How Can Companies Keep Their Existing Teams Productive & Happy?

In an increasingly hot job market, one industry is facing a growing shortage of talent that shows no signs of slowing down; Tech. The last few years have called for businesses in all sectors to rethink how they do business, and in turn, this has created an even larger demand for software engineers who are tasked with helping companies navigate the new, digital transformation.

A report from Gartner found that 58% of IT leaders reported either an increase or a plan to increase emerging technology investments in 2021, compared with 29% in 2020. This increased demand for coders married with the fallout of The Great Resignation, as it has come to be called, has caused a massive deficit or tech talent in the United States and around the world.

According to the same study conducted by Gartner, the majority of businesses believe a shortage of talent to be the biggest obstacle standing in the way of growing their business to meet the ever-changing needs of the macro environment. While this growing shortage of tech talent is extremely concerning and exacerbated by the global pandemic, the concern has been expressed long before the Covid-19 changed our working lives forever.

As far back as 2010, more than 50% of CEOs polled expressed their concern over the lack of digital talent. By 2019, that number had grown to 79%. So, it is fair to say the pandemic did make the demand for coders a lot greater.

So, in today's incredibly favorable job market, how are software engineers reacting to the climate? According to a survey from TalentLMS and Workable conducted in 2022, 72% of tech employees in the United States are strongly considering leaving their current jobs in the next 12 months. When it comes to the factors influencing their decisions, 40% say that limited opportunities for career growth play a huge role. Other reasons expressed included non-flexible work hours, a lack of remote working options, feeling under-appreciated, and a toxic work environment. A staggering 85% said they felt their company focused more on attracting new talent than investing in existing staff. Unsurprisingly perhaps, 58% said they were suffering from burnout.

So, it’s no secret that business leaders need to have their tech talent top of mind, but in a market where acquiring such talent is becoming harder and harder as the days go in, it is absolutely vital that companies prioritize equipping their current team with the resources and tools they need to be successful and happy in their role.

Any coder will tell you that the repetitive tasks associated with their job, such as code reviews and sourcing code snippets, not only affect their productivity but their overall happiness with the performance. According to a study conducted by Openrefactory, 75% of a developer’s time is spent on debugging– that's roughly 1,500 hours a year. What's more concerning is that a study into the productivity levels of software developers found that the majority spend less than half of their workday actually writing code.

The right tool can make the world of difference. Codiga was designed by coders, for coders, and our platform houses a number of tools that have all been created to help developers cut their working time in half.

Our Coding Assistant tool, used by tens of thousands of developers from all over the world, was developed to mitigate the need for countless hours spent sourcing code snippets.

Using code snippets already coded by another developer is common practice. These reusable and adaptable pieces of code speed up projects and reduce wasted time spent writing code that already exists. Coders can't live without code snippets, but our Coding Assistant tool features Smart Code Snippets that will streamline your workflow even further.

What makes Codiga’s Smart Code Snippets next-level is the fact that users gain access to an ever-growing library of Smart Code Snippets that have been added and vetted by thousands of other developers who use our platform. Even better, these Smart Code Snippets can be favored on the Codiga Hub(more on this later) and will then populate directly on your chosen IDE with just a few short commands.

Smart Code Snippets, found within the Coding Assistant feature, work anywhere you write code and can be easily added to their working environment using our VS Code, IntelliJ, and Chrome plugins. These plugins support all languages, and Coding Assistant also works with cloud-based development platforms like GitHub codespaces, Replit or Gitpod.

When using Coding Assistant, a user can subscribe to any public Smart Code Snippet in our network on the Coding Assistant Hub. This helpful tool allows you to find code snippets based on language, name, or keyword and tag associated with the piece of code. Once you have favored a Smart Code Snippet, you can then populate it in your chosen environment by simply typing in the name or keyword associated with the Smart Code Snippet and then continue your work with a buildable, trustworthy piece of code.

In addition to cutting time searching for the right coding patterns online, Coding Assistant acts like your own personal Code Snippet Manager and allows you to add your own Smart Code Snippets that you can share publicly, privately, or with your selected team. Smart Code Snippets can be created on our web interface, or directly in your IDE. To create a shareable(remember you can keep it private, too!) Smart Code Snippet, simply highlight it directly in their IDE, right-click, and select create Smart Code Snippet. From there, the piece of code will populate directly in our add Smart Code Snippet section, and you’ll be directed to add a name, language, a brief description, and most importantly, the keywords that will trigger the Smart Code Snippet to appear in Coding Assistant. Once saved, the Smart Code Snippet will be available instantly for use. It takes a matter of minutes to add and share a code snippet, and results in a lot of time saved for both teams and individual coders, because it is very easy for everyone on your team to share their work with one another in real-time, and if you work alone, a simple command will now do a lot of the manual work for you moving forward.

Wrapping up

The tech talent shortage shows no signs of slowing down, but whether you’re an individual coder, or leading a team of developers during these uncertain times, know that the right tools can do wonders for productivity and job satisfaction.

If you’re interested in learning more about Codiga’s Smart Code Snippets, visit our site today and see how our tools can help you cut the unnecessary tasks from your workday.

Want to write for our blog? Reach out to contact@codiga.io with your pitch!