Software developers are some of the most highly sought-after IT professionals, and many companies consistently struggle to find the coders they need. 

That can be especially true of smaller businesses, particularly if they lack the money to tempt developers who might otherwise end up going to big technology companies. But what's also true is that not every developer wants to work for a giant, faceless corporation. And in any case, every software developer has to begin designing code somewhere, whether at a mid-size tech company or their old college roommate's startup, which means that smaller businesses are often a route into the industry for many developers just starting out.

And depending on a company's size, a developer will face different challeges and use different skill sets.

Brendan O'Leary, developer evangelist at GitLab, says that smaller companies can offer greater feelings of connectedness between a developer and their work's impact on their company. O'Leary says smaller companies allow developers to focus more on their cycle time, which is the time it takes from writing the first line of code to seeing it go into production.

That can be a huge advantage that a small company can offer, he says: "That's an intrinsic motivator that's really hard to replace with money or anything else."

O'Leary says developers at larger companies are more likely to feel disconnected from their work's direct impact on their company and its customers. 

Also: The future of the web will need a different sort of software developer

Amanda Richardson, CEO of CoderPad, agrees that developers at smaller companies have a unique chance to witness the fruits of their labor by working on a project in its entirety.

"Working at a smaller company can provide the opportunity to work from start to finish on projects while seeing the immediate impact of your work," she says. 

According to Richardson, small businesses might be the route new or inexperienced developers choose, as startups are typically operating within the bounds of small budgets. Developers at smaller companies will need excellent problem-solving and research skills. On the other hand, she says more prominent companies are in the market for IT professionals who might not have a broad scope of experience in all facets of software development but have a deep understanding of one specific topic.

"Because budgetary constraints often mean startups can't match the pay of large companies, they are more open to considering profiles that don't tick all the boxes in terms of degrees or professional experience," she says.

Bigger businesses do offer specific advantages for certain types of individuals. At a larger company, software developers and engineers can expect more structure, clearly designated roles and responsibilities, and established processes. A larger company is probably further along in its DevOps growth and hires developers who are ready to face a project head-on. That can be a good environment for someone just starting out.

"Working as a developer at a large company implies a structured environment with well-established processes and roles," Richardson says. "It can be especially valuable for young graduates to learn within a structured environment and see software development at scale while acquiring best practices."

The downside, of course, is that developers in a bigger business might find themselves completing mundane tasks. According to a Stack Overflow survey, 45% agreed that feeling unproductive is the number one reason they're unhappy at work, with inflexible working practices not far behind as something to complain about.

This issue is particularly true at larger companies if developers work on a small part of a larger project, with each team of developers holding one piece of the puzzle, and little sense of what the completed work looks like.

In contrast, smaller companies can offer software developers a more comprehensive range of knowledge, as each developer will need to take on more pieces of the puzzle and manage more parts of a project. At these companies, developers will be closer to understanding a problem and will work closely with the required steps to find a solution. 

Both Richardson and O'Leary agree that smaller companies have a slight advantage over larger companies with how fast they can develop new software. 

Richardson thinks this advantage is because larger companies must make more complex decisions. At the same time, O'Leary says it's because developers can focus more intensively on their cycle time at smaller companies.

Larger companies overcome some of the challenges of building software by using smaller groups to make the process more manageable. Smaller teams can communicate and collaborate faster, releasing software at lightning speed. As a company grows, it will need to split its engineers and developers into much smaller teams, and each team will oversee a small portion of a project.

Even some of the largest tech companies still want their developers to keep to small teams, to emulate the agility of small businesses.

"The smaller the team, the better the collaboration," says Amazon – hardly a small company – in its so-called "two-pizza team rule", which states that DevOps teams should be small enough for two pizzas to feed everyone on the team.

"Collaboration is also very important as the software releases are moving faster than ever. And a team's ability to deliver the software can be a differentiating factor for your organization against your competition. Imagine a situation in which a new product feature needs to be released or a bug needs to be fixed – you want this to happen as quickly as possible so you can have a smaller go-to-market time," it says.

Also: GitHub vs GitLab: Which program should you go with?

Flexibility is another factor. Richardson says developers working at small companies and startups have more autonomy and responsibilities than they would at larger business. This autonomy creates room for developers to pitch new ideas to the company. According to the Stack Overflow survey, 39% of respondents said that a lack of growth opportunities makes them unhappy with their jobs. A developer's possibilities to expand and grow in their career might be much higher at smaller companies.

But the same autonomy can mean a lack of guidance and more room for error.

"The drawback of working for a smaller company is you're unlikely to have the reassuring support of a seasoned engineer to answer questions and help you ramp up or be able to test your ideas at scale," she says.

O'Leary says it all depends on the developer and what kind of career goals they have. Some people might enjoy the challenges of trialing new code and solving problems that small businesses face. Others might prefer the stability of a larger, more established company.

Working at a small, mid-size, or large company has positive and negative aspects. It all depends on what an individual developer or engineer strives for in their career, and how many responsibilities they'd like to take on in their professional lives.

But it's almost universal for developers to want to understand the impact of their work and feel like the work they complete is meaningful and valuable to society. So in a tough market, hiring managers at companies big and small should look at the work they are offering and consider how the developers they recruit can be made to feel like they are really making a difference.

By now, Haven Studios should be comfortable working on the technological edge.

After all, much of the studio's founding team came from Google, where they were working to create first-party Stadia games that would showcase the power of cloud streaming technology.

Haven is with Sony these days – the PlayStation maker provided investment for the start-up and outright acquired it earlier this year – but the devs have still been relying on cloud tech to help with hybrid remote/local development, and are looking to push the envelope to see how other emerging technologies can change the way games are made.

"We really have this vision to bring a new type of player-centric, community-driven game to life. And to do that, these investments are very important"

Jade Raymond

In formally launching the studio's Montreal office space last week, Haven co-founder Jade Raymond said more than 30% of the studio is currently working on machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cloud-based dev tools.

"We really have this vision to bring a new type of player-centric, community-driven game to life," Raymond said. "And to do that, these investments are very important."

While it's not quite clear yet exactly what kind of payoff those investments will have, Haven shared an early look at technology that it believes could potentially be used in game development down the road.

Haven director of creative machine learning Logan Olson started by showing a brief clip from the HBO sci-fi show Westworld, where a person working with a futuristic interface describes a story and a computer generates a rough visual that adapts to the changing story details in real-time. While it's nowhere close to practical at the moment, Olson said it was a "pretty rad north star" for people to work towards.

It also may not be as far away an aspiration as it seems, he says, given the advances made by AI text-to-image efforts like Midjourney and DALL-E 2 in accurate years. Such programs are now beginning to tackle video and 3D models as well, and Olson says the rate of progress is so fast it's difficult to keep up with.

As for what Haven is working on, Olson demonstrated a differentiable rendering tool that takes a 3D model of a human head in a photorealistic style and alter the image based on a user prompt, whether it be "evil clown," "aquatic alien," or "werewolf." He cautioned there were still a number of hurdles to be cleared before any such output would be realistically usable by the development team, but he was clearly enthusiastic about the future potential.

After Olson's demonstration, Raymond sat on a panel with Haven CTO Leon O'Reilly and PS5 lead system architect Mark Cerny, discussing the potential of machine learning to change the way games are made. Cerny began by reflecting on all that's changed over his decades-long career in the industry.

"When I look back, of course CPUs and GPUs are exponentially more powerful, and we talk about that quite a bit," Cerny said. "What we tend not to talk about is the corresponding increase in the power of the tools we use to create games."

He recalled working on his arcade hit Marble Madness in 1984, when the process of changing a single pixel of the graphics would take several hours.

"It was a multi-step process that involved things like burning the art data into ROMs and then physically inserting the ROMs into a prototype motherboard," Cerny said. "And that's terrible, of course, because fast iteration is key. Fast iteration has been key for the entire history of video games. We never get it right the first time."

If the tools are too cumbersome, creators have a harder time translating their ideas into reality, Cerny said, adding he was excited about the technology Olson showed off and how it might help more developers realize their visions.

O'Reilly has a lengthy history in development himself, having started with the Spectrum ZX. He said iteration times in games steadily improved after the days Cerny was lamenting, but only to a point, and they've actually been getting worse in accurate years.

"Iteration times probably reached their peak around the early 2000s, when... the data sets were small enough that we could iterate quickly"

Leon O'Reilly

"Iteration times probably reached their peak around the early 2000s, when the codebases we had were lean enough and small enough, the data sets were small enough that we could iterate quickly," O'Reilly said. "But as we moved away from that and started to build these big open-world games with lots of assets and bigger teams, iteration times really took a hit. There's a lot more data to crunch than there was previously, and the code bases themselves really ballooned in size."

While many of the code bases used today date back to that early 2000s era, O'Reilly said they have had so many additional layers piled on top of them that they have lost their original advantages.

Raymond echoed the importance of iteration speed, saying, "It doesn't take you too many games to understand that the faster you can get to a good view and knowledge of what your game is – and the more you can then iterate on that – that's how good your game is going to be."

She acknowledged Haven's roots at Stadia, and while she said the team was excited about what the cloud could do for the end user experience, she was more eager on what it could do for game engines and dev tools. She said she sees experiments with machine learning in game development in much the same way.

Cerny was particularly interested in how tools like Olson demonstrated could be used to create lots of content quickly that may not be "directly publishable AAA content," but is good enough to get an idea across.

"...before the game even begins, the whole process of conceptualization is going to get so much freer and faster"

Mark Cerny

"The first thing I see is before the game even begins, the whole process of conceptualization is going to get so much freer and faster," Cerny said.

"Today, without these strategies, we go to a conference room, we chat, we scribble on a whiteboard, and when we kind of know where we're heading, we send out for storyboards, and then a week or two later we chat again. Well based on this, you can see we'll soon be communicating at the speed of AI. We will be able to converge so much more rapidly on what our world feels like, and what a level feels like."

He adds that the technology could empower teams "of a moderate size" to do much more.

"That's really important because what we're doing is a creative endeavor," Cerny said. "Yes, you can brute force it. Yes, you can bring in 800 or a thousand people to make your game, but something like maintaining thematic coherency across the project when you have a headcount that high? The left hand doesn't know what the right hand does at one point."

He also echoed Olson's point about the potential for such tools to be used for unique customized content, saying, "What's important is that you're expressing your individuality as a player and it's a little bit less important whether a serious artist would look at that and say, 'You know we could do a little bit better over here.'"

Raymond concluded: "Our north star at Haven is creating a new IP that can be owned by the fans, where the fans are really driving that. Once you launch a service game, the fans do take over. And what does that mean, and where can we bring that, if we can get these tools to the players?"

Following the release of iOS 16.1 beta 4 earlier this week, Apple today released a new AirPods beta firmware to developers. It’s unclear, however, what’s new in the update as Apple doesn’t provide details on AirPods firmware updates.

The new AirPods beta firmware has the build number “5B5040c,” while the previous one was “5A304a.” With iOS 16, Apple has revamped the AirPods menu within the Settings app with a section dedicated to showing details about the current firmware. However, release notes for the beta firmware are still to be added there.

The previous AirPods firmware update, which was made available with the public release of iOS 16, added the “Personalized Spatial Audio” feature and improved Automatic Switching. It also added support for the higher-quality LC3 audio codec.

To install beta firmware on your AirPods, connect your iPhone to Xcode in order to enable the Developer menu in iOS. After that, turn on the “Pre-Release Beta Firmware” toggle under the Developer menu. According to Apple, it can take up to 24 hours for AirPods to update after enabling this option.

It’s worth noting that in order to install the beta firmware on AirPods, the iPhone or iPad on which they are paired must be running iOS 16 or iPadOS 16. The firmware update is available for AirPods 2, AirPods 3, AirPods Pro, AirPods Pro 2, and AirPods Max.

With the release of iOS 16.1 beta 3 last week, owners of the first-generation AirPods Pro and AirPods Max noticed that the update enabled the “Adaptive Transparency” option for these earphones. While it was unclear whether the feature was actually coming to older AirPods or not, Apple later removed the option with iOS 16.1 beta 4, confirming that it was just a bug.

Have you noticed any new features available for your AirPods after installing the beta update? Let us know in the comments section below or on Twitter, @9to5Mac.

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macOS Ventura developer beta 10 now available

Apple is edging ever closer to the release of macOS Ventura, and has provided developer beta testers with a tenth build of the operating system.

“Ask Apple” is a new series of interactive Q&As and one-on-one consultations that will help developers with more opportunities to connect directly with Apple experts for insight, support, and feedback. With that, developer participants can inquire about a variety of Topics such as testing the latest seeds, implementing new and updated frameworks, and more.

DON’T MISS: How to get FREE MONEY from Amazon for Prime Early Access Sale 2022

Copyright 2022 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Apple today seeded the fourth beta of an upcoming watchOS 9.1 update to developers for testing purposes, with the new beta coming one week after Apple released the third watchOS 9.1 beta.

To install ‌watchOS 9.1, developers will need to obtain the configuration profile from the Apple Developer Center. Once installed, ‌watchOS 9.1‌ can be downloaded through the dedicated Apple Watch app on the iPhone by going to General > Software update. To update to new software, an Apple Watch needs to have 50 percent battery life, it must be placed on the charger, and it needs to be in range of the ‌‌iPhone‌‌.

We don't yet know what's included in the watchOS 9.1 update as no new features have been found in the betas, but watchOS 9 brought a number of changes including a redesigned Compass app, a new medication tracking feature, updated watch faces, improvements to Workouts, new features for the ECG app, and more.

Chinese real estate developers are delaying their debt restructuring moves until after the upcoming Communist Party Congress, hoping the crucial gathering offers clues on how Beijing plans to stabilise the embattled sector.

What emerges at the meeting could help determine how the developers, who have missed payments or even defaulted on their offshore bonds worth tens of billions of dollars, pace any asset sales, extract or offer concessions to creditors, or even put themselves up for liquidation.

While there is no consensus in the property industry on what specific sector measures, if any, are expected from the party congress - or in its immediate aftermath - and how far-reaching they could be, developers are nevertheless sitting tight.

"The terms for the restructuring would be very different if the market recovers (post-congress meeting) and we are able to start selling and get cashflow rolling again," said a senior executive at a developer based in China's southern province of Guangdong, explaining the rationale for deferring the company's debt restructuring talks.

The developer, which is in the process of restructuring after missing payments on some of its offshore debt, said in such a scenario bondholders would have more confidence in long-term repayments and the company could minimise disposal of core assets.

If, however, Beijing does not introduce game-changing policies, developers could then take measures such as enforcing steep haircuts on bondholders or even liquidate, developers and restructuring advisers said.

Some of the major developers in the process of restructuring their debt include China Evergrande Group, whose liquidity crunch last year was a turning point in the country's real estate crisis, Sunac China Holdings, Shimao Group Holdings and Kaisa Group Holdings.

Smaller peers, which have done bond exchanges to extend the maturities of their debt, are also considering restructuring, the developers told Reuters.

Graphic: China's real estate debt

China's twice-a-decade party congress kicks off on Oct. 16, during which President Xi Jinping is poised to secure a precedent-breaking third leadership term as general secretary. The makeup of China's economic leadership is set for its biggest overhaul in a decade.

The property sector is crucial to China's political and economic stability, with real estate accounting for around 40% of household assets, according to analysts, and making up around a quarter of the country's gross domestic product, the largest among all sectors.

But after a government crackdown in 2020 on developers' debt-fuelled expansion, the sector has become a major headache for Beijing over the past year.

Evergrande, with its $300 billion total debt and a default on its offshore debt last year, has cast an unwelcome light on Chinese developers' $5 trillion debt, rattling global markets and sparking rare protests.

NO 'HEADLINES'

An executive at another property company, which had previously planned to negotiate restructuring terms with offshore bondholders in the run-up to the party congress, said authorities told the developer to hold off on discussions to prevent any shock to the real estate market.

"To put it simply, the government doesn't want any headlines," said the executive, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Echoing that apprehension ahead of the party congress, some fund managers and brokers have been told to avoid big share sales, two sources told Reuters.

The debt crisis in the property sector has led to dwindling investment from developers and homebuyers. Now, many analysts expect China's GDP to grow at roughly 3% this year, the slowest pace since 1976, excluding the 2.2% expansion during the initial COVID hit in 2020, as the sector drags on the economy.

China has already rolled out a plethora of measures to bolster housing demand and affordability, but home prices and sales have continued to contract. New home prices fell for the third straight month in September, a private survey showed.

"They have already tried so many relaxing measures and none of them worked," said a senior executive at a Shanghai-based developer. "It is a confidence issue; people don't want to spend money to buy houses even if you lower the down-payment ratio or cut the mortgage rates."

Graphic: China's real estate growth

Another real estate executive told Reuters the government was unlikely to reverse its goal to deleverage the sector, and cautioned that if no drastic support measures were announced at the party congress, disappointment could lead to a market rout.

Betty Wang, senior China economist at ANZ, said with Xi's principle of "houses are for living, not for speculation", she did not expect any material changes to property regulations.

With the emphasis on local governments implementing "city-specific" measures without a coordinated nationwide effort, varying degrees of policy relaxation in different cities could squeeze liquidity and demand for other cities and lessen the overall policy impact, she told Reuters.

"The lack of specifics from the central government makes local governments, developers and homebuyers stay cautious," Wang said. "Developers will not increase their investment while homebuyers don't know whether it is the bottom yet."

For some stakeholders, the stalling of the debt restructuring ahead of the party congress is frustrating.

One bondholder told Reuters the developer it has a holding in kept delaying its restructuring timetable, initially from Chinese New Year in February, to a parliament meeting in March, and now to the party congress next week.

"Every time they said there would be policy changes and we'd provide you something after that. This kind of thing never ends, there's always an excuse," said the person, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

"They tell you a timetable but I don't think any of them is realistic; the companies have no clue either."

UiPath global partner Reveal Group recognized at UiPath Forward 5 for innovation with RoboSuite® for UiPath

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#Forward5–Reveal Group today announced it has been named Innovation Partner of the Year for the Americas at the UiPath 2022 Partner Awards. UiPath, a leading enterprise automation software company, made the announcement during the UiPath Forward 5 event in Las Vegas, the largest global gathering of automation practitioners. Reveal Group was recognized for developing and taking to market new products and solutions built around the UiPath Business Automation Platform, namely its RoboSuite® for UiPath.

RoboSuite® for UiPath automates the design, build, quality assurance (QA), and delivery process, resulting in 40% faster automation life cycles. Focused on increasing the quality and number of automations that clients can deploy, the award-winning solution can be installed and added to the UiPath Orchestrator to automate time and reduce manual effort in project lifecycles. RoboSuite® was built by Reveal Group developers to ensure rigorously governed, scalable UiPath automations are deployed faster and better.

“We are delighted that during Forward 5, UiPath announced Reveal Group as the winner of the Innovation Partner of the Year Award for the Americas,” said Ian Crouch, Reveal Group Managing Partner. “Our RoboSuite® tools, which have been developed to supplement UiPath and support the Modern Design Experience, are our latest and most significant innovation. Since the release of these tools, we have proven how development effort and timeframes can be substantially reduced using the UiPath Business Automation Platform. Our clients are already seeing these tools as a major productivity breakthrough. Watch out for our RoboSuite® tools on UiPath’s Marketplace.”

“We congratulate Reveal Group for its dedication to transforming businesses through automation, which enables true digital transformation,” said Jay Snyder, Senior Vice President, Global Head of Customer Success, and Partners at UiPath. “The UiPath 2022 Partner of the Year Awards recognize the partners who have demonstrated unique capabilities in implementing and scaling automation, growing their own revenues while delivering exceptional value.”

About Reveal Group:

Reveal Group is your Intelligent Automation services company. We have been helping clients to Automate Better since 2005. Reveal Group is focused on delivering technology-driven, innovative consulting services that accelerate change, reduce costs and Improve the overall performance of our clients around the world.

Contacts

Suzanne Sorbera, marketing@revealgroup.com