IT organizations with purse strings squeezed by today's macroeconomic environment could find relief from that issue – and the tech talent shortage – by getting creative with implementing low-code development technologies.

"If you're forced to tighten your constraints as a technological business organization, you have to get creative with solutions in the same way that we did three years ago [and] the same way that we did 14 years ago," Nick Mates, VP of operations and technology at Lendr, told reporters during a roundtable hosted by low-code provider OutSystems.

Even with the influx of laid-off tech workers entering the job market, "it's so many of us fighting for scraps," Riviera Partners CTO Pete Peterson added. "We can't pay what Google pays, or Meta, or Microsoft."

Enterprise access to low-code technologies, however, significantly reduces the need for specialized (and expensive) talent, which "goes a long way," Peterson said. "I need competent developers, and they're not as scarce as some of the high-end folks that they might be getting let go at larger companies."

Reduced enterprise IT headcount, driven by a lack of available talent and cash, won't reduce the amount of requests sent to the IT teams. "Low-code, in the same way that a C# developer would have been faster than an Assembly developer, just allows you to be more efficient as a technological organization," Mates argued.

When developing in a low-code enterprise environment, it's less about hard skills like C# and more about who is "a process-minded individual," Mates explained. "Do you have the business acumen within our existing business processes if you're a current employee? Because those are the highest value-add individuals – where they understand that business and can translate that into technological solutions," he explained.

The current generation of low-code development tech is "generic enough" that it addresses all the needs of an organization. That means low-code apps can be implemented throughout the company in the case of an IT staff shortage "rather than trying to piecemeal together four or five solutions" from various vendors, Mates said. "I can have that under one roof, whether I have the same number of individuals and we're just more productive as a technology team, or I can do the same amount of work with fewer people," he explained.

Thanks to the changing architectures of technological organizations that require fewer talented individuals, the issue is likely to "end up balancing out in the next 12 months," Mates predicted.

And as low-code continues to evolve, it will "free us up to do more higher level thinking, and the more time that we have the more innovative we're going to get," Peterson added. "The whole purpose of technology, for me, is to free me up so I can go do something else."