The Future of Software Development: Personal Thoughts After Attending Tech Awake for Career 2025 Event
Table of Contents
- Introduction to Tech Awake for Career 2025
- Notable Companies That Attended
- Personal Thoughts and Insights
- Conclusion
This is kongs from Cloud Solution Group 2.
A few weeks ago, I was searching the internet when I came across an event called Tech Awake for Career 2025 . The event was to be held on the 15th of November, and is advertised as an IT event where you can meet some well-known companies, and get to understand recent IT trends.
I think that a chance to speak personally with professionals as well as IT companies about the latest IT trends and technologies that they are adopting is no doubt very valuable, especially for any IT engineer that wishes to understand the upcoming field in better detail. Therefore, I have taken the initiative to participate in the event personally.
Introduction to Tech Awake for Career 2025
When we think of software development in the context of Japan, a few keywords would come to mind. “SES”, “SIer”, “startup” and “foreign IT company (GAFA)” are some of the more notable keywords. What would rarely come to mind is that, “I want to work at ABC, a traditional Japanese company to build my IT career”.
This sentiment is understandable, as there is a persistent image that “IT is a specialized field for professionals, so companies that want IT related services would go to specialized firms instead of doing it themselves”. This also leads to a bias where “the core business of said company is not IT, so they are not hiring IT professionals”.
The core message of the Tech Awake event is to challenge that image. The event wishes to emphasize that, in order for Japanese companies to regain their global competitiveness, it is essential for them to evolve into true tech companies with technology at their core. Therefore, the event wishes to advertise that various Japanese companies are actively pursuing in-house development, not just startups or large IT companies.
With this trend towards in-house development at large companies, greater expectations are being placed on engineers and other tech talent than ever before. The event aims to help large companies elevate technology to the heart of their business. This process will undoubtedly present new challenges and opportunities, allowing tech talents attending to take on new challenges and lead the transformation of large companies into tech companies with a business perspective.
Notable Companies That Attended
The list of companies that have attended the event are as follows:
- MBK Digital
- Persol Holdings
- Kinto Technologies (backed by Toyota)
- Tokyo Gas
- Yokohama Bank
- Lixil
- Ryohin Keikaku
- SMBC
- Marubeni
- Satto (backed by Softbank)
- Marui Unite
As listed above, most companies in attendance are standard Japanese companies, or are backed by standard Japanese companies.
Personal Thoughts and Insights
Personally, I am less interested in the career aspect that the event wishes to appeal or emphasize. Although, for aspiring tech talents wishing to meet Japanese companies that are at the forefront of adopting new technologies and trends, the event is incredibly valuable for such individuals.
I am however very interested in how conventional Japanese large companies are slowly adopting the above changes and philosophy, and what approach they are taking to achieve it. The following are some trends and findings that I think are important for general programmers or software developers to know about.
① Progressive AI Adoption
The companies that attended the event come from different fields and backgrounds, such as banking, logistics, retail, energy sector and more. It would be difficult to picture some of these companies to be related to IT, much less having their own in-house IT department.
However, after the attending the event, I have come to understand that the companies in attendance each have their own dedicated IT departments. I have also noticed that despite the companies come from various different fields, in their speeches they are either actively adopting AI tools and technologies in their project, or are working on developing new products using AI.
The field of AI has received both a lot attention and a lot of criticism. Some engineers think that the technology itself has value, while others think that over-reliance on it can lead to issues. One crucial point that I think most engineers can agree on however is that with this trend moving forward, engineers that have used AI tools and technologies will in general be more valuable then engineers that do not have that knowledge.
With the above understanding, I think that it is very important for engineers to at the very least get started with trying out some AI related tools, and see if the adoption of these tools into their personal development projects can help improve their overall efficiency. Through this, I believe that engineers can start to accumulate the knowledge and experience required to use these tools, and maintain a competitive edge overall.
② The (Possible) End of Specialist Programmers/Developers
Something to also note is that certain companies have openly expressed that their IT department was, quote “started by a few internal department members with near zero experience and knowledge in IT”.
This come to me as a bit surprising, until I understood the first point that I have made, that being the adoption of AI. With the rise of easy to use AI tools, especially their rapid adoption into software development projects, the hurdle for everyday people to break into the field has lowered considerably, allowing more people in general to work as general IT engineers.
There was a sentiment expressed by a speaker where “IT used to be a very difficult and specialized field, so only the best and knowledgeable professionals were hired”. He then said “Now, it is the opposite. Instead of hiring people who are IT specialists, companies prefer people hiring non specialists who have a strong urge to learn IT”.
The sentiment expressed by the speaker resonated a lot with me. IT as a field used to be very difficult and specialized, where only the most experienced and knowledgeable engineers were entrusted to lead software development projects. Back then, only the most technically skilled were hired.
However, over the years, instead of only technical knowledge, other various skills started to get prioritized. When you think about it, IT as a service is about solving customer challenges. This involves providing solutions to problems faced by users, which requires a good understanding of the end users’ needs, clear communication skills with customers, and a good understanding of business operations in general.
With this understanding, it becomes clear that the focus of what makes a good tech talent has shifted. IT engineers should focus not just on improving their technical skill moving forward, but also work towards improving their non-technical skills, such as communication skills and business related knowledge. This will allow them to better solve business challenges and become not just a technically skilled IT engineer, but one that can provide solutions to solve customers’ needs.
③ Pivot From Outsourcing to In-housing Development
Many of the companies in attendance have explained that because they started out without having a dedicated internal IT department, they started out by outsourcing related development tasks and projects to external companies. However, over the years they have pivoted from outsourcing to moving the development in-house.
I find this to be quite interesting. However, when continuing to listen and understand the explanation, the reasoning seems quite obvious.
As listed above, many of the above companies are not perceived as 100% IT focused companies. Some are banks, some are service providers, retailers etc. When speaking of such companies, it is often assumed that “these companies are not IT experts, so they would just contract actual experts or outsource the related tasks to third parties”.
However, when you analyze the process of outsourcing or contracting, the problems start to become very obvious. Mainly, that you have delegated most of the responsibilities and controls over your software development to an outsider. When you want something changed, you will need to speak with the parties involved, take the time to explain to them what you wish, maybe hash out the schedule and hold meetings with the related parties.
One of the representatives in attendance, the CTO of NewsPicks stated that they deploy releases to update their application an average of 10 times a day. You read that right, 10 times. I am experienced with the structured deployment of web applications on the cloud, and I can tell you that to be able to redeploy your web app 10 times a day takes serious preparation and setup. Such a demanding pace is difficult to achieve in an outsourcing or contracting team, where every decision has to be preapproved.
This shows that in the future, companies that have a certain level of IT knowledge would understand the trade-offs that come with outsourcing IT development projects, and opt for in-house development should they value development speed, quality and overall management.
I think that engineers should take note of the above trend, and try to adopt a new perspective when in comes to being an IT engineer. Instead just focusing on doing the next task or getting the next assignment from a project, try to look around and see if there are common problems and challenges that could be solved with their own IT skills. Maybe with some effort, a simple solution or personal development project could become a fully fledged product in the future.
④ The Necessity to Know More
I consider myself a person who is quite up to date with the latest software development tools and technologies.
I know about modern frameworks, popular tools that are adopted (and should be adopted) in various development projects, and even go out of my way to try them out personally in self development projects.
However, I am still dumbfounded by many technologies that I have never used before are already being adopted in various tech stacks, which are in use by some of the companies in attendance. Not only that, some of the tools they use I have not even heard of before until the event.
A few notable ones would include Mastra, Drizzle ORM and Storybook.
When software development in Japan is spoken about, the image that usually comes to mind is usually “static, unchanging, and old-fashioned”. That image itself is still true for certain companies operating today, where COBOL and Fortran are still being used, obsolete PHP versions are still being maintained, and new technologies are incredibly slow to get adopted.
However, what I wish to show is that there are also companies that open to embracing new ideas, new tools, new technologies, and above all else, willing to stand at forefront of the latest trends. I think that such a decision is not only forward-thinking, it allows them to be the first to master such tools and use them to solve actual business challenges, allowing them to stay competitive.
With the above perspective, I think that it is important to understand that to be an IT engineer is not an end goal, but instead a journey, where we must always be open to new ideas, be willing to try new tools, willing to understand new technologies, and most importantly, to never stop learning. With this in mind, I recommend that IT engineers should always stay up to date with technology related news, and be willing to try them out and learn about how to use them. There is always the possibility that learning some new tool can lead to solving current problems in actual ongoing projects.
Conclusion
I am very fortunate to have taken the initiative to take part in the event and getting a glimpse of the wonderful future of the IT sector moving forward. I hope that readers of this article were able understand some of the latest upcoming IT trends, as well as how to be better prepared to face upcoming challenges.
I also wish to point out that sometimes, an engineer can learn not just by studying or working on projects, but by going out and participating in events, networking with other engineers in the field, as well as speaking with companies face to face and understanding their business challenges. I hope that readers could understand this point, and that all adventures begin by taking the initial small step.
