What makes developers happy?

A data-driven approach using Stack Overflow’s developer survey data to determine the key factors contributing to job satisfaction of developers.

Motivation

One year ago, I decided to follow my passion, changed my career path, from mechanical engineering to data science. It was a huge decision and I don’t regret it one bit as so far I am genuinely loving my coding job.

However, the majority of my friends and acquaintances, those who are not in tech/engineering roles, complain about how boring their 9 to 5 jobs are. At some point I started wondering what makes developers happy. Everyone defines workplace happiness differently. For some, it’s an empty inbox. For others, it’s a calendar free from meetings.

Let the data tell the story. I searched answers to my questions using the data acquired from Stack Overflow’s 2019 and 2020 Annual Developer Survey.

The intended audience of this post is for aspiring developers, people who are completely new to coding career, as well as tech employers who want to keep their developers happy and productive. My goal is to put developers’ thoughts into words.

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. — Confucius

Are developers happy with their profession?

The statistic shows the satisfaction of global developers with their job in 2019 and 2020. According to the survey, about 64.7% of respondents report that they are either slightly or very satisfied with their job. Only 7.4% are very dissatisfied.

Apparently the majority of developers like their jobs. But what exactly makes them happy? And what factors affect the level of job satisfaction? Let’s dig deeper into the data.

Which country has the happiest developers?

I started my exploration with the visualisation of the effect of geographical factor on the job satisfaction of the developers — the percent of the total respondents from each country on a scale from Very satisfied to Very dissatisfied.

Judging by the bar chart below, United States, Netherlands and Canada are the ideal countries for developers to work in.

• Developers in United States are the most satisfied at work while Brazilian and Indian developers are the least satisfied out of 10 countries surveyed.
• Netherlands beats UK, Germany and France to offer highest job satisfaction for techies in Europe.

Can money buy happiness? Does organisation size matters?

Next, I look at the cognitive component of job satisfaction by examining the impact of salary and organisation size, focusing solely on the developers in United States. I had 3 big takeaways from the image.

• Compared to office employees, the variation in salary of full-time freelancers is the largest for all level of job satisfaction. The result is as expected as freelancing is by its very nature financially unstable. Nonetheless, successful freelancers are able to earn as much as full-time employees from large enterprise, as we can see from the Very satisfied group.
• Developers in small enterprise generally earn below average. There is however an exception for the Very satisfied group, which consists of 45% of the respondents from small enterprise with an annual salary of about 120k. Does this mean that happiness can be bought using money in small enterprise?
• In large enterprise, salary played an insignificant role on the job satisfaction. All groups have the average salary above 120k annually. In spite of that, only 39.3% of the respondents from large enterprise is very satisfied with their current job, which is the lowest compared to other organisation size.

After all, I could not find clear correlation between job satisfaction and organisation size. Is job satisfaction greater for larger or smaller firms? It is too simplistic.

What drives developers to look for a new job?

Indeed, the prevailing wisdom was that peoples are never satisfied with their pay and ask for better compensation for good and all regardless of profession. This applies to American developers inevitably.

Apart from that, developers are driven by technical challenges, rather than personnel issues. Curiosity helps developers become masters of their areas by fueling their ambitions. They are curiosity-driven and always open to opportunities for growth and even development in leadership. Having a good work/life balance is important for developers as well.

Which languages are growing in popularity?

From 2019 to 2020, C remains the most popular programming language and has the largest developer community but Python, TypeScript and R are growing in popularity in the past year. Presumably this is a result of the ever growing data science and web development industry in the recent years.

For those who want to break into the field, these languages are definitely worth the investment.

Fun fact: In 2015, a survey conducted in the UK revealed that Python has overtaken French as the most popular language taught in primary schools.

What Does It All Mean?

• United States has the happiest developers while Netherlands ranked first in Europe. Tech employers in these countries are better at demonstrating how much they value their developers a bit better than others.
• Organization size does not play important role affecting the job satisfaction of developers. Instead, developers need more interesting code to work on and problems to solve in order to be fulfilled.
• Cash alone won’t keep developers happy, and they constantly looking for opportunities. The need for professional development is something every developer has, regardless of their role, industry or location.

The findings here are observational, not the results of a formal study. So the real question remains:

What ACTUALLY makes developers happy?

To see more about this analysis, feel free to check out my codes or connect with me on LinkedIn.