Aussie orgs struggling to retain developers

The vast majority of Australian organisations are struggling to recruit and retain skilled developers within their IT teams as a result of a surge in employee churn, according to research from MuleSoft.

A survey of 100 CIOs and IT decision-makers in Australia found that 98% say it has become more difficult for their IT teams to retain skilled developers due to this ‘great resignation’, while 93% are finding it more difficult to recruit in the last two years.

The top four causes contributing to developer burnout in Australia were learning new skills to adapt to new technologies and approaches (39%), increasing workload and demand from other teams (35%), pressures of digital transformation (35%), and difficulty onboarding new hires quickly enough (35%).

Meanwhile 87% of organisations admit that the cognitive load required to learn their software architecture is so high that it is a source of angst and low productivity for developers, while 86% are looking for solutions to automate key processes for developers to address the skills shortage.

“The demand for digital solutions was already outpacing the supply of software developers before the pandemic, but now it’s through the roof. Churn caused by the ‘great resignation’ is widening this gap even further,” MuleSoft CTO and VP of Digital Transformation Matt McLarty said.

“For organisations to truly transform digitally, they need to do two things: first, give developers user-friendly tools that maximise their productivity, and secondly, give the rest of the knowledge workers in the organisation tools that empower them to become engaged in building digital solutions, not just documenting requirements.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Olivier Le Moal