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TECH WORKFORCE TRENDS
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Remote Work Habits are Changing Again |
For a report in Harvard Business Review (HBR), researchers gathered metadata from all Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and WebEx meetings (involving webcams on and/or off) from 10 large global organizations and compared six-week snapshots of the number of meetings from April through mid-May in 2020 following the COVID-19 lockdowns, and the same set of six weeks in 2021 and 2022. The study concludes that remote work doesn't decrease productivity but does change how workers and companies define productivity. According to the study, virtual meetings today are more frequent, spontaneous, shorter, and include fewer participants. We can assume that as remote working became more ubiquitous, people realized that it's not always necessary to have a 30-to-60-minute meeting. HBR's study aims to argue against the assertion that remote employees are not engaging with their colleagues. The study says that unscheduled one-on-one meetings might replace the in-person interactions employees used to have in the office. (https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/work-life/remote-work-habits-are-changing-again-that-doesnt-mean-employees-are-less-engaged/)
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Demand for Tech Skills Remains Strong; Tech Sector Layoffs "Barely Dent" Demand |
The hiring market for technology talent remains robust, and demand keeps growing for technology professionals who can fuse business requirements with tech savvy. That's the word from Jeff Williams, VP of enterprise and HR solutions for Paychex, providing his perspective on what's ahead for the technology talent market in the year ahead. In a recent ZDNet article, he discusses: What types of technology skills are now the most critical to employers, especially in a rocky economy? What types of companies have and will continue to have the strongest demand? What initiatives or actions should tech professionals take to demonstrate their value to their businesses and keep advancing in their careers?. (https://www.zdnet.com/article/despite-the-gloomy-headlines-demand-for-tech-skills-is-strong/)
ALSO, CIO Dive reports that "Tech sector layoffs barely dent demand for IT talent": Tech sector upheavals have had a negligible impact on the market for talent, as tech-reliant companies in the financial sector, retail, defense contracting, and consulting have picked up the slack. Unemployment for tech workers remains low and job postings correspondingly high. The economy added nearly 140,000 tech jobs in November, as the unemployment rate for tech workers dipped to 2%. Engineering and data skills were in particularly high demand, according to the report. Software engineers were the most in-demand tech professionals by job postings volume. Similarly, the number of postings for software development engineers increased by nearly 140% since 2021. Data analyst, scientist and engineer all experienced growth of more than 40%, landing all three positions near the top for number of postings during the period analyzed. (https://www.ciodive.com/news/tech-talent-demand-2022-dice-report/638674/
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Study Ranks LA as Among Top Cities Prepared for Future |
A study from PropTechOS has ranked Los Angeles among the top U.S. cities "prepared for the future" - finishing second behind Austin, based on "11 indicators of how adapted a city is to emerging technologies." The company said its researchers looked at various indicators, including broadband speeds, number of tech jobs per 10,000 residents, and access to electric vehicle charging points, based on the OECD's recommendations for a smart city. L.A. was followed by Seattle; San Francisco; Atlanta, and Washington DC. (https://www.socaltech.com/fullstory/0083068.html)
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Low-Code is on the Rise: Analyst Predicts Fastest-Growing Category Will be in Citizen Automation & Development Platforms |
Tech analyst Gartner estimates that spending on low-code development technologies will grow 19.6% year on year to $26.9 billion in 2023. It also sees the even lower-code "citizen developer" category growing faster than the rest of the low-code market. Gartner sees organizations using low-code technologies - which require less developer skill and knowledge of programming languages - being used to speed up application delivery and build customized automation workflows. The analyst expects strong growth across the broad spectrum of low-code technologies, with the largest category being low-code application platforms (LCAP). It forecasts LCAP market revenues to grow 25% in 2023 to $9.9 billion. Gartner reckons that 80% of people using low-code development tools won't be within formal IT departments by 2026. That's up from 60% in 2021. (https://www.zdnet.com/article/low-code-is-on-the-rise-should-developers-start-to-worry/)
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OTHER TECH TRENDS
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US Scientists Announce Fusion Energy Breakthrough in "Landmark Achievement" |
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently announced a "major scientific breakthrough" in the decades-long quest to harness fusion, the energy that powers the sun and stars. Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it, something called net energy gain, the Energy Department said. The achievement will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power, Granholm and other officials said. Proponents of fusion hope that it could one day produce nearly limitless, carbon-free energy, displacing fossil fuels and other traditional energy sources. Fusion works by pressing hydrogen atoms into each other with such force that they combine into helium, releasing enormous amounts of energy and heat. Unlike other nuclear reactions, it doesn't create radioactive waste. (https://www.kxly.com/i/us-scientists-announce-fusion-energy-breakthrough-in-landmark-achievement-heres-what-it-means/)
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Smartphones Could Soon Help Identify Range of Health Conditions |
The National Institutes of Health has launched a project to examine how certain voice patterns could signal a range of health conditions. To speak you use your lungs, voice box, mouth, and brain, so illness affecting any of these can change how your voice sounds. Scientists plan to gather 20,000 to 30,000 voice samples from study participants, along with their health data, and then using artificial intelligence, create an app for a wearable device that will be able to analyze a person's voice and alert them to see a doctor. They say this strategy could be used to pick up on a host of health conditions such as pneumonia, stroke, Parkinson's disease, and even depression. (https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/smartphones-could-soon-help-identify-health-conditions/)
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Musk's Monkeying Around with Neuralink, Predicting it Should Be Ready for Human Testing in Six Months |
Elon Musk recently crowed during an update about the progress Neuralink has made with its brain-implant technology: it's submitted most of its paperwork to the FDA, which oversees medical devices, including neural implants, Musk said. In 2019, he said the company planned to seek the FDA's approval for human testing and predicted it could begin as soon as 2020. "We are now confident that the Neuralink device is ready for humans, so timing is a function of working through the FDA approval process," Elon tweeted during the event. The company wants to be able to help restore vision and enable people with severe disabilities to move and communicate by decoding brain activity. Eventually, Neuralink wants to open clinics where patients could get a device implanted into their brains by their surgical robots, which the company also showcased at the event. The robot surgeon will thread Neuralink's tiny proprietary electrodes, or brain-signal recording wires, into the brain. Elon showed a video of "telepathic typing" monkey, which has a Neuralink brain implant, while not typing into a keyboard, the monkey was able to move a cursor to images of letters. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-neuralink-set-to-show-and-tell-latest-brain-computer-advances-at-event-11669785946?mod=article_inline)
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