Why you should incorporate generative AI into your day-to-day work, how your role will change as team leaning continues, and other things you need to know this year.
Translated from Tech Workers: What You Need to Know in 2024, Jennifer Riggins is a storyteller, journalist, author, and event and podcast host of tech culture, helping to share stories of how culture and technology collide and illustrate the impact of the technology we're building. She's been there. With the arrival of the new year, what changes can be expected in the tech industry?What will stay the same?
Here's what we've learned from the ever-changing market and think tech workers in 2024 need to know – so you can prepare for the worst in advance, while also figuring out why there are still good reasons to hope for the best.
In 2024, the tech community will continue to try to answer: How can tech workers best devote their time to generative AI – a promise that hangs in the balance but is still not enough to solve all problems?"How seriously should we take it?Tracy Miranda, Head of Open Source Technology, asked in an interview with The New Stack. "Should we relearn the skills to participate in these ecosystems?Or is this just another bubble that will come and go and may end up with nothing?”
On the other hand, if you're Gergely Orosz, the author of The Pragmatic Engineer's newsletter, you don't have pragmatism without at least trying out Genai. "It's not very wise to wait and see. It's wise to try out these tools now and see how they can improve your productivity," Orosz told The New Stack, referring not only to ChatGPT, but also to promising AI productivity tools like Sourcegraph's Cody Programming AI Assistant. He urged people to "figure out how to integrate these AI assistants into your workflow to offload something more repetitive, or to master new technology faster."
While use cases are still in their infancy, they are growing rapidly and will grow even faster in 2024. Therefore, he points out that the question is not to decide if it works, but how it works for you.
Don't be fooled into thinking that the Genai revolution is "out of reach," he said. "Just go and give it a try. If it doesn't work for you, fine. But the reality is that a new generation is entering the industry – Gen Z, and they're ingesting and using all of this stuff. ”
My feeling is that [AI tools] can really improve your productivity. Veteran engineers who refuse to use them for principle or other reasons will be surpassed within a few years by a generation that is now more productive, working faster, and mostly of undiminished quality. ”
Regardless of the results of the GenAI experiment, it will continue to dominate the discussion in the tech industry in 2024. That's why tech workers should participate not only as users, but also as creators.
The number of searches related to terms like "open source Genai" in Google Trends has increased at least twofold, which is normal, as open source is a common avenue for free experimentation.
For open source, a big question is where it's going to go and which communities you're going to be involved in," says Miranda.
The GenAI movement is still in its early days, and the sudden arrival of the open-source GenAI community makes it too early to distinguish between signal and noise. "People will look for communities where they can really engage, where they can build, collaborate, and really innovate," she noted. ”
In her view, the first community to embody this open-source spirit is AI Tinkerers, a series of conferences across 21 cities in seven countries with the aim of "advancing the boundaries of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI," as it puts it. Miranda said the community is committed to creating a safe place for participants to learn and share with each other, which is a core value of open source.
The good thing about this group is that it focuses on showcasing your projects and results, but doesn't bring your startup pitch and product. She said.
She also often hears that LangChain, a popular LLM framework, has a very active, interactive, and supportive open-source community. But that's still small compared to the number of open source GenAI projects that have emerged in the last year or so. So, whether it's AI or a more mature community, how do you identify the signals of a more inclusive, diverse community?After all, about 95% of open source contributions are still male. We've talked about the importance of clear enforcement in the Code of Conduct, which is a basic signal for a safe community. Miranda also advises, looking at the leadership. Look out for clear signs of diversity, or at least diversity, equity, and inclusion are priorities for this community and reflected in the actions taken by the organization. "I think open source is still a great way to learn quickly and reach great developers," Miranda said, but she advises choosing communities carefully.
If the community is affiliated with a club, you may have a better chance of making the community exist for the long term than if it were a VC-backed startup community that may or may not continue to exist. ”
Want to prepare for your future in this volatile job market?Do you want to be able to adapt to technological changes like generative AI?Problem solving will continue to be a highly sought-after skill in 2024. Now, more than ever, you need to be curious and open about these rapid changes. Louise Ogilvy, Director of Recruitment at Develocity, told The New Stack: "Software developers are inherently curious and problem-solving, so continuous learning has always been the default. "I believe that by 2024, employers will be looking for people who are motivated to understand industry trends and can adapt to capitalize on them, which will be a key skill they are looking for in the hiring process. ”
Keeping up with the times isn't just about reading the news or your favorite tech blog. It's still important in this industry that you know people, not just what you know.
More than ever, networking will play a key role in understanding industry trends and understanding new opportunities," said Michelle Babels, program director working for G2i, a recruitment platform for remote engineering jobs, to The New Stack. You don't need to be proficient or even have tried all the cool new tools, but you do have to think about them and how you can leverage them to solve problems and collaborate in the future.
"This includes understanding how new developments in AI can be applied to analytics, decision-making, and automation," Ogilvy said. In addition, technology professionals, including managers and leaders, need to be flexible and adaptable to move from one specialty to another and use new technologies that are critical to success. ”
When everything changes so fast, you can no longer appear resistant to new technology. But you also can't willingly adopt anything shiny. Critical human vision is more important than ever. Especially the AI that Orosz says, you need to be aware of the limitations and why LLMs are still fantasizing. "I think there's going to be a lot of emphasis on using technology in an ethical and responsible way," Ogilvy said. Technologists are expected to be aware of and participate in discussions about issues such as data privacy, ethical AI, and the broader impact of technology on society. "These discussions are likely to take place in technical job interviews – and if not, then your future employer may be worryingly behind. Just don't keep working and studying at the risk of harming your mental and physical health. Software engineer burnout continues to be prevalent in our industry. "Our industry has always focused on problem-solving, so improve the ability to communicate and deal with complex problems," Bakels said. But it's just as important to prioritize your mental health;Learning to balance work with our most cherished roles – such as being a parent or partner – is especially important to sustain your career, especially in uncertain times. ”
Remote work has literally propped up operations around the world during the COVID pandemic. But over the past few years, tech companies have been trying to force unwilling employees back into the office. In December, some senior employees chose to leave after an internal Amazon memo warned that people who worked less than three days a week in the office would not be promoted.
It seems that in 2024, this in-office vs. remote work debate will continue within many organizations.
It's not just about flexibility in the workplace. As budgets continue to be tight, many hiring freezes remain in place and employment agreements will change.
We're going to see more efforts to blur the lines between full-time hiring, freelancing, fractionals, and ** providing services," G2i CEO Ogabe Greenberg said to The New Stack. "The mass layoffs in 2023 highlight the need for a more flexible workforce for companies so that they can bring specific skills to critical projects or temporary positions without incurring the cost of a full-time employee. "This combination of project-based work and outsourced hiring allows companies to hire the right people they need from anywhere and keep them for as long as they need – or when they can afford it. It's also a way to bring in people who specialize in new technologies to help teams improve their skills.
Of course, for skilled workers in the U.S., health insurance is tied to full-time employment, and this flexibility comes with the risk that they may not have medical coverage, paid time off, or other benefits.
The tech industry is still struggling to recover from the overhiring of 2022 (and layoffs after mergers and consolidations) as the tech industry struggles to recover from 2022, and the layoffs have been going on for 18 months. This makes smaller teams have to do more work. "I feel like we're going to see less growth and it's going to be important to find out how to be more productive," Orosz said. Showing that we're seeing more and more companies not hiring as quickly as they used to, but instead relying on smaller teams that may become smaller. And more engineers may start working with multiple technologies at the same time. He's seen full-stack developers — people who can handle both the front-end and the back-end — recover in some companies, and as teams shrink and tech stacks continue to grow, this will happen more in 2024.
He noted that Stripe has been a full-stack build and maintenance for years, and most roles are still explicitly skewed towards the front-end or back-end, but he wrote in the briefing that "it's rare for an engineer to only do the backend, front-end, or data." It's more common for new entrants to take on the work required by the team. "That doesn't mean you have to have expertise on both ends. But as tools make it easier to embrace full stack, Orosz thinks there's more pressure on businesses to hire just one engineer instead of two in 2024.
So if you do a little bit of front-end as a back-end engineer, or a little bit of back-end as a front-end engineer, that gives you a career advantage," he predicts. "With AI tools, it's actually surprisingly easy to learn how to do this or have a generator explain the front-end or back-end for you**. ”
It's just another way, and while companies expect teams to do more in 2024, the safest way to build a career in technology is to focus on staying agile and learning. As Orosz says, "Change is a constant in technology, and it's good to know which changes work in your favor." ”