CTO Perspectives: Technology Trends with Allan Wintersieck

This past summer you said, “we haven’t seen many technical advances this year because everyone is simply bouncing back from the pandemic.” - Is this still true?

“Generally, yes.”

“Of course, there are always people doing new research, but it seems like most companies are just holding steady right now. The areas where I’m seeing transformation are more table-stakes operations stuff—the cloud, hosting, and headless CMSs. That said, digital transformation like this is still great to see. Just because it happens slowly over many years doesn’t make it any less impactful in the long term.”

What are the biggest challenges you see?

“It continues to be finding and recruiting talent. Most leaders I know can’t find enough talent for the work they need. However, I believe that retention is getting better. Generally, developers are more settled because companies have landed on remote/hybrid policies.”

What are the biggest opportunities for tech companies right now?

“I think engineering leaders need to shift their mindset from “competing in the market” to “competing in the talent pool.”

“If you can’t find the right folks, your product will suffer. That’s why you need to prioritize talent over your competition—so you can crush them in product. We still think that the best way to do this is through culture.”

Was there anything that surprised you from the developer survey?

“In the data we collected, languages/frameworks/technologies ranked so low, which was surprising. In fact, the lowest three rankings (technology, impact of product, and industry) were all surprising because other surveys, like Stack Overflow, often show different results.

“How does this impact companies? Well, in the past, I always thought that if you have old tech and/or your mission isn’t profound, it would be more difficult to hire people. But maybe this is less true. If you have a great culture, pay well, and have flexible work opportunities, maybe your tech stack and industry don’t matter as much.”

What else are you thinking about?

“The cost of complexity.”

“On one hand, engineers and leaders want to learn about complex new things so we can handle them, and honestly, because they’re cool. On the other hand, when it comes down to usability, we generally don’t want to choose overly complex solutions.

“For example, think about microservices. People are typically either for or against microservices. But I think it should be ‘let’s not over-engineer this for the sake of it’. A large company with hundreds of engineers very likely needs some complex microservices set up to make it all work, but an early-stage startup absolutely doesn’t. Take on however much complexity you actually need to take on.”

End Interview.

Want to have a conversation with Allan about technology and recruitment trends? Reach out!