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Register a new userPlease Turn Your Cameras On: Remote Onboarding of Software Developers during a Pandemic
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Added by
Thomas Zimmermann
Publication date
2020
fields
Informatics Engineering
and research's language is
English
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The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the way that software development teams onboard new hires. Previously, most software developers worked in physical offices and new hires onboarded to their teams in the physical office, following a standard onboarding process. However, when companies transitioned employees to work from home due to the pandemic, there was little to no time to develop new onboarding procedures. In this paper, we present a survey of 267 new hires at Microsoft that onboarded to software development teams during the pandemic. We explored their remote onboarding process, including the challenges that the new hires encountered and their social connectedness with their teams. We found that most developers onboarded remotely and never had an opportunity to meet their teammates in person. This leads to one of the biggest challenges faced by these new hires, building a strong social connection with their team. We use these results to provide recommendations for onboarding remote hires.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the world to its core and has provoked an overnight exodus of developers that normally worked in an office setting to working from home. The magnitude of this shift and the factors that have accompanied this new unplanned work setting go beyond what the software engineering community has previously understood to be remote work. To find out how developers and their productivity were affected, we distributed two surveys (with a combined total of 3,634 responses that answered all required questions) -- weeks apart to understand the presence and prevalence of the benefits, challenges, and opportunities to improve this special circumstance of remote work. From our thematic qualitative analysis and statistical quantitative analysis, we find that there is a dichotomy of developer experiences influenced by many different factors (that for some are a benefit, while for others a challenge). For example, a benefit for some was being close to family members but for others having family members share their working space and interrupting their focus, was a challenge. Our surveys led to powerful narratives from respondents and revealed the scale at which these experiences exist to provide insights as to how the future of (pandemic) remote work can evolve.
Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, software engineers daily life was disrupted and they were abruptly forced into working remotely from home. Across one exploratory and one confirmatory study (N = 482), we tested whether a typical working day is different to pre-pandemic times and whether specific tasks are associated with task-specific satisfaction and productivity. To explore the subject domain, we first run a two-wave longitudinal study, where we found that the time software engineers spent doing specific tasks (e.g., coding, bugfixing, helping others) from home was similar to pre-pandemic times. Also, the amount of time developers spent on each task was unrelated to their general well-being, perceived productivity, and other variables such as basic needs. In our confirmatory study, we found that task satisfaction and productivity are predicted by task-specific variables (e.g., how much autonomy software engineers had during coding) but not by task-independent variables such as general resilience or a good work-life balance. Additionally, we found that satisfaction and autonomy were significantly higher when software engineers were helping others and lower when they were bugfixing. Also, contrary to anecdotal evidence, software engineers satisfaction and productivity during meetings is not lower compared to other tasks. Finally, we discuss implications for software engineers, management, and researchers.
Software testing is an important phase in the software development life-cycle because it helps in identifying bugs in a software system before it is shipped into the hand of its end users. There are numerous studies on how developers test general-purpose software applications. The idiosyncrasies of mobile software applications, however, set mobile apps apart from general-purpose systems (e.g., desktop, stand-alone applications, web services). This paper investigates working habits and challenges of mobile software developers with respect to testing. A key finding of our exhaustive study, using 1000 Android apps, demonstrates that mobile apps are still tested in a very ad hoc way, if tested at all. However, we show that, as in other types of software, testing increases the quality of apps (demonstrated in user ratings and number of code issues). Furthermore, we find evidence that tests are essential when it comes to engaging the community to contribute to mobile open source software. We discuss reasons and potential directions to address our findings. Yet another relevant finding of our study is that Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines are rare in the mobile apps world (only 26% of the apps are developed in projects employing CI/CD) --- we argue that one of the main reasons is due to the lack of exhaustive and automatic testing.
Context. As a novel coronavirus swept the world in early 2020, thousands of software developers began working from home. Many did so on short notice, under difficult and stressful conditions. Objective. This study investigates the effects of the pandemic on developers wellbeing and productivity. Method. A questionnaire survey was created mainly from existing, validated scales and translated into 12 languages. The data was analyzed using non-parametric inferential statistics and structural equation modeling. Results. The questionnaire received 2225 usable responses from 53 countries. Factor analysis supported the validity of the scales and the structural model achieved a good fit (CFI = 0.961, RMSEA = 0.051, SRMR = 0.067). Confirmatory results include: (1) the pandemic has had a negative effect on developers wellbeing and productivity; (2) productivity and wellbeing are closely related; (3) disaster preparedness, fear related to the pandemic and home office ergonomics all affect wellbeing or productivity. Exploratory analysis suggests that: (1) women, parents and people with disabilities may be disproportionately affected; (2) different people need different kinds of support. Conclusions. To improve employee productivity, software companies should focus on maximizing employee wellbeing and improving the ergonomics of employees home offices. Women, parents and disabled persons may require extra support.
Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, software engineers daily life was disrupted and abruptly forced into remote working from home. This change deeply impacted typical working routines, affecting both well-being and productivity. Moreover, this pandemic will have long-lasting effects in the software industry, with several tech companies allowing their employees to work from home indefinitely if they wish to do so. Therefore, it is crucial to analyze and understand how a typical working day looks like when working from home and how individual activities affect software developers well-being and productivity. We performed a two-wave longitudinal study involving almost 200 globally carefully selected software professionals, inferring daily activities with perceived well-being, productivity, and other relevant psychological and social variables. Results suggest that the time software engineers spent doing specific activities from home was similar when working in the office. However, we also found some significant mean differences. The amount of time developers spent on each activity was unrelated to their well-being, perceived productivity, and other variables. We conclude that working remotely is not per se a challenge for organizations or developers.
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