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. 2020;25(6):4927-4961.
doi: 10.1007/s10664-020-09875-y. Epub 2020 Sep 14.

Pandemic programming: How COVID-19 affects software developers and how their organizations can help

Paul Ralph  1 , Sebastian Baltes  2 , Gianisa Adisaputri  1 , Richard Torkar  3   4 , Vladimir Kovalenko  5 , Marcos Kalinowski  6 , Nicole Novielli  7 , Shin Yoo  8 , Xavier Devroey  9 , Xin Tan  10 , Minghui Zhou  10 , Burak Turhan  11   12 , Rashina Hoda  11 , Hideaki Hata  13 , Gregorio Robles  14 , Amin Milani Fard  15 , Rana Alkadhi  16
Affiliations

Pandemic programming: How COVID-19 affects software developers and how their organizations can help

Paul Ralph et al. Empir Softw Eng. 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.

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: COVID-19; Crisis management; Disaster management; Emergency management; Pandemic; Productivity; Questionnaire; Software development; Structural equation modeling; Wellbeing; Work from home.

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Figures

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Fig. 1
Theoretical model of developer wellbeing and productivity
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Participants’ education levels
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Organization sizes
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Distribution of ratings on the WHO-5 and HPQ scales before and since switching to working form home with mean (dashed line) and median (solid line) values (2,194 complete cases for WHO-5 and 2,078 for HPQ)
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Supported model of developer wellbeing and productivity. Note: error terms, unsupported hypotheses and control variables are omitted for clarity
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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