Researchers from Stripe surveyed "thousands of C-level executives and developers across five different countries" and found that companies finding hiring qualified developers harder than anything else — even raising cash ("Access to developers is a bigger constraint than access to capital").
This is why the Google rebellions over military drone projects and complicity in Chinese censorship matter: Google has long enjoyed a competitive edge over its rivals, thanks to its infamous "Don't be evil" motto; while the company often falls short of this lofty goal, every time it does, it loses some of the talent that it has managed to tempt away from rivals with a promise of an ethical workplace.
It's why organized tech workers show so much promise in reforming the worst evils of Big Tech; they represent one of the last groups of skilled workers for whom demand vastly outstrips supply. When they make ethical demands, their employers have to pay attention. Those employers may not always give in, but when they don't, it hits them where they hurt.
Senior executives report that the lack of quality developer talent is one of the biggest
potential threats to their businesses. In fact, they now worry about access to skilled
developers more than they worry about access to capital, immigration concerns, and
other challenges. Despite the number of developers increasing year-over-year at most
companies, the best developers working on the right things can accelerate a
company’s move into new markets or product areas and help companies differentiate
themselves at disproportionate rates. This underscores the most important point
about developers as force-multipliers: It’s not how many devs companies have; it’s
how they’re being leveraged.
The Developer Coefficient [Stripe]
(via /.)
