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On the heels of 2020, the new year brought a lot of hope that things would be better and run smoother, especially for a lot of the suffering industries. The pandemic has brought significant challenges to many industries, forcing most businesses to adapt quickly or risk closing their doors. There was a strong need for businesses that had resisted embracing the online market to make the shift in order to keep their customers. The world of online development was more in demand than ever before, and it’s not going to slow anytime soon.

Developers Are In High Demand

Shortly after the beginning of the pandemic, at least here in Vancouver, there was a dip in the demand for developers. As I was going through the Bootcamp and was beginning to watch the job market for positions, there were less and less jobs available for junior and senior developers alike. Fast forward to now and the demand for developers is growing exponentially every single day. Businesses who had put in quick (and possibly temporary) solutions to overcome the first wave are now faced with finding permanent solutions as the pandemic continues and we all adjust to doing things a little differently. 

With that, the need for developers is increasing. Not only are new businesses requiring developers to survive and succeed in the online world, but existing companies are seeking new and innovative ways to overcome some of the challenges we are facing. The tech industry continues to grow at an accelerated speed. 

In addition to this, stable existing companies have seen exponential growth over the past year, as people have become significantly more reliant on their products. Tech giant Shopify announced staggering growth over the past year, reporting an 86% increase in total revenue. Meanwhile, Zoom, the software we’ve all become so reliant on during the pandemic, saw a 326% increase in their total revenue. These are absolutely mind-blowing numbers, but it’s not just the giant online companies that are receiving the increase in traffic. Statistics Canada released their online shopping overview from last year and the increase in online shopping for nearly all non-essentials grew at unprecedented rates.

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The pandemic has brought a significant increase to an industry that has already been steadily climbing for years. The need for developers isn’t going to slow down anytime soon.

Low Code Solutions

Given the demand and need for businesses and companies to get updates and content out faster, the shift to companies using low or no-code solutions is greater than ever before. Shopify’s continuing success and increase in use showcases just how many companies are utilizing low or no-code technologies.

While the name implies the shift away from needing developers, low or no-code solutions are often used as a replacement for certain aspects of the development process to allow the developers to spend more time on the software and applications that matter more to the companies.

We ourselves used one of these solutions here at CodeCast. We used Webflow to build the website you are currently reading this blog on. This allowed me to quickly implement all the designs our designer created, and allow our other developers to spend more time on the player and studio since those are the aspects of CodeCast that we want to spend our time perfecting. 

There is a lot of really popular software out there to provide low or no-code solutions for all different aspects of development and this type of software is expected to become more popular and widely used as time goes on. 

Remote Working & Communication Changes

It goes without saying that the shift to working remotely became commonplace last year in any industry where it was possible. Development has always been famous for people being able to have more flexibility when it comes to working styles, but with the pandemic, a lot of companies have fully transitioned to working from home. Popular companies like Twitter, Square, and Shopify all announced that they are allowing their employees to work from home permanently, with companies like Quora and BaseCamp going entirely remote. 

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We ourselves are an entirely remote company here at CodeCast. being entirely remote, you have to have the ability to communicate with each other in a clear and timely manner, similar to how you would be able to in an office. 

So much of development allows for this by nature via things like GitHub, but we also utilize communication tools like Slack for day-to-day communication, as well as Zoom for all our meetings or anything where we need to problem solve actively. We have a blog coming up about all our advice for communicating remotely in an effective way, so be sure to keep an eye out for that!

Open Source

2020 also brought an increase to the number of companies who began using and contributing to open-source software. Open-source has been growing over the past few years, but as the demand for applications increased, so did the reliance on open-source software. According to opensource.com, “44% of organizations report[ed] they will increase their use of open-source for application development”. 

While open-source has been popular through the years because it saves time (and therefore cost) for companies, we are beginning to see a growing number of companies who are contributing to open-source projects.

While open-source software is nothing new to the coding world, it doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon, and many developers can expect to use pieces of open-source software in their work.

Full Stack Developers

Software developers are in high demand and are consistently on the top industry lists year after year. Specifically, the need and desire for full-stack developers are increasing. Covid brought hardships to companies and forced a lot of companies to move into the digital world, shifting their budgets and requirements alike. This leads to the desire for companies to hire fewer developers that can do more for them.

Due to this, Full Stack Developers tend to be paid higher salaries than developers who focus on front or back-end development. If you’re a full-stack developer, make sure you are being paid fairly for the work you're doing. We recently published a blog about developers struggling to charge for their work, so give that a read if you think it applies to you! 

Either way, being full-stack requires you to have a much broader knowledge base, with you often needing to have your hands in multiple pieces of the pie within your company. While it’s more to know, it also means you get to do more varying work, and will constantly be learning and growing your knowledge base.

All in all, the past year had a substantial impact on every industry, and it made some significant changes to the world of development. Regardless of where you fit in, we hope you have a successful 2021.