Software Development in 2018: Monday Afternoon Stats
The year, as software developers saw it
What does a development-dominated world want this year? Right, more developers! And the more the industry grows, the faster this industry changes. Believe me when I say it’s hard to capture the state of software development in the world at any given moment. It’s equal to taking snapshots: there’s never two identical ones! Even so, there are some trends that have dominated the industry recently, and we’re eager to share them with you in our #mondayafternoonstats series:
Challenges and Solutions
Two biggest challenges for tech companies as of 2018 are capacity and hiring talent. Remember us saying what the world needs is more developers?
When it comes to the demographics, the issues varied greatly depending on the role of the respondent.
So, different roles, different challenges! Still, capacity seems to be an equally important issue for everyone. This lack of employees is probably what makes companies turn to outsourcing team members or entire teams to jump to the tasks:
So, roughly over 52% of companies, worldwide, have turned to outsourcing. This is why global teams are so common.
Trends in tech and tools
The landscape of programming languages is pretty much dominated by JavaScript, followed by Java and Python.
While many languages have low usage stats, the trends show many of them are bound to move up the list as a number of companies are considering adding them to their tech stack:
Python, Go, TypeScript, Kotlin and JS are getting more exposure by the day, and may cause pretty much change in the overall landscape of IT.
Now, when it comes to the most popular project management, communication and SCM too tools, the very obvious leader is Jira. Other popular solutions are GitHub, Trello and Asana.
Communication during the projects most often happens using Slack. Email is still popular, being used by over 54% of employees.
Hiring and talent retention
Remember that talent shortage is the number one issue for a number of companies? Well, turns out you can also do quite good without a college degree or diploma. What you do need is, above technical skills or experience, is the willingness to learn and being a good cultural fit.
With software development changing as rapidly as it does, it’s no surprise the ability and willingness to learn fast is so much appreciated.
And when it comes to retaining those employees, you’d be surprised that money is not even one of the 5 most important factors. Instead, give developers challenging work, a good team and autonomy to create!
Performace
Performance is the number one factor that measures success. However, over 28% of companies don’t use any criteria to measure performance. For the majority, however, working software and completed tasks are an indicator of work being done properly.
And, when people fail to deliver, there is a number of reasons ranging from unrealistic expectations to lack of clearly defined goals, changing requirements and wrong estimations:
With the IT landscape changing so fast it is hard to say how long these stats will be in place, but it’s worth sharing them while they are hot!
These stats were first gathered by Coding Sans.
About this author:
Armine Hakobyan is a digital storyteller with a heart for technology and innovation.
