Four Major Fears That Software Developers Face
Developers face plenty of challenges in today’s IT landscape. They’re required to take care of both functional and non-functional requirements, scale quickly, provide quick response times, and build secure applications. And though developer positions are in high demand right now, it doesn’t mean developers don’t have some fears of their own. But like any career concerns, there are ways to deal with them. Here are four major fears that software developers face:
Releasing a Bug
No developer wants to be to blame for releasing a bug. At any given time, a developer is working on a variety of applications and systems. And while everyone makes mistakes at their job at one point or another, the consequences of a bug can range from minor user inconvenience to crippling for the company. If you take a look at the world’s worst software bugs, you can easily see how simple mistakes and slight overlooks can become disastrous.
This is the reason why so many developers are fearful of pushing anything they’ve built, regardless of how thoroughly they’ve tested it. While nothing is ever fool-proof, you can of course take all the necessary steps to ensure nothing slips through the cracks. This includes reviewing your own code, allowing automation tools to review it as well, reviewing your logs, and don’t forget about your Unit Test report.
Job Loss
Although there’s a strong demand for developer positions, many developers are still concerned about job security. One of the main concerns is outsourcing. Some companies are weary of the skills gap between overseas talent and local talent, and understand the cost savings of outsourcing. However, if you take a look at the data, you’d see that even with outsourcing considered, it creates more jobs locally than job losses. Outsourcing may be a way for an organization to grow on a lean scale, but as the company grows, they understand the need for a solid in-house team.
Some developers are also fearful that new technology with automate them out of a position. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. For instance, with DevOps, automation tech is merely a tool guided by human hands. Through automation, developers can eliminate tedious, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks. This leaves them to focus on building code and creating great user products.
Data Breaches
Every great developer wants to ensure both the privacy of their code and the data of its users. To do this, they need 360-degree privacy enforcement. Privacy and data protection should always remain at the top of the priority list. In some cases, a company will hire a privacy engineer to take care of the nuts and bolts, but this isn’t always the case—leaving modern developers to juggle several facets of testing and deployment.
For starters, each tool must have high-security embedded into its platform. If you use Helm and Kubernetes integrations, choose a platform that offers highly scalable storage, access control, and enforced privacy. This is even more important in a changing privacy landscape where data plays a major role in everyday life, and it’s the developers duty to take extra measures to ensure a breach doesn’t occur. With new malware being released at an alarming rate, and millions of people dealing with compromised data and hacking, an attack on their system is easily one of the biggest fears a developer has.
Big budgets and massive corporations have failed to accurately protect their users, proving that even with resources aplenty, data breaches can happen. What’s important is that devs today are testing their code with aplomb, both manually and with automation tools.
Staying Relevant
It’s no secret that technology evolves at an incredibly fast rate. With technology changing constantly, it can be difficult to keep up with the pace. Developers cannot quickly jump from one programming language to the next based on what’s trending, and adopting new platforms and methodologies isn’t a walk in the park either.
Typically, a developer specializes in one or two languages, and as such, they carry a fear of not being able to keep up. Rather than take on too much at once, focus on staying niche and learning more about the technologies and processes that surround your specialization. In some cases, developers go on to start their own companies or become project managers.
