Zenhub recently released a report which it believes fills a new role in the software development industry.
The Vancouver-based productivity management solution for software teams has released the 2022 Software Developer Happiness survey, focusing on the priorities, goals, and challenges of software developers.
We’ve heard Canadian tech talent is sitting in the driver’s seat, but that doesn’t tell us what makes them tick.
“Now more than ever, a happy development team is critical to a business’s bottom line,” believes Aaron Upright, Zenhub’s cofounder. “However, we found there was almost no existing data on what makes developers happy and satisfied at work.”
This inaugural report provides insights into what software developers look for in their careers, organizational culture, and the tools they use to complete their jobs.
“This report quantitatively demonstrates a connection between developer happiness and the technologies and tools they use every day,” explains Upright. “We’re excited to give engineering leads pragmatic, definitive recommendations they can use to immediately improve the happiness of their team, and, ultimately, its productivity.”
Most developers are happiest and stay at their jobs longer when allowed to focus on building code; they even tend to prefer digital interactions to in-person meetings. Because of this, most developers felt the Pandemic-driven shift to hybrid work actually strengthened their productivity rather than reduced it—though one-third did admit they stayed at their job longer than expected due to Covid-19 related reasons.
Ultimately, Zenhub’s report shows that developers are not fans of meetings and do not enjoy losing coding time to tasks such as reporting. The BC startup believes its software minimizes friction between developers and the managerial stuff they hate, allowing tech employees to maximize morale and thus productivity.
ZenHub last year raised a $6 million round led by BDC Capital and Ripple Ventures. The company was founded in 2014 and spun out of innovation studio Axiom Zen.
Other notable Axiom Zen spin offs include Dapper Labs (the home of NBA Top Shot, Flow, Dapper Wallets and Cryptokitties) and Routific.
