Introducing the 2020 State of Developer Satisfaction Report

With the unprecedented events of 2020 impacting our society, we have all been impacted in some shape or form. Normal semblances of life have shifted to becoming completely remote/virtual for most of us in the technology field. At Harness combined with our own internal efforts to cope with the shifting times, we sent out a comprehensive survey to 500 developers in peer organizations around satisfaction. 

When drastic changes to the economy started to occur in March 2020, businesses were triggering Business Continuity Plans (BCPs). With such drastic change and uncertainty, many if not all of us had additional stress around the uncertainty. In the 2020 State of Developer Satisfaction Report, key themes were around the drive, resilience, and overall outlook of our developer peers.

Driving Business Changes 

To adapt to the rapidly changing conditions, businesses had to adapt to meet the new and unforeseen needs of their clients. Core to making business rules or functionality changes to applications are development teams. For example, an airline extending credits for a longer period of time seems easy on paper to the unfamiliar but most likely need to touch several dozen live systems and services where expertise is scattered. 

Forty-three [43%] of respondents said their deployment velocity increased which is staggering. In the high tech industry, we typically see pretty high deployment velocity compared to other industries and with so many engineers experiencing even higher velocity of change shows that business and engineers are committed to making impactful changes and a majority all while working remotely. 

Changing How We Work

For myself, I am very grateful that I don’t have to be on the front lines in the pandemic and can continue my occupation remotely. Technology firms were already well poised to support remote teams though in major technology hubs like San Francisco the radio dial was previously turned towards having folks being co-located. Since the start of the pandemic, seventy-four [74%] of respondents said their firms will continue to encourage a remote developer workforce even after the pandemic is over which represents a fundamental shift. 

Learning and growth are important to our careers also. Being in the office and having the ability to travel to meetups or trade events were core to learning and development. With the shift to many of these events being virtual, employers are allowing for additional flexibility to attend virtual events. An overwhelming majority of ninety-four [94%] of respondents were satisfied with the investment in growth and learning. A good example is our upcoming {Unscripted} 2020 conference which was originally physical and now switched to virtual to accommodate a newly minted remote workforce. Even ourselves at Harness has spent time intrinsically making our employee experience better.

Keep Moving Forward

The resilience and adaptability of those interviewed in the technology profession are impressive. Like so many other fields, the unprecedented times and challenges are taxing for many individuals. At Harness, we are adapting like so many other firms from an office-centric culture to a remote driven culture. At Harness, we recently introduced our TGIF program giving Harness employees a free Friday off every month to decompress. 

Our 2020 State of Developer Satisfaction Report provides additional breakdowns on how age and salary trends impact satisfaction and also additional details about hiring/reduction trends. Harness is here to partner with your organization to reduce toil as development and deployment velocity increase. As our first inaugural satisfaction report, we will surely compare and contrast our 2021 report to show how we are moving as an industry.

Cheers,

-Ravi & Tiffany