While article 50 has not yet been triggered, the prospect of a post-Brexit Britain raises concerns about a shortage of skilled technology workers.

At the same time, digital disruption and a growing interest in VR and AR mean that tech employees are in higher demand than ever. GitHub predicts this will have a significant impact in 2017.

Hiring the right people

With this in mind, in 2017, employers and recruiters will place less emphasis on traditional qualifications such as A-levels and bachelor’s degrees. However, this will not impact their ability to hire the right people.

Why? Because open source project hosting hubs are providing a new way for developers to learn from industry legends, in addition to acting as a digital portfolio. They can showcase a candidate’s skills and projects to prospective employers, allowing them to successfully match person-to-role.

Employers under the old way of ‘degree-first’ thinking will be eliminating a vast array of talent — and with competition increasingly rife in the tech-space, can they really afford to take that gamble?

AI will make our workforce more productive

Gartner has predicted that by the end of 2017, at least one organisation will report significant increases in profit margins due to the use of algorithms to positively influence employee behaviour. But how can this be implemented in practice without creating unease amongst the workforce?

In short, through improved collective memory.

Algorithms offer the potential for instant access to a vast bank of information, which will help employees to remember anything at any time. This will free people up to focus on the task in hand, and reduce the impact of emotion and irrationality on productivity. Developers will be integral to striking the delicate balance between using algorithms as a tool that is of genuine benefit without being invasive.

Will 2017 finally be the year of VR?

Only if we have the developer talent to support it.

In 2016, we saw an explosion of VR and AR with the likes of Playstation, Samsung and HTC all releasing headsets that transported the user to another world through the power of technology.

In 2017, VR and AR are set to collide with industries such as retail, mobile and even cinema to make our everyday lives more immersive, and provide businesses with a huge increase in customer engagement.

As this technology continues to evolve and impact different areas of our lives, it’ll be developers and their skills that will be behind this shift. With developers demonstrating their coding skills in the production of VR and AR, open source projects will act as the setting for this next wave of digitisation.

Edited from press release by Jordan Platt.