Fewer Meetings Would Result In Better Productivity, Say Developers According to a survey by HackerEarth, 70 per cent of developers said that fewer meetings would help them achieve 100 per cent productivity at work.

Despite the uncertainty around human life and impact on businesses due to the ongoing Coronavirus outbreak across the world, software engineers and developers have continued to remain in demand. However, there appears to be a gap in what the employer and the employees want when it comes to productivity.

According to a survey by HackerEarth, an artificial intelligence-powered developer assessment platform, 70 per cent of developers said that fewer meetings would help them achieve 100 per cent productivity at work.

61 per cent said multiple monitors would help with productivity, while 59 per cent said a no-interruption policy while they have their headphones on would help.

"While the demand for developer talent continues to rise, there is too often misalignment between the needs and expectations of companies and developers in hiring, career, and overall happiness," said HackerEarth chief executive officer Sachin Gupta, in a statement.

The survey results include responses from more than 16,000 developers from 76 countries.

Happiness Quotient

An interesting finding of the survey was that developers weren't unhappy to be working longer hours.

Of all those that were surveyed, 70 per cent who weren't happy with their current jobs worked for 40 to 50 hours a week while only 3 per cent of developers who spend more than 60 hours at work are unhappy with their job.

13 per cent of those working between 50 and 60 hours said they were not happy with their jobs.

It was also found that developers at enterprises were the least happy of the lot. 70 per cent of developers working at an enterprise said they weren't happy with their jobs. That number is around 14 per cent for growth-stage start-ups.

Seeking Jobs

Despite these numbers, most developers said they would still like to move to enterprises and growth stage start-ups, with employees currently employed at enterprises choosing to switch to other enterprises.

Experienced developers chose challenging roles and high compensation as the most important criteria for a new job while other benefits that they seek include flexibility, such as work from home options. It was found that ESOPs and Glassdoor reviews don't play a big role for a majority.

57 per cent working of working professionals and 56 per cent student developer said they used LinkedIn far more than other channels to search for new jobs.

For student developers, the next most preferred option for job seeking was hackathons (13 per cent) while for working professionals, it turned out to be job portals or boards (19 per cent).

In terms of preferences when it comes to a job application process, 26 per cent said they would want take-home tests followed by onsite interviews, 21 per cent chose remote interviewing using online video and code editing tools and 19 per cent said they would prefer traditional whiteboard interviews.

Other Findings

For both student developers (29 per cent) and working professionals (32 per cent), Go was the most sought-after programming language. For the latter, Python came second (24 per cent).

Data science was found to be the domain that interests both sets of developers the most, with 63 per cent of students and 61 per cent working professionals going with that option. Cybersecurity, Internet of Things and blockchain were some of the other top picks.