How are developers engaging with emerging technologies?
Are developers happy in their jobs?
Welcome to the second instalment of our State of the Developer Nation report series.
If you missed the first part where we discuss the size of programming language communities and how developers are working with AI models and tools, you can find it here.
The 26th edition of the Developer Nation survey reached more than 10,000 respondents from 135 countries around the world.
The second wave of the 6 free report series is here with 2 more additions:
Software developer happiness at work
Emerging technologies adoption.
Sounds fun? Let’s get into the details.
Quick reminder: All reports are accessible under the freshly launched SlashData Research Space, free to access, view, and download.
Developer Research Report: How and why developers engage with emerging technologies
While artificial intelligence (AI) is at the centre of every newly-introduced innovation, AI is not the only technology making waves. Blockchain and metaverse technologies continue to promise revolutions in many commercial areas, whilst Wi-Fi sensing, digital twins, and fog/edge have wider industrial and consumer applications.
As part of SlashData’s commitment to understanding the landscape of software development, we have tracked developers' engagement with and adoption of many different emerging technologies across 12 surveys over the last six years, adding new technologies as they become relevant and sunsetting others from the list as they become established.
From developers’ interest in these technologies, we ascertain the levels of engagement and adoption. We consider a developer to be engaged with a technology if they report being interested in it, learning about it, or working on it. The adoption rate of a technology is the proportion of engaged developers currently working on it. To better understand the engagement and adoption rates for these technologies on a macro level, we have created four quadrants, defined by where each technology sits in the current software landscape, compared to the median adoption and engagement value
Has AI taken over the world? Not yet. However, it has achieved to both take over all our discussions about the future and have 59% of developers use AI tools in their development workflows.
Engagement with blockchain technologies has been volatile
Four technologies have consistently failed to engage developers: digital twin, haptic feedback, fog/edge computing, and DNA computing/storage, and not all for the same reasons. Digital twin and fog/edge computing both have primarily industrial applications and, therefore, fail to capture the imaginations of many developers, whilst DNA computing is still a long way from maturity. Haptic feedback, on the other hand, currently has limited use cases outside of gaming and accessibility applications.
Engagement with blockchain technologies, including cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and other applications, has been very volatile.
It’s these technologies that the rest of the report addresses. Access the full free report here.
Developer Research Report: How happy are developers with their jobs?
Significant employee turnover can cripple firms. Furthermore, as most of us can attest, applying to jobs is a huge pain and typically not something most professionals aspire to undertake regularly. Hence, it is in the interest of both employees and employers to seek and create an environment where company personnel are happy and satisfied.
How happy are developers with their jobs?
While what constitutes satisfaction can be difficult to define, in this report, we examine how satisfied developers are with their jobs using a validated measure of job satisfaction incorporated in the latest edition of our Developer Nation survey. We assess how job satisfaction is associated with future career plans –i.e. changing jobs –and examine how various factors and contexts affect satisfaction.
How important each item is will vary based on each individual. However, the fact that roughly a quarter of developers feel they are missing opportunities for promotion, fair compensation, and stimulation in their job, is noteworthy. Going out of its way to provide opportunities for promotion, for example, can distinguish a company from the competition.
To ensure that they can attract and retain talented personnel, most successful companies aim to foster environments where employees feel valued and supported and have a future. To measure this, we used questions from the validated Job Descriptive Index and asked developers worldwide to respond to these questions to measure their satisfaction with their current role. By and large, we find that developers consider their job worthwhile (79%) and that it gives them a sense of accomplishment (75%). Meanwhile, one in four (26%) developers do not believe they are compensated fairly and a similar proportion don't feel they have opportunities for promotion or feel stimulated.
How important each item is will vary based on each individual. However, the fact that roughly a quarter of developers feel they are missing opportunities for promotion, fair compensation, and stimulation in their job, is noteworthy. Going out of its way to provide opportunities for promotion, for example, can distinguish a company from the competition.
Those working in AR/VR are the most satisfied professional developers
In the full report we also look at:
Developers’ overall satisfaction and satisfaction by roles.
Satisfaction and job-seeking
Job-seeking and developers’ age
You can access the full report at the SlashData Research Space.
We recently hosted a live session with analyst Brayton Noll to discuss the findings and developer happiness at work.
More software developer research coming soon
This was part 2 of the 6-report series. 2 more reports are already available and the final additions are coming in the next few weeks.
Make sure to subscribe to the SlashData newsletter to be notified first.
Here are the reports that will be soon available and will complete the State of Developer Nation series:
Threats in software supply chain management (August)
Profiling of new ML/AI developers (August)
If you are looking to address a tailored question or want to take advantage of our expertise in surveying developers, let’s talk.
The Developer Nation survey
If this is the first time you heard about SlashData, I’m happy to share a few quick words. SlashData is a developer research company. Every quarter, SlashData runs a survey on the globe developer audience, to measure the pulse of the developer ecosystem and how they feel about new technologies, tools, platforms, the support from developer programs and more. Following the closing of the survey, our expert analysts work on identifying key trends and translate raw data into actionable insights that professionals and companies addressing a developer audience can utilise to fine-tune their strategy and address developers’ needs and wants.
Are you a software developer? Take the survey.
The State of Developer Nation reports
SlashData’s Developer Nation survey is the leading research programme on mobile, desktop, industrial IoT, consumer electronics, embedded, third-party app ecosystems, cloud, web, game, AR/VR and machine learning developers, as well as data scientists, tracking developers’ experiences across platforms, technologies, programming languages, app and API categories, revenue models, segments, and regions.
About the author
Stathis Georgakopoulos, Product Marketing Manager
Always keen to see what’s next in the industry, Stathis is the Product Marketing Manager for SlashData, setting the table and running the marketing activities. He's our go-to guy for all things marketing and does not hide his love for content marketing and creating helpful content.