The Developer Coefficient
Software engineering efficiency and its$3 trillion impact on global GDP
SEPTEMBER 2018

THE DEVELOPER COEFFICIENT

A decade since the global financial crisis, companies increasingly
face challenges beyond scarcity of capital. As technology fracks
into every aspect of the world economy, software engineers are
becoming one of the world’s most precious resources.
While businesses today face myriad issues—security vulnerabilities, trade tariffs,
complex government regulations, increased global competition—how they deploy
their developers may be the most overlooked factor impacting their future success.
Developers act as force-multipliers, and if used effectively, have the collective
potential to raise global GDP by $3 trillion over the next ten years.
While many people posit that lack of developers is the primary problem, this study—
which surveyed thousands of C-level executives and developers across six different
countries—found that businesses need to better leverage their existing software
engineering talent if they want to move faster, build new products, and tap into newand emerging trends.

Access to developers is a bigger threat to success than accessto capital
Senior executives report that the lack of developer talent is one of the biggest
potential threats to their businesses. In fact, they now worry about access todevelopers more than they worry about access to capital, immigration concerns, andother challenges. Despite the number of developers increasing year-over-year at mostcompanies, developers working on the right things can accelerate a company’s moveinto new markets or product areas and help companies differentiate themselves at
disproportionate rates. This underscores the most important point about developers
as force-multipliers: It’s not just how many devs companies have; it’s also how they’rebeing leveraged.

1

THE DEVELOPER COEFFICIENT

C-LevelExecutives

How threatening are thefollowing factors to the successof your business?
(somewhat/very)

How much of an impact candevelopers have to help yourcompany with each of thefollowing challenges?
(moderate/major)

How has the number ofSecurity / data breach66%

Increased regulation

62%

Disruption from tech industry

62%

Access to developer talent

61%

Growing competition from China

60%

Corporate tax rates

58%

Trade tariffs

56%

Access to capital

56%

Impact of Brexit

55%

Immigration reform

51%

Bringing products to market faster71%

Increasing sales

70%

Differentiating products / services vs. competitors

69%

Internal reporting / visibility

65%

Increased

56%

Stayed the same

19%

Decreased

14%

developers/software engineers
changed in the following year?

Germany Increased (46%) lowest percentage response

How much of a priority is it forHigh / medium priority

96%

Not at all / low priority

3%

upper management to increase
the productivity of its
developers?

2THE DEVELOPER COEFFICIENTHOW $3 TRILLION IN
GDP IMPACT ADDS UP

18 million$17,000

Global GDP per capita$51,000

GDP per developer$918 billion
31.6%
Sources: Evans Data Corp.,
CIA Factbook, Stripe research

Estimated developers in the world~$300 billion

Aggregate GDP of developers globallyEfficiency loss of developers (from survey)
Global GDP loss from developer inefficiency annually‘Bad code’ costs companies $85 billion annually
While it’s a priority for senior executives to increase the productivity of theirdevelopers, the average developer spends more than 17 hours a week dealing withmaintenance issues, such as debugging and refactoring. In addition, they spend
approximately four hours a week on “bad code,” which equates to nearly $85 billion
worldwide in opportunity cost lost annually, according to Stripe’s calculations on
average developer salary by country. Nearly two-thirds of developers agree that thisis “excessive” and believe that clear prioritization, responsibilities, and long-term
product goals would improve their own productivity.

Developers

Approximately, how many hours on average dodevelopers at your company work each week?

341.1 hours

39.6 hours

Mean (all countries)

Mean in France (lowest)

THE DEVELOPER COEFFICIENTDevelopers

How many hours per week do you estimate developers
at your company waste on maintenance (i.e. dealingwith bad code / errors, debugging, refactoring,modifying)?

17.3 hours

20.9 hours

Mean (all countries)

Mean in France (highest)

How many hours each week do you think the averagedeveloper at your company spends on addressing“technical debt?”

13.5 hours
MeanTHE DEVELOPER WORK WEEK

13.5 hours
Technical debt

3.8 hours
Bad code

41.1 total hours
Average developer work week

How much do you agree or disagree with the following
statement? “The amount of time developers at mycompany spend on bad code is excessive.”

459%

70%

Strongly / somewhat
agree (all countries)

Strongly / somewhat
agree in Singapore (highest)

THE DEVELOPER COEFFICIENTDevelopers

In your opinion, as a whole, how

0%

100%

productive are developers at

68.4%

your company? Consider 100%
being perfectly productive andMEAN

0% being completely
unproductive.

Which of the following do you
believe is hindering developer
productivity at your company?

How much of a negative impact
does each of the following haveon your personal morale?

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT
OF ‘BAD CODE’

5

Leadership’s prioritization of projects / tasks

45%

Building custom technology

40%Work overload

81%

Changing priorities resulting in discarded code ortime wasted

79%

Not being given sufficient time to fix poor quality code

79%

Spending too much time on legacy systems

78%

Paying down technical debt

76%

Average hours per developer workweek

17.3

Average hours spent by developers on badcode, debugging, refactoring, modifying

13.5

Average hours spent on technical debt

9.25%

CIA Factbook, Stripe research

52%41.1

3.8Sources: Evans Data Corp.,

Maintenance of legacy systems / technical debt~$85 billion

Average hours spent on bad code
Percent productivity loss from bad code
Global GDP loss from developer time spenton bad code annuallyTHE DEVELOPER COEFFICIENT

Technology companies pose the biggest threat across industries
Senior executives feel the threat of tech industry competitors most acutely, which is why
they’re prioritizing investments in infrastructure, R&D, and recruiting over the next five years.
Both developers and C-level execs agree that artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and API
services are having the biggest impact on their businesses today, with ML, virtual assistants, andblockchain likely to be impactful in the next 10 years. Senior executives are more optimistic
than developers that their companies will be ready to tap into to these trends, however, withdevelopers worried about not having the right technology infrastructure and skilled employees.

C-Level
Executives

Companies in which of theTech

44%

Banking and finance

36%

Engineering services

27%

Telco

23%

Manufacturing

19%

Retail19%

following industries pose thegreatest competitive threat toyour business?

Singapore Tech (59%) highest among all countries

What are the top three areas

Software infrastructure and tech

43%

R&D

31%

Recruiting technical talent

31%

Marketing

29%

Sales

26%

Customer service

24%

Much / somewhat more

81%

The same

16%

Much / somewhat less3%

your company plans to increase
investment in the next 5 years?

Compared to now, how much ofa core competency will softwaredevelopment need to be 10years from now?

6THE DEVELOPER COEFFICIENT

Developers

Which of the following+technology trends, if any, areC-Level
Executives

having the greatest impact on

AI

Developers 28%

C-Suite 34%

IoT

25%

28%

SDS

24%

25%

API-based services

22%

15%

AI

41%

41%

IoT

24%

27%

Virtual assistants

18%

21%

-20%

20%

-your company today?

Which of the following
technology trends, if any, arehaving the greatest impact on
your company in 10 years?

Blockchain
MLC-Level
Executives

How confident are you thatyour company has sufficient
resources to respond to thesetrends?

Developers

How confident are you thatyour company has sufficientengineering resources to keepup with these technology

83%

17%

30%

Very / somewhat
confident

Not very /not confident

Germany (highestacross all countries)

77%

23%

Very / somewhat
confident

Not very /not confident

trends?

Why aren’t you confident that

We’re too slow to react to tech trends

44%

We don’t have enough skilled employees

42%

Leadership doesn’t prioritize technology

36%

We’re too focused on quarterly or annual gains to36%

your company has sufficientengineering resources to keep
up with these technology
trends?

prioritize long-term growth
We don’t have the tech infrastructure to support it733%

Stripe.com

METHODOLOGY

Stripe partnered with Harris Poll toMore than 1,000 developers andsurvey developers, technical leadersmore than 1,000 C-level executives inand C-level executives about their

the United States, U.K., France,

organizations’ business challenges,

Germany, and Singapore participatedsoftware development practices, andin the study.

future investments to determine therole that developer productivity playsin their success—and the growth ofworldwide GDP overall.