Study finds majority of developers have a strong work-life balance

A survey of 200 senior developers at medium-large sized brands by enterprise CMS Storyblok has revealed the factors that developers say make them most productive at work. 

Storyblok surveyed developers on their job satisfaction, personal working preferences, and how their job impacts their personal life.

Workplace preferences

When asked what their most productive times to do work were, 48% of developers said it was outside of working hours. In relation to their attitudes towards meetings, 68% said they generally enjoyed them, however, only 27% considered their meetings productive. 

On needing help with a work problem, robots were preferred to people. 34% of developers said they now turn to AI for the answer, with only 20% saying they would ask a colleague. 

68% of developers believe they will be more productive and happier if they were given the option of working a four day week, even if it meant working longer hours. 

When it comes to their working environment, the top genre of music to listen to while working for developers was classical (16.5%), followed by lo-fi (15.5%) and hip-hop (14%). Outside of drinking coffee to spur productivity, developers listed energy drinks (15%), healthy snacks (8%), and water (9.5%) as their top choices. On the lighter side, when asked to rank their preference for hot wing spiciness, 49.5% preferred mild, with 41% saying hot. 

Stress and work-life balance

66% of developers said they have a great work life balance, with only 2% saying it was ‘bad’. 13% said they are ‘always stressed’ by their work, 16% are stressed ‘most of the time’, 58% ‘some of the time’, and 13% are ‘never stressed’.

Digging into the numbers, the situation becomes more complicated at home. One in four developers said they argued ‘all the time’ with their partner or spouse about their job, with 17% saying it was ‘often’ and 22% ‘sometimes’. 13% said they didn’t argue at all.

When asked how often they checked work emails during time off, 13.5% of developers said every hour, 57% said ‘multiple times a day’, 18% once a day, and only 4% said never. Despite this, 94% of developers said they have no regrets about their chosen career, and 92% would be very happy if their real or imagined children followed the same path. 

Dominik Angerer, CEO and co-founder of Storyblok, said: “Although some of the questions we asked were light-hearted, we undertook this survey in the context of radically changing workplaces. Developers are among the most exposed to the impact of technological developments, so gaining a deeper understanding of their personal workplace preferences, stresses, and productivity more broadly can help businesses determine how best to manage change, improve happiness, and productivity. For example, we see a clear problem with many developers being unable to switch off on holidays. Simple policy and expectation changes could alleviate this problem and may have the knock-on effect of lowering stress levels.”