Developer surveys are fascinating as we gain insight directly from IT professionals and find out exactly what makes them tick. They show us trends in our industry, help us determine if there is greener grass on the other side of the fence, and sometimes just provide some interesting tidbits of information. We recently shared some results of Stack Overflow’s annual Developer Survey and since GitLab also published results of a similar developer survey, it only make sense we share that as well.
GitLab surveyed over 5000 IT professionals from around the world, ranging from the most junior developers to veteran software professionals. While the results garnered a variety of conclusions, these are our favourite highlights:
There are Some Distinct Qualities of a High Performing IT Team’s Culture
It takes all kinds of inputs to create a high performing team, but GitLab identified five specific qualities that their cultures all share:
- A DevOps culture
- Better access to best tools
- Less time context switching
- More likely to be using cloud-based tools
- Leaders make automating SDLC a top priority
The DevOps culture may be of a specific interest to you, or even come as a surprise, depending on your preferred methodology. GitLab did dive deeper into the DevOps vs Agile topic, and we’ll summarize those findings in a separate post later this month.
Developers and Management Don’t Always Agree
To add different twist, GitLab asked questions to both managers and developer and compared responses. While they weren’t always far off, it is clear by these findings that there is often a disconnect between the two groups:
Statement | Developers Who Agree | Managers Who Agree |
Project expectations and requirements are not set up front | 31% | 23% |
Practicing Continuous Integration (CI) alleviates blockers in the development process | 84% | 90% |
Automating more of the SDLC is a top priority in the organization | 55% | 78% |
Developers have access to the best development tools | 74% | 81% |
Developers Around the World Feel the Same Pain Points
Finally GitLab also asked respondents about their biggest challenges and delays. The charts below show that, regardless of the type of organization and where they are in the world, we’re all experiencing similar set-backs: