'Developers will be some of the most highly paid employees in any company', says MongoDB CEO

Hardcore developers are becoming more powerful as software becomes integral to a company's competitive advantage, Dev Ittycheria tells Computing

Developers will be some of the most highly paid employees in any type of company, according to the CEO of NoSQL database provider MongoDB, Dev Ittycheria.

In an interview with Computing at MongoDB World in New York, Ittycheria said:

"Developers are getting more and more power; I think developers will be some of the most highly paid employees - not just in a tech company but in any company because software and tech are going to be intrinsic to a company's competitive advantage," he said.

So did Ittycheria mean developers that can work in a DevOps environment?

"No, just hardcore developers. DevOps is more of a phenomenon. [Companies] do have DevOps teams but they are ‘Dev' and ‘Ops' teams," he said, suggesting that the idea of DevOps doesn't always require developers to have "Ops" skills, but rather to just work alongside operations teams.

"Developers are getting more power. In the old days Ops had more power because they owned capital budgets and they were the ones who said 'yes' or 'no', but now because there is so much pressure to drive the business, developers are accumulating a lot of power," he added.

Because of this new power in the hands of developers, Ops people have to respond, said Ittycheria.

"They can't be viewed as inhibitors of the business - in the old days it was okay to say ‘no', but the way the world is changing, every incumbent is terrified that they are going to be ‘Ubered' or ‘Amazoned' by a new start-up so [Ops] have to be open to a new change," he said.

Computing also sat down with three developers from The Washington Post at MongoDB World, who all explained that their skill-set had been broadened within the past year.

No longer can they just be "front end developers" and "back end developers". Instead they need experience in both areas, alongside certain operational skills.

But Ittycheria said the broadening of their required skill-set was only part of the reason that they would be so highly paid.

"It's the importance of that skill-set. So if you're having a material impact on the business, you're going to be rewarded higher. If you are just a cog in the wheel; you could be the best cleaning person in the world but you're not going to be valued that high. But if you're the best developer in the world, people are going to pay a lot of money to recruit you, that's why the war for talent is so high," he said.

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