AI’s impact on the developer experience - Github survey

Source	Github
Date	June 13, 2023
Methodology	Survey conducted online by Wakefield Research on behalf of GitHub from March 14, 2023 through March 29, 2023 among 500 non-student, U.S.-based developers who are not managers and work at companies with 1,000-plus employees.
Link to article	https://github.blog/2023-06-13-survey-reveals-ais-impact-on-the-developer-experience/#methodology

Key survey findings:

• AI is here and it’s being used at scale. 92% of U.S.-based developers are already using AI coding tools both in and outside of work.
• Waiting on builds and tests is still a problem. Despite industry-wide investments in DevOps, developers still say the most time-consuming thing they’re doing at work besides writing code is waiting on builds and tests.
• Developers want more collaboration. Developers in enterprise settings work with an average of 21 other engineers on projects—and want collaboration to be a top metric in performance reviews.
• And they think AI will help. More than 4 out of 5 developers expect AI coding tools will make their team more collaborative.
• Developers also see big benefits to AI. 70% say AI coding tools will offer them an advantage at work and cite better code quality, completion time, and resolving incidents as some of the top anticipated benefits.

More details

1. Developers view on performance metrics

• Developers say performance metrics don’t meet expectations. Example: they are measured by the number of incidents they resolve but they believe how they handle those bugs and issues is more important to performance
• Developers believe collaboration and communication should be just as important as code quality in terms of performance measures

2. What development teams spend most of their time doing

3. Things that positively impact developers workdays

4. What developers spend the most time on daily

5. Use of AI

Developers think AI coding tools will lead to greater team collaboration

Beyond improving individual performance, more than 4 in 5 developers surveyed (81%) say AI coding tools will help increase collaboration within their teams and organizations.

• In fact, security reviews, planning, and pair programming are the most significant points of collaboration and the tasks that development teams are expected to, and should, work on with the help of AI coding tools. This also indicates that code and security reviews will remain important as developers increase their use of AI coding tools in the workplace.

--> Developers think AI coding tools will help them upskill while they work

57% of the developers surveyed say using AI coding tools helps them develop their coding language skills, which they consider the top benefit of using these applications (with the second benefit being greater productivity). This suggests that developers view the use of AI coding tools as a way to upskill while they work, instead of adding another task to their workday for learning and development.

Conclusion

Almost all developers (92%) are using AI coding at work—and they say these tools not only improve day-to-day tasks but enable upskilling opportunities, too. Developers see material benefits to using AI tools including improved performance and coding skills, as well as increased team collaboration.

Suggested Path forward

In addition to exploring AI tools, here are three takeaways engineering and business leaders should consider to improve the developer experience:

1. Help your developers enter a flow state with tools, processes, and practices that help them be productive, drive impact, and do creative and meaningful work.
2. Empower collaboration by breaking down organizational silos and providing developers with the opportunity to communicate efficiently.
3. Make room for upskilling within developer workflows through key investments in AI to help your organization experiment and innovate for the future.