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This year Apiumhub partnered up with codignsans and other software related companies like: clutch, gitkraken, Cooperpress, Level-up, Storyblok, Dashbird, Serverlessguru, Coder, Webiny, Meetupfeed and took part in a global software development research to find out how companies attract software developers, what are the most popular languages, what are the most frequent challenges, etc. We got more than 600 answers from different countries around the world and we really hope that you will find this report interesting. To get the full report with Interesting facts about software development, click here.
Sneak peek: interesting facts about software development
And now, let’s look at some of the data from the report to get an idea of what to expect from this report. Let me highlight that in this article you won’t find a detailed explanation of each graph and question. It is just a sneak peek.
As we all know, software development is a fast-changing field. Almost every year we see new languages, software architectures, containers, methodologies, etc. A tool or language that is highly used today might be obsolete next year. This year our intention is to take a snapshot of the current state of software development and make conclusions about where it’s heading.
This report has different chapters, the first part of the report is about the challenges software teams are facing and the solutions they try to implement. In this part, you will also find the most popular programming languages and project management tools.
The second part of the report is about hiring and retaining challenges and solutions. is among the biggest challenges tech companies are facing. And the last chapter focuses on performance management.
This is the gourth time we conduct the survey, therefore you will find interesting comparisons 2018 vs 2019 vs 2020 vs 2021 and see what has changed and how.
To be honest, we are very excited to show you these interesting facts about software development in 2021. We hope you will like it!
Ok, let’s start!
Top interesting facts about software development
1. Challenges in software development
The biggest challenge tech companies are facing is related to hiring talent.
This challenge is closely followed by capacity.
If we compare it to the previous years, we will see that it has changed, last years companies had Capacity as the main challenge followed by knowledge sharing.
Ok, the main challenges are clear, but what are the solutions?
What do teams do to overcome the capacity challenge?
Here are the most popular choices to combat capacity issues:
- Improving prioritization
- Hiring engineers
- Outsourcing to contractors
- Improving processes
And what do teams do to solve the Hiring Talent challenge?
The most important methods our participants use to be able to attract talent are:
- Building an engineering brand
- Advertising more
- Offering higher pay and better benefits
- Working with recruiters
To see the graph and other solutions, click here.
What challenges has the pandemic added to your daily work?
Difficulties with communication
The majority of the participants mentioned that the forced remote environment made communication more difficult, causing a wide array of issues. Here are the most common occurrences:
- Lack of water cooler conversations
- Increased overhead in communication
- Asynchronous communication
- More meetings
Work-life balance
Many participants mentioned that working from home made separating personal life from work difficult.Many people in the industry have trouble focusing on work with many distractions going on at home that they don’t have to deal with at the office. Others say working extra hours became regular.It can turn into a vicious cycle where you have trouble focusing, so you end up putting in extra hours, take less rest, which will cause you to have less focus again. This is a common issue across the board that may be worth looking into to improve the quality of life for remote workers.
More stress, burnout, and depression
Slower and often lower quality communication, the lack of human interaction, and difficulties with work-life balance in themselves cause extra stress. On top of these, there is a lot of uncertainty everywhere.
This leads to depression and burnout becoming more widespread issues. They may still be less visible, because you only talk to your colleagues during meetings, as opposed to being around them all day in the office.
Mental health issues of any level are certainly real in the current atmosphere, and they deserve extra attention from employees, managers, and more senior leadership.
2. The most used programming languages
What are the most used programming languages? And what languages will be used in the next 12 months? The answers are here:
As we can see the most widely used programming language is still JavaScript with 49.47%.
And what is curious is that 32.45% of the respondents said they’re not planning to use any new programming languages in the upcoming 12 months.
Source: State of software development report
If we compare the results 2018 vs 2019 vs 2020 vs 2021, we will see that this year the usage of Typescript is growing continuously.
3. Software development Tools
This report made it clear that teams use a wide variety of tools, especially when it comes to testing and project management. You may find the detailed analysis here: State of software development report
4. Hiring and retaining talent
Hiring and retaining developers are critical parts of managing a developer team. We wanted to learn more about how tech companies hire and retain talents.
Since 2018, the most effective hiring methods haven’t changed. Employee referrals and having in-house recruiters are the best ways to hire talent.
Source: State of software development report
From what we can see it is clear that there are 4 important areas tech companies focus on when they’re hiring talent: willingness to learn, work experience and technical skill evaluation test and cultural fit.
What is curious is that now, very few companies look at degrees or certifications, it became something secondary. The most important one is a willingness to learn and it makes sense because we live in a rapidly changing world and people should be able to adapt to new circumstances and find new opportunities to do the job better.
As for the attraction strategy, let’s look at the graph to find out what are the main factors that companies use to attract new talents:
Source: State of software development report
It turns out that great team, challenging work and growth opportunity are the most popular ways to attract new software developers.
5. Software Outsourcing
Since dealing with capacity issues is one of the biggest challenges along with hiring talents, outsourcing could be a quick fix. Let’s see what companies think about the idea of doing outsourcing:
Source:State of software development report
Well, as we can see most of the people who outsourced software development services stayed somewhat satisfied. This can be a good solution for the capacity problem.
6. Performance management
In this section of the report, we will look at how software teams measure performance and what causes delivery problems. This part also uncovers how developer teams ensure code quality.
Source: State of software development report
As we can see working software, completed tasks and code readability are the most important factors for project managers to measure developers performance.
And the number one cause of failure for most of the project managers is lack of clearly defined deliverables, followed by unrealistic expectations and estimation.
Source: State of software development report
Conclusion: global software development situation
This article featured just a small slice of all the data we gathered from the report. If you want to see the full report, just follow this link and download it. Feel free to share this post or report with anyone you think might be interested. But don’t forget that this data is relevant only for this year.
Again, big thanks to Codingsans for this initiative and for making it happen together with clutch, gitkraken, Cooperpress, Level-up, Storyblok, Dashbird, Serverlessguru, Coder, Webiny, Meetupfeed. Proud that Apiumhub is part of it!
To see the full report, click here.
Enjoy!
And if you are working on an exciting project and you need help with software development, let us know! We would be happy to know more!
If you would like to get more interesting facts about software development, I highly recommend you to subscribe to our monthly newsletter by clicking here.
One Comment
Rachel Smith
Amazing facts! While developing software, scalability needs to be a focus area. Else the cost of implementation across a company’s various departments becomes too high. Also, the learning curve should be low, as this affects adoption.