Trends in 2016: What keeps developers happy in their job? Survey & Results.

So I decided to run a survey to see what people think are the most important aspects of their job and what keeps them happy. I sent the survey out…

So I decided to run a survey to see what people think are the most important aspects of their job and what keeps them happy. I sent the survey out and got some really good responses. The vast majority of responses were from the Austin market. Objectively, it shows a trend towards wanting to be more involved in decision making and having good leadership. This is consistent with what I have seen in the marketplace. As a hiring manager and watching the evolution of the market over the last 5 years, you can tell that the shift is moving from “working on cool technology”. It is almost a given that a developer wants to work on cooler tech.

Here are the surveymonkey results.

Survey Results - What keeps developer's happy in their job
Survey Results – What keeps developer’s happy in their job

Survey details

I didnt get as many responses as I would have liked but this sample is representative of what i have been seeing. The themes are:

  1. More involvement in decisions
  2. More leadership/mentorship
  3. More money
  4. Flexibility of schedule

Special thanks to everyone who responded, especially the members of the Austin Digital Jobs Facebook Group.

I will run this survey again at the end of 2016 to see how things have changed. As employers start to recognize what is needed to engage developers, other issues will surface.