2017 State of Software Developer Productivity Survey: Key Findings

2017 State of the Industry
in the United States and Great Britain
a study by
Software Developer
Productivity Survey

02 2017 State of the Industry: Software Developer Productivity Survey
In February 2017, 1,000 professional software developers from the United States and
Great Britain participated in a survey to understand their views and perceptions
around software developer productivity.
Software Developer Productivity Survey
2017 State of the Industry
Methodology and Participation
The survey was conducted online and included English speaking professionals who
write code as the primary responsibility in their work day. The appendix at the end of
this document contains anonymized data about the survey participants including
location, gender, age, leadership experience.

The biggest drain on productivity is not
technical — it comes from waiting on other
people and low-engagement meetings.
24.8%23.9%32.0%19.3%
28.4%27.4%25.8%18.4%
31.1%30.6%27.6%10.7%
31.4%33.3%24.6%10.7%
35.1%30.2%23.0%11.7%
39.9%27.8%20.1%12.2%
41.1%28.5%19.1%11.3%
Drains
no time
Drains a
little time
Drains non-
trivial time
Drains a lot
of time
Waiting for other people to do stuff
Meetings where I mostly remain silent
Struggling with bad tools
Managing tickets, status, and process
Q&A with non-developers
Social Media & Entertainment sites
Other developers needing help
Rate the things that drain the most productivity from your day:

of software developers believe
there are good metrics to measure software
engineering productivity.
No: 10.8%
Yes: 89.2%
Do you think there are good
metrics to measure software
engineering productivity?

of software developers would
want to know their productivity metrics.
No: 7.9%
Yes: 92.1%
If productivity metrics existed,
would you want to know yours?

Engineers’ opinions of their managers would
improve if their managers regularly reviewed
productivity data.
If you found your manager regularly
reviewed productivity data to help the
team, would your opinion of them:
0% 15% 30% 45% 60%
No Change
Improve
Worsen
23.4%
61.1%
15.5%

8.8%14.7%20.2%24.7%31.6%
12.0%21.0%23.6%24.7%18.7%
12.5%24.8%33.8%18.6%10.3%
11.5%25.6%31.7%19.8%11.4%
28.0%29.6%19.2%9.5%13.7%
29.8%28.9%21.8%9.8%9.7%Me
Fellow Programmers
Direct Managers
Product and Project Managers
C-Level, Senior Execs
No
Understanding
Whatsoever
Insufficient
Understanding
Sufficient
Understanding
Pretty Good
Understanding
Deep Nuanced
Understanding
Engineers believe executives and non-technical
stakeholders lack sufficient understanding.
Who has an understanding of what makes software programmers productive?
Non-Technical Stakeholders
(e.g. Accounting, Sales, Marketing)

Correctness, maintainability, and readability
of code are hallmarks of great programmers.
What is the top quality to
look for when judging
fellow programmer’s code?
0% 4% 8% 12%
Correctness of their code
Maintainability of their code
Readability of their code
Reusability of their code
Completeness of their code
Bugs their code generates
Cleverness of their code
Test coverage around their code
Timeliness of delivery of their code
Effective use of OSS libraries in their code
Adherence to style guides (e.g. PEP-8)
Other
13.9%
12.7%
12.5%
10.0%
9.7%
8.6%
8.1%
8.0%
5.8%
5.1%
4.9%
0.6%

Engineers believe productivity is indicated by
fewer bugs created and participation in
meaningful code reviews.
What are the top metrics that indicate the productivity of a programmer?
0% 3.5% 7% 10.5% 14%
Low volume / severity of bugs created
Meaningful participation in code reviews
Volume of *new* code contributed
Low frequency of rewrites
Volume and scope of closed tickets
Raw lines of code written
Low technical debt created
Other
16.0%
15.2%
14.7%
14.4%
13.8%
12.6%
12.1%
1.3%

Survey Participation
Appendix:
1,000 professional software developers from the United States and Great Britain were
invited to participate in this survey. They were presented with a screening question to
verify their knowledge of software development in order to be included in the study.
The following pages contain background information about the participants including
geographic location, age, gender, leadership experience, and self assessment of skill.

1,000 software developers in the U.S. and Great Britain
CA 71
TX 61
NY 42
WI 40
CO 39
FL 32
IA 31
PA 30
GA 29
NC 29
762 238
United States Great Britain
Appendix: Survey Participation

Are you currently a professional sofrware programmer who largely writes code for a living?
Yes, and (TRUE || FALSE) && (FALSE && TRUE) == FALSE is correct
Yes, and (FALSE || FALSE) && (TRUE && TRUE) == TRUE is correct
Yes, and (TRUE || FALSE) && (FALSE && TRUE) == TRUE is correct
Yes, and (TRUE || FALSE) && (TRUE && TRUE) == FALSE is correct
No
100%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
Screening question

Female: 42.8%
Male 57.2%
Respondents by gender
Age 18-24
Respondents by age
25-34 35-44 45-54 55+
0
100
200
300
400
240
320
216
155
69
by demographic

Are you currently in a leadership role? If in leadership, do you have any formal training?
42.3%
No Formal Training
Formal Training
57.7%
by leadership experience
Not in leadership
30.3%
In Leadership
69.7%

Rank yourself amongst your fellow programmers
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%
Top 20% of all coders
Top 50%
Bottom 50%
Bottom 25%
24.9%
48.1%
16.7%
10.3%
by self-assessed skill distribution

2017 State of Software Developer Productivity Survey: Key Findings

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2017 State of Software Developer Productivity Survey: Key Findings