Active demand for generative artificial intelligence (genAI) skills increased 20-fold this year, and research suggests that upskilling and reskilling are part of the answer for many IT organizations. And despite the useful capabilities of AI in software development, it's only exacerbating the need for skilled developers.

Talent shortages represent the main roadblock to successful data and analytics initiatives, according to Gartner's 2023 survey of chief data officers (CDOs). The obvious solution is to "get more people into software development," OutSystems VP of developers Miguel Baltazar told SDxCentral. "The needs are just insane."

But expanding the pool of skilled developers is much easier said than done. Those advanced IT data and analytics skills have been consistently hard to find, making this a "prevailing and recurring" issue, Gartner analysts wrote.

In addition, research found a cultural aversion to change and lack of training are hindering data and analytics program results.

The rising popularity of AI is another factor impacting the growing need for developers. While the technology does have "a few capabilities that are really cool" – like visibility into AI-generated code, interface and visual graphics generation, and "the ability to learn from a significant amount of data" – it's not necessarily fated to have "a disruptive effect on our developers," Baltazar said.

AI tools can help generate code and build applications, but the human touch is still required. "You need to have people to actually validate if those applications are correct, to do the fine-tuning. AI is just as good as its learning and the prompts you give it," he said. "You always need a little bit of a human in the background."

AI also exacerbates the problem of application knowledge transfer. In traditional high-code software development, "there is a lot of complex code that gets injected into an application by programmers that is just theirs. When someone [else] tries to understand, it creates a significant amount of technical debt, it takes a long time, and [often] these applications will reach the point in which they need to be rewritten," Baltazar said.

With AI, that issue exponentially grows.

"Now you're not putting your own code in the application. You're putting code that was generated by an artificial intelligence, which you yourself don't understand," he said. The lack of skilled developers won't be solved by AI, and naively believing it might can set IT organizations back.

To that point, new and seasoned developers have a lot of learning to do. In fact, "there's still a lot of learning to be done about the learning that needs to be done," Baltazar pointed out.

Upskilled developers with traditional backgrounds in computer science have needed to constantly relearn and reinvent themselves in order to keep pace with the changing technology landscape. The changes AI has brought so far are impacting user interface definitions and automated testing. Other more "esoteric" applications of AI will soon "make current computer-science-based developers obsolete very quick[ly], and they are going to have to catch up," Baltazar said.

Reskilled developers, on the other hand, are professionals who shifted from careers in science, technology, engineering, math, arts or literature, for example, to software development. These individuals tend to be "highly motivated" and "very much aware of the problem that they're trying to solve," according to Baltazar.

Traditional developers can easily get lost in the code and forget they're building an application for a business. But devs from reskilled backgrounds are "really good at understanding the problem" and "interacting with people," he noted, especially with the aid of low-code development platforms like OutSystems.

In terms of both upskilling and reskilling existing employees, much of the responsibility falls on the employer as an investment in a precious resource – talent. Companies will need to "push people out of their comfort zone and then force them to evolve into these capabilities," Baltazar said.

In the modern age of business, "you need to be able to build your differentiator," he argued. Whether a company sells bananas or paves roads, it needs to build its own software. And with companies like Google and Apple scrambling to hire "all the highly talented developers to work with them on their products," the skill shortage will only be exacerbated.

Gartner recommends organizations follow these steps for reskilling and upskilling developers.

1. Identify and group desired skills.
2. Inventory current talent and gaps.
3. Map required skills to "must-have" roles.
4. Draft job descriptions with required skills.
5. Assess current team against job descriptions.
6. Build skills development portfolio.
7. Create skills development strategies.
8. Roll out and monitor programs.