamp tech skills for one third of their talent base, failing which it will become a challenge for them to remain competitive. Of these 28 per cent organisations that believe that over 35 per cent of the tech roles will require skills transformation, about 50 per cent are from India and the remaining from the UK/EU.