RDEL #54: Analyzing the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey: Productivity and DevEx (Part 1)
This week we begin a three-part series reviewing the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey. We start by reviewing the top areas that impact productivity and overall developer experience.
Welcome back to Research-Driven Engineering Leadership. Each week, we pose an interesting topic in engineering leadership, and apply the latest research in the field to drive to an answer.
The 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey is out! Over the next three weeks, we will digest the top findings from the most comprehensive pulse survey on global software engineering. We start our analysis by asking: over the last year, what have developers felt impacted their productivity and developer experience most?
The context
The Stack Overflow Annual Developer Survey is conducted to gather insights into the developer community's preferences, challenges, and trends. It covers various topics such as popular programming languages, tools, and technologies, as well as work environments, education, and demographics. The survey aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the developer landscape, helping inform industry practices and highlighting emerging trends.
Each year, thousands of developers participate, making it one of the most significant surveys in the broader tech industry. This year, 65,437 responses from 185 countries are used in these survey results.
The research
The data for the 2024 Stack Overflow Developer Survey was collected through responses from approximately 29,000 professional developers who opted to share feedback about professional development. They were asked about productivity impacts, developer experiences, and job satisfaction. Below are three key findings from this study on developer productivity and developer experience.
1. Only 1 in 5 engineers describe themselves as “happy” at work
48% of engineers feel complacent at work, and 32% feel unhappy at work.
When asked to assign value to the factors that contribute most to job satisfaction, “improving quality of code and developer environments” had the highest value (20.5%), followed by learning/using new tech.
2. Poor access to information causes slowdowns in productivity.
45% of developers encounter knowledge silos frequently.
61% spend over 30 minutes daily searching for answers.
48.8% of developers often answer questions that they’ve already answered before.
3. Technical debt is the top frustration for developer experience.
63% of engineers say technical debt causes the most frustration.
After technical debt, engineering managers say unreliable tools is the top frustration. However, ICs believe complex tech stacks to be the second-largest frustration.
The application
The findings of this study paint a pretty clear (and sobering) picture of the state of software engineering today: only 20% of engineers are currently happy with their work. That said, there are clear opportunities to improve developer experience, discover friction that slows down engineering teams, and help teams work more effectively.
From the findings of this section of the survey, some opportunities to better-support an engineering team are:
Mitigate Knowledge Silos: Foster a culture of documentation and regular knowledge-sharing sessions to reduce the time developers spend searching for information. This will also help engineers better balance collaborative work with deep work, ensuring they get the right amount of time to complete their tasks.
Tackle Technical Debt: Implement regular code reviews and refactoring practices to manage and reduce technical debt.
Promote Continuous Learning: Encourage a culture of continuous learning within the team, so engineers can continue to grow in their skills and opportunities. This can be through pair programming, knowledge sharing opportunities, or more formal means like courses.
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Next week, we will dive into AI adoption across engineering organizations, and the the impacts to the development process. Until then, Happy Research Monday!
Lizzie