The tech leader’s guide to 2023

Recently, I had the opportunity to ask over a dozen leading technologists for their hopes, predictions, and guidance for the year 2023. This article distills the far-ranging conversation and wealth of insight that came back to me. The year ahead looks to be lean in financial investment, but long on innovation.

Doing more with less

Not surprisingly, economic conditions figure large for many in tech. The theme of doing more with less is prevalent, along with pushing for technology solutions to take up the slack.

Guillermo Rauch, CEO and founder of Vercel (see interview), says “With rising macroeconomic pressures, businesses will have to fight harder for every dollar while doing more with less. How will online businesses solve these challenges in a short time frame while keeping costs in mind? By equipping their developers with the right tools and turning to front-end performance optimization and personalization to deliver new creative experiences for their customers.”

Steve Sewell, CEO and founder of Builder.io (see interview), also noted the push to simplify. “Less engineering staff due to layoffs means a focus on core business, less speculative investment efforts, less spending on marketing/growth, and growing efficiently instead of at all costs. Not excessive polish—simplicity. Solve many things with less, for less.”

The sentiment was echoed by OutSystems head of global portfolio, Prakash Vyas: “Ensuring IT productivity will be even more critical in 2023. Owing to the growing number of tech layoffs adding even more to the shortage of developers.” Vyas added that providing developer teams with low-code tools could be helpful for maximizing productivity.

Milin Desai, CEO of Sentry.io, also spoke to the need for focus:

Companies are going to look at how they can do more with fewer resources, while still innovating and delivering great results. To do this in software, companies need to focus on funding the most important initiatives that drive their customer value and improve their development team’s productivity more so than ever […] sharpening what is working while still having room to make key future bets.

Breaking down walled gardens

Brendan Eich, CEO and co-founder of Brave, notes that “ChatGPT predicts a revitalization of browsing and information applications (not just search), thanks to all the human-created text on the web. This may be the year that innovations combining blockchains, privacy, and browser tech will break down the walled gardens of Big Social.”

AI everywhere

In 2022, we saw artificial intelligence and machine learning transform from a promising frontier to a practical factor in many business processes. Mario Fusco, Java Champion and Drools project lead, hopes for a more measured approach in 2023:

I hope we will find effective ways to complement the amazing capabilities of machine learning with other AI technologies that nowadays are considered a small sunsetting niche like rules engines. The net result of this approach is that for some reason we decided to let ML rediscover (in a poor way) some rules of our business domains instead of trying to properly encode them in our software.

Patrick Jean, CTO of OutSystems, predicts that this year, companies will embrace low-code tools for efficient business process management (BPM):

The BPM market is expected to be valued at $14.4 billion by 2025. The demand for building a robust BPM is so high that businesses will need to use smart shortcuts and automate their processes. But amidst the ongoing developer shortage and IT backlog piling up, businesses are left in the cold. Employees are expected to do more with fewer resources, which is hindering the overall digital transformation journeys. In the next year, businesses will turn towards low-code technology to make room for building strategic business process management.

Guillermo Rauch expects that “AI-based apps will subsume entire categories of software. But every app will find opportunities to also embed AI.” As an example, he cites Vercel’s headless architecture, which “lets developers easily integrate off-the-shelf AI models into the customer experience.” He also anticipates further advancements in AI/ML workloads “being executed at the edge for low-latency AI-driven apps.”

Rich Harris, creator of the SvelteKit framework (see interview), sees AI impacting user interface design. “AI will be everywhere, and most of it will be crap—cumbersome interfaces, questionable results, and a pervasive sense of opportunism—but it will also usher in some of the most radical changes in how we think about UI and workflow in a generation.”

Dan Moore, head of developer relations at Fusion Auth says that machine learning “will continue to be integrated into software and applications, but things like ChatGPT are so expensive it will only be the big players who will have that smooth of an experience.” Machine learning, meanwhile, “will continue to be a required shiny object for any company seeking VC funding,” says Moore.

Application development in 2023

Front-end frameworks and techniques have been under intense evolution over the last few years, and the trend shows signs of staying with us.

Ryan Carniato, creator of Solid.js (see interview) and one of the people working at the frontier of JavaScript frameworks, says that “the past year has been a bit of an awakening. We’ve assumed for the greater part of a decade that the way we developed websites and apps was heading in a certain direction—what could run in the browser, will run in the browser.” Carniato continues:

Those paying attention noted a few years ago that this wasn’t sustainable, but it wasn’t until 2022 that we’ve seen the realization of these solutions that suggest how we build for the web is evolving. That being smarter about how we use JavaScript in the browser is just going to be built into our tooling.

With all the innovation, there are still a lot of rough edges and things to figure out. The next year is going to be less about showing what’s possible and more about figuring out how to make the experience of developing with these techniques enjoyable. My gut is it won’t be the performance but the [developer experience] that separates these solutions, as they all already make such a significant impact, that for many it will be hard to ignore them for long.

Steve Sewell also sees a growing focus on developer experience: “It will be easier to make performant websites that maintain the great DX we are used to.”  He also notes that “React’s dominance will start to finally lose some momentum.”

Guillermo Rauch continues:

2023 is the year companies double down on open-source frameworks. Many companies have recognized the value of React but were using homegrown tools to build their stacks. Companies that have not invested in frameworks and component systems of the front end will realize that they have amassed a lot of complexity and created a lot of technical debt. This year, we expect to see these companies embrace frameworks, like this example from the BBC, to address that technical debt and help their engineering org move faster.

Kim Weins, CMO at Vaadin, brings Java into the conversation, saying “companies will be building new applications using full-stack Java or combining front-end frameworks based on TypeScript and JavaScript with Java back ends.” Weins cites the open source framework Hilla as an example of a framework making it faster and easier for developers to combine React with a Java back end.

MongoDB CTO Mark Porter (see interview) notes, too, that analytics are “shifting left” into application development:

The shift to smarter applications has meant that developers are now becoming responsible for building the logic directly into their applications and running cutting-edge machine learning and automation capabilities on their live operational data. The results for businesses are: the ability for applications to process and analyze real-time data much, much faster and at a lower cost, and to both understand trends and make more informed predictions based on those trends. The results for customers are greater personalization and richer digital experiences.

The blockchain battleground

Cryptocurrency took a real beating in 2022. Nevertheless, much of the technology pushes forward. It appears that two camps are emerging on the subject of blockchain. On the one end, as Mario Fusco says, “I hope people will finally realize that crypto currencies are just the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.”

Others, looking to history, see a longer trajectory for blockchain and related technologies. Simon Jones, CEO and co-founder of Voltz Protocol reminds us that “the dot-com boom led to some of the biggest businesses in the world, like Amazon and Google, but these businesses emerged after the ‘bubble’ popped.” Jones believes we’ll see something similar with decentralized finance. The “projects that come out the other side of this cycle will become pivotal players for the new global and decentralized internet.”

Shawn Douglass, CEO of Amberdata, also foresees “massive growth on the heels of yet another collapse in trust” for decentralized finance and decentralized custody.

“As we course-correct after the FTX collapse, decentralized solutions will be more popular than large centralized platforms, allowing DeFi to see more success and adoption than ever before,” says Tony Cheng, general partner at Foresight Ventures. Similarly, “DeFi will benefit from the collapse of many CeFI failures and more people will protect their wealth through Bitcoin.” notes Will Szamosszegi, CEO of Sazmining.

Derek Yoo, CEO of PureStake, (a development team for Moonbeam) says that cross-chain “interoperability will be the key to any killer (blockchain) app in 2023 […] Dapps will span multiple chains to optimize for cost and efficiency—this will provide a solid foundation for more scalability in the next bull market.”

Will Reeves, CEO and co-founder of the Bitcoin awards company Fold points to CBDC (central bank digital currency) as a potential driver for crypto adoption, remarking “as news of CBDC planning continues to propagate, look for new entrants to flock into Bitcoin as an alternative.”

Dan Moore finds a middle ground, saying “Cryptocurrency/blockchain companies will be in a ‘winter’ throughout 2023.”

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity seems to be on a permanent growth trajectory. Matias Woloski, CTO of Auth0 Lab at Okta (see interview), sees both crypto wallets and passkeys as major themes in 2023, saying he expects that “digital wallets will continue to gain consumer adoption driven by major platforms. But we will see them become a new primitive beyond just payments. We are seeing a version of this with Web3 wallets, and support for passkey/FIDO will be a big enabler.” 

Woloski adds that “as passwords get replaced, the phone will represent a stronger first factor. This will not only improve the user experience but security as well. At Okta, we detect breached passwords at a baseline of 50,000 incidents per day—up from 26,000 last year.” Woloski notes that replacing passwords with passkeys can reduce identity attacks:

Apple, Google, and Microsoft are all supporting passkeys. The focus will shift to easing the developer experience, making it super easy for the people building applications to adopt passkeys in one click or less. There will also be developments for workforce identity to address challenges around allowing administrators to opt-in to passkeys for certain scenarios.

Eric Avigdor, senior director of product management at JumpCloud, says that “securing the IT landscape continues to be a significant challenge for organizations of all sizes. Specifically, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have to juggle distributed workforces and heterogeneous device types and policies without the budget or staff that enterprises enjoy.” In response, Avigdor believes that 2023 will see more companies shifting the responsibility for security “from the user to tools and technology.”

Additionally, “2023 will be the year when IT teams seek to centrally manage user identity and access—not just because it makes their job easier but because it lightens the security load on employees,” says Avigdor.

Stephanie Wong, head of developer engagement for Google Cloud, ties the economy into cyber security:

2023’s economic pressure will up the ante for cybercriminals. With more security breaches like the recent LastPass incident, securing cloud credentials is more important than ever. But there is an increasing responsibility for development teams to harden their software development life cycle—by shifting security to the left at source code and avoiding secrets whenever possible.

Derek Yoo adds that in the blockchain realm, “security for cross-chain communication is a top priority, to avoid the amount of exploits we see on existing bridges and in current interoperability scenarios.”

XR—extended reality

Investor and founder Soleio points our attention to extended reality (XR), which encompasses augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality development:

2023 is the year that mixed reality and spatial computing capture the imaginations of consumers and developers alike. Meta has hinted at their plans with their Passthrough technology, and Apple’s long-rumored efforts may finally come to light. The key change will be how developers perceive the viability of this new market and the real-world use cases they can now build for as we begin the transition from desktop/mobile to XR.

Rich Harris has similar hopes:

People are overly cynical about virtual and augmented reality. Crossing the threshold from curiosity to mainstream computing platform means solving difficult hardware engineering problems, making progress that seems glacial next to the explosive AI industry, but when it happens it will become ubiquitous seemingly overnight.” Harris notes that he hopes to see more developers using WebXR APIs. “It’s crucial that we don’t let a single company dominate this space.

Climate and energy

Ravi Pendekanti, senior vice president of product management and marketing for Western Digital’s HDD business, points to climate, saying “Corporate climate commitments and environmental sustainability are vital for a company’s long-term success and for the wellbeing of humanity. Data centers have a significant role in helping companies meet their goals.” In 2023, Pendekanti expects that hyperscale, communications service providers (CSPs), and enterprise data center customers will continue to search for ways to improve their sustainability and total cost of ownership (TCO). “Storage optimization can be used as a means to reduce power/energy consumption, emissions, e-waste, and other environmental impacts, making data centers more eco-friendly.”

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency can also play a role here, says Will Szamosszegi: “Bitcoin mining will help many energy companies reduce methane emissions while the broader geopolitical conflict will strengthen the use case for Bitcoin.”

Developer experience

Developers as human beings is a rising theme. Guillermo Rauch sees a movement this year from “devops to dev experience,” or DX, where DX “will take center stage. Great developer experience leads to better developer productivity and improved developer velocity, directly improving your bottom line.”

Elain Szu, VP of marketing at Sentry.io, continues:

Today, developer productivity has to include not just velocity, but also code quality plus developer happiness.” This trend, she says, drives the need for developer-first application performance monitoring tools. “Only when you empower devs to do good work, with their preferred way of working, can you be sure that your end customer is also getting the best possible experience.

Conclusion

I believe that the tech industry will continue to work its way through uncertainty as the year progresses. This uncertainty spells opportunity for those who are sharp-eyed and ready to jump, and it may help to shake out what isn’t working. We’ll arrive into the new year, in 2024, as a more clarified industry, purified of dross and poised for explosive strength in the coming years.

I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to provide insight for this article.