A new Evans Data survey has performed an ample study meant to uncover some of the characteristics of the developer community. Are developers introverted or extroverted? Are they intuitive or logical? Do they prefer virtual or real rewards? What is most worrisome for their carrier? And many others.
Evans Data Corporation (EDC) has conducted a recent online survey meant to decipher the attitudes, adoption patterns and intentions of developers in relation to marketing. The survey was done through an in-depth interview of 457 developers from the EDC International Panel of Developers which, according to EDC, includes around 75,000 developers from 85 countries recruited as neutrally as possible without being vendor or platform related.
Motivation
When it comes to what’s driving them in their work, developers under the age of 25 start as being mostly curios, then most of them want to enhance their skills, then, around 50-55, they have a time when they like to contribute to the community, being mainly curious after 55 but also remaining with a desire to learn more as shown in the following chart:
Rewards
When it comes to rewards, the study has found that the vast majority of developers prefers virtual rewards (badges, levels, leaderboards points, etc.) to physical ones (cash, vacation, software). Two thirds of the developers incline towards recognition from their peers:
Carrier Worries
During the survey the developers were asked to identify what’s most worrisome for their carrier, what happens to the platform they are developing for, their skills or the tools they use? Developers consider that the decline of their platform of choice or tools is more worrisome than their skills becoming outdated. EDC interprets that as “A developer can always learn new skills but if you’ve just invested years of your life and possibly a lot of money on developing an app for a particular platform or technology, and the platform becomes irrelevant in the market, then you’ve potentially lost a lot.”
Introverted vs. Extroverted
Programmers are stereotyped as introverted geeks, even nerds, but what do they consider themselves? Most of the develops think they are extroverted, half of them being moderately extroverted, as shown below. The results were consistent across different countries. Being such a personal question, perhaps a more precise measurement method would be using observation rather then self evaluation.
Intuition vs. Logic
Another question was meant to measure how much developers rely on intuition and how much on logic. The results are those expected, 85% of them placing themselves on the logical side of the equation:
The 200-pages survey contains answers to many developer related questions, such as:
- What Makes a Developer Excited about a Tool or Technology?
- Why do Developers Become Developers?
- How Many Would Change Tech Careers for More Money?
- Motivations for Abandoning a Platform
- Companies Developers Believe Are Most Relevant
- Most Credible Source on Emerging Technologies
- Top Reasons for Attending Webinars
- Best Length for Instructional Videos
and many others like those.