One thing that programmers like are decently formatted reports that present the information in a meaningful and elegant manner.<p>Sadly this is none of those things.
It's somewhat unfortunate that there's no breakdown between the different levels of experience.<p>That is to say, those with 12+ years of experience probably have very different views of what is important to them in a workplace than those with 1-2 years of experience. The data for the survey should allow us see this breakdown, right?
Pie charts for comparison?! Here, I made you some bar charts instead: <a href="http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/wpw/Country" rel="nofollow">http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/wpw/Country</a><p>Thanks to gavinballard for the CSV link.<p>If you want to see different breakdowns, just download the workbook/software and play with it yourself.
I think the most interesting question is not what the "average" programmer (this study is likely skewed) whats, but what they're willing to do to get it. That 93% would take a significant cut to work somewhere is better is staggering to me (although I'd do the same). Money certainly does not buy happiness.
The lack of interest in "Stock Options/Profit Sharing Program" should be a sobering reality for business people looking for technical co-founders/employees.
I found the "would you take a 10% paycut" matched my experience precisely. Back when I worked at Microsoft on developer tools, I would sometimes get contacted by people who were in the finance industry with salaries 2-4x what we could offer, and often transitioning from some nice CTO/Chief Head Architect title to Software Design Engineer.<p>But, universally, they were _excited_ for the opportunity to work on real compilers, tools, etc. and especially to be surrounded by people they could learn from. I'm would expect the lurking Google hiring managers have experienced the same thing.
If an employer were to take anything away from this survey, I'd say it should be the last question. Way too often have I been interviewed by monotonous and unorganized people who misrepresent an otherwise great position.<p>Please. When performing interviews, try and get people who both like what they're doing and are organized.
I suspect many managers, if they ever see this report, would only take-away: programmers don't care about money and stock options.<p>I know some of my past managers would (and they would use it as an excuse to justify not upgrading dev machines so often). Unsurprisingly none of them would ever read it as it isn't in the form of a management guru book.
After reading about Joel Spolsky "What Programmers Want" survey, I thought it'd be interesting to know how programmers feel about their current employer.<p>Fill up the 3 questions survey, it really takes 3 minues <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEx6LUNRWHZHWHRBTmxGcEtIM05IeWc6MQ" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEx6LUN...</a><p>Thank you already for taking the time, we'll publish the result on matchFWD blog at <a href="http://blog.matchfwd.com" rel="nofollow">http://blog.matchfwd.com</a> as soon as we have significant data.
I wish that benefits and perhaps vacation related questions were on here. Next time I look for a job, a sane amount of vacation is something I am going to demand, and I think I would sacrifice significant salary to get it.
I'm shocked at how many people are in start ups - does that perhaps reflect the fact that if your a start up you're typically building your own tools from scratch in areas you're less familiar with, so perhaps need access to experts you don't have locally (i.e. in your company)?