Pandemic programming
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Pandemic programming How COVID-19 affects software developers and how their organizations can help Paul Ralph1 · Sebastian Baltes2 · Gianisa Adisaputri1 · Richard Torkar3,4 · Vladimir Kovalenko5 · Marcos Kalinowski6 · Nicole Novielli7 · Shin Yoo8 · Xavier Devroey9 · Xin Tan10 · Minghui Zhou10 · Burak Turhan11,12 · Rashina Hoda11 · Hideaki Hata13 · Gregorio Robles14 · Amin Milani Fard15 · Rana Alkadhi16
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract 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.
Communicated by: Robert Feldt and Thomas Zimmermann This article belongs to the Topical Collection: Software Engineering and COVID-19 Paul Ralph
[email protected] Sebastian Baltes
[email protected] Burak Turhan
[email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article.
Empirical Software Engineering
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. Keywords Software development · Work from home · Crisis management · Disaster management · Emergency management · Wellbeing · Productivity · COVID-19 · Pandemic · Questionnaire · Structural equation modeling
1 Introduction In December 2019, a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) emerged in Wuhan, China. While symptoms vary, COVID-19 often produces fever, cough, shortness of breath, and in some cases, pneumonia and death. By April 30, 2020, The World Health Organization (WHO) recorded more than 3 million confirmed cases and 217,769 deaths (WHO 2020a). With wide-spread transmissions in 214 countries, territories or areas, the WHO declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (WHO 2020b) and many jurisdictions declared states of emergency or lockdowns (Kaplan et al. 2020). Many technology companies told their employees
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