This document summarizes insights from the StackOverflow Developers Survey regarding diversity in software engineering. It finds that: 1) When assessing job opportunities, diversity is not a top priority for most developers but is more important to non-binary/transgender individuals. Culture and work-life balance are generally more important. 2) Women prefer more specialized technical roles in the future while men prefer being founders/co-founders. Non-binary and transgender individuals have higher doubts about their programming skills compared to men. 3) To attract and retain diverse talent, companies should focus on both diversity and an inclusive culture. They should provide skills development for women and address potential unconscious biases. Stereotypes may influence women and

1. ReinforcingDiversityCompanyPolicies:
InsightsfromStackOverflowDevelopersSurvey
ICEIS 2019- 21st INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Karina Kohl Silveira, Soraia Musse, Isabel Manssour, Renata Vieira and Rafael Prikladnicki
School of Technology, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Porto Alegre, Brazil
karina.kohl@edu.pucrs.br, {soraia.musse, isabel.manssour, renata.vieira, rafael.prikladnicki}@pucrs.br

2. Introduction
Research Questions
Background
Context Selection
Methodology
Results
Discussion
Conclusion
Outline

3. Diversity is being intensively discussed by different knowledge areas of society and
discussions in Software Engineering, are increasing as well.Thereareunconsciousbiasand
lackofrepresentativeness andwhenwetalkaboutcharacteristics asethnicityandgender,tomentiona
few.
Howcantechcompaniessupportdiversity,minimizingunconsciousbiasintheirteams? Studies say
that diversity builds better teams and delivers better results, among other benefits.
Inthiswork, we are interested in understanding the pain points in software engineering
regarding diversity and provide insights to support the attraction, hiring and retention
policies for more diverse software engineering environments.
Introduction

4. Research
Questions

5. RQ. What companies working with software engineering
should focus to attract, hire and retain talents on the specter
of diversity?
RQ1. Whatisbeingconsidered bydeveloperswhen
assessing job opportunities?
RQ2. Whataretheirprofessionalobjectivesforthe
future?
RQ3. How confidentdevelopers areintheir
programming skills?

6. Background

7. We cannottellwhetherdiversityisgoodorbad
unlesswefirstknowwhatdiversityis.*
Diversity ischaracterizedas thedifferencesin
howpeoplesee,categorize,understand,andgo
aboutimprovingtheworld,recognizingdifferent
dimensionsofdiversity:cognitiveand
identity.*
*ScottE.Page-TheDifference- 2007.

8. Cognitive Diversity
The difference betweenhowweinterpret,reasonand
solveproblems-howwethink.
Identity Diversity
Itisdeterminedbyaffiliationwithasocialgroupas
gender,culture,ethnicity,religion,sexualorientation,
etc.
*ScottE.Page-TheDifference- 2007.

9. Identity diversity leads to cognitive diversity.
People belonging to different identity groups, or with
different life experiences, also tend to acquire diverse
cognitive tools.
Education, life experiences, and identity can all contribute
to cognitive diversity.
How much of these matters depend on the task.
For identity diversity to be beneficial in a group, it must link
with cognitive diversity, and it happens when tasks are
related to problem solving and prediction, so the
identities translate into relevant tools.
*ScottE.Page-DiversityBonus-2017.

10. Google Facebook Microsoft SAP
Female: 21.4%
Male: 78.6%
Asian: 41.41%
Black: 1.5
Latinx: 2.8%
White: 50.7%
Other: 3.8%
EffortstoHave
DiverseWorkforces
Female: 21.6%
Male:78.4%
Asian: 50.3%
Black: 1.3%
Latinx: 3.1%
White:42.7%
Other: 2.6%
Female: 19.0%
Male: 81.0%
Asian: 38.2%
Black: 2.7%
Latinx: 4.3%
White: 52.3%
Other: 2.4%
Female: 33%
Male:
Asian:
Black:
Latinx:
White:
Other:
Icons made by Freepik from Flaticon is licensed by Creative Commons BY 3.0

11. Context
Selection

12. Photo by Lucas from Pexels
StackOverflow is a popular question and answer sites for
developers based on gamification and reputation
An extensive list of academic papers using
StackOverflow data has been published since it was
created in 2008 as Vasilescu et al.(Vasilescu et al., 2013), Bosu
et al.(Bosu et al., 2013) and, Berger et al.(Berger et al., 2016) to
mention a few.
No academic paper was found using StackOverflow
Annual Developers’ Survey data (published since 2011).

13. Methodology

14. To answer our research questions,
we combined data visualization and
data analysis techniques.

15. The visualization’s ability helps people better
understand data(Saket et al., 2016).
We chose to useTableau Desktopas the
tool to support our visual data analysis.
Photo by Lucas from Pexels
In this work, we are not considering salary as
a parameter to the discussion because it is a
very well discussed subject in the industry
and hard news.
To answer our research
questions, we combined data
visualization and data analysis
techniques

16. Data Description
Data provided by StackOverflow is based on a survey they run every year
101,592 software developers (considered “qualified” for analytical purposes based on completion and time spent on the survey)
183 countries around the world.
Respondents were recruited primarily through channels owned by StackOverflow.
The data is anonymized and available for download in CSV format, and under the Open Database License
(ODbL)*
https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey

17. Results

18. AspectswhenAssessingJob
Opportunities
One of the questions done in the survey was:
"How Do Developers Assess Potential Jobs?"
Thissectionaimstosupporttoanswerour
RQ1:“Whatisbeingconsideredbydevelopers
whenassessingjobopportunities?”.

19. Gender Analysis - Women/Men
ASPECTS WHEN ASSESSING JOB OPPORTUNITIES

20. Gender Analysis - Non-binary, Genderqueer, Transgender
ASPECTS WHEN ASSESSING JOB OPPORTUNITIES

21. Race and Ethnicity Analysis
ASPECTS WHEN ASSESSING JOB OPPORTUNITIES

22. ProfessionalObjectives
One of the questions done in the survey was
“What Do Developers Hope To Be Doing in
Five Years?”
Inthissection,theobjectiveistohelptoanswer:
RQ2.“Whataretheyprofessionalobjectivesfor
thefuture?”.

23. Gender Analysis
PROFESSIONAL OBJECTIVES
26% of men want to be Working as
a founder or co-founder of their
own company while 16% of
women, non-binary and
transgenders want the same.
Around 42% of women and non-
binary wish to be working in a
different or more specialized
technical role in comparison to
approximately 33% of men and
transgenders.

24. Race and
Ethnicity Analysis
PROFESSIONAL OBJECTIVES
44.71% Black or Afro descent
want to be working as a founder
or co-founder of their own
company
41.53% of South Asians want
to be working in a different or
more specialized technical
role.

25. NotasGoodProgrammingasthe
Peers
One of the questions done in the survey was
“Kinship, Competition, and Self-Evaluation”
Thissectionwantstosupporttoanswerour
RQ3.“Howconfidentdevelopersareintheir
programmingskills?”

26. NOT AS GOOD PROGRAMMING AS THE PEERS
Most of the answers, no matter the
gender, are on the disagreement range
or in the neither agree nor disagree.
However, men tend to disagree more
with the affirmation.
On the scale of agreeing and strongly
agreeing, we have 29.73% of women
that agree or strongly agree that is
not as good as their peers, versus
17.28% of men that share the same
belief.
24.5% on non-binary and 19.61% of
transgenders also believe that are not
as good as their peers.

27. Insightsfromthe
Results

28. RQ. What companies working with software engineering
should focus to attract, hire and retain talents on the specter
of diversity?
Diversitydoesnotseemtobeaconsciouspriorityfor
mostofthedeveloperswhenassessinganewjob
opportunity.
However, non-binariesandtransgendersputthisonthe
topoftherank,followedbythecultureofthe company.
Culture appearsasfirstforwomen andconsidering
gender andrace, alwaysmid-ranked.
Google’semployeefiredin2017afterwroteamemo
blamingbiologyfortechnical’sgendergap
(Varinsky,2017).
Mixoftwocrucialaspects:
diversity supported by culture.
Evenifthe diversityofthecompanyisthe last itemto
beconsideredwhenadeveloperconsidersa new
jobopportunity, companies may consider this
aspect once is linked to enterprise culture and the
way to provide a safe work environment for all.

29. RQ. What companies working with software engineering
should focus to attract, hire and retain talents on the specter
of diversity?
Men wanttobeownersoftheirownbusinesswhen
womenwishtomorespecializedtechnicalpositions.
Development programs that offer
opportunities for women improve their
technical skills may pay off once they
demonstrate higher interest than men to be in
specialized positions.
Women, Nonbinary and transgenders tend to
doubt more their programming skills
comparing to their peers than men.

30. Discussion

31. Googlestudy aboutDiversitygapincomputerscience(2016).
• Malestudentsmoreinterestedandmoreconfidentin
learningcomputerscience
• Femalestudents ratethemselveslowerinskillsrelatedto
ComputerScience.
• Stereotypes mayinfluenceimplicitbeliefsaboutwhocan
studycomputer science andmightintroduceunconscious
biasin educatorsandparents
• Malestudentsaremorelikelythanfemalestudentstohave
beentoldby ateacher(39%vs.26%)oraparent(46%vs.
27%)that theywouldbegoodatComputerScience.
Stereotypes

32. ResearchpublishedinNaturefromO’Deaetal.(2018)
• Girlsaresusceptibletoconforming tostereotypesinthe
traditionallymale-dominatedfieldsofSTEM
• Thestudycomparesschoolgradesofgirls andboys.
• Girlstend toearnhigherschoolgradesthan boys,
includinginSTEM subjects.
• Girlson averageearn highergradesandarelessvariable
thanboys
• Therearemorehighly performingboys thangirlsatthe
upperendoftheachievementdistribution.
• Bythetimeagirlgraduates, sheisjustaslikelyasaboyto
haveearned highenoughgradestopursueacareerin
STEM.
Womeninmale-dominatedpursuits,includingSTEM, facea
paradox:
• if theyconformtogenderstereotypes,theymightbe
perceivedaslesscompetent
• if theydefy genderstereotypesandperform ‘likeaman,’then
theirprogresscanbehaltedby ‘backlash’frombothmenand
women
The results observed in the StackOverflow
Developers’ Survey may be a reflex of
stereotypes built from previous personal
experiences and be directly related to a
confidence gap in women, mainly.
Stereotypes

33. Impostor syndrome is a psychological
phenomenon in which people are unable to
internalize their accomplishments. Affects most
people at some point during their careers across
all races, all genders, and all ages (Jackson and
Heath, 2014)
• Itiscommonwithintheacademicenvironment,particularlyat
thegraduatelevelstudent-inSTEMfields,mainly,where
productivityisasignificantmeasureofastudent’ssuccess
(Sukhaiand Mohler,2016)
• Presentsitselfasaseriesoffeeling orthoughts,andoneof
themisthefrustrationwiththeinabilitytomeetself-set
standards
• Prevalentamonghighachieving women(Churchill,2018)
• Strongcorrelationwithanxiety,stress,depression,and
burnout —> talentedindividualsgiving uponpromising
careers.
Impostor Syndrome

34. StackOverflowsharestheresultsaboutdisabilitystatusintheir
resultspage,withnumbersaboutanxiety,depressionandfocus
Unfortunately,theindividualizedandanonymizedresultsabout
itwerenotsharedintheCSVfile, andwecouldnotmakethe
gendercorrelation.
Toovercomeit,itisessentialtohaveasupportnetworkthat
helpstoidentified impostorsyndromeintheirworkforce.
Therearesomestrategiestoovercomethesyndrome,for
example:instruct employeesthatcomparisonwithothersmust
bedonewithcare(JacksonandHeath, 2014).
Comparison withoutcontextcanbemisleading(peoplewill
comparethemselveswithpeopleinanotherskilllevel).
From the data of StackOverflow Developers’
Survey suggests the importance of the
initiatives to minimize bias, stereotypes, and
impostor syndrome that some companies are
doing in their hiring process and the process of
development of their technical team.
Impostor Syndrome

35. Threats to Validity
External Validity
Externalvalidityreferstohowmuchwecangeneralizeourfindings.Thepresented
results arebasedondatafromtheStackOverflowcommunity.Wesuspect thatgiven
thehighnumberofrespondentsandthereputationofthecommunitytheresultscould
begeneralizedoutsidethescopeof ourstudy.Thedifferencebetween howwe
interpret,reasonandsolveproblems -howwethink.
Internal Validity
Internal validity often refers to experimenter biases. For our results, the threat of is
reading the data visualization analysis and getting to conclusions based on the
knowledgeareasoftheresearchers involvedinthiswork.

36. Conclusion

37. We provided insights to support the attraction, hiring and
retention policies for more diverse and inclusive software
engineering environments.
Resultsshow that diversity in the company is not yet a full conscious decision-makingfactor
fordevelopersassessinganewjobopportunity
Respondentsthatidentifiedthemselvesas women, non-binary and transgenders tend to doubt
more their programming skills believingtheyarenotasgoodastheirpeers.
We reinforcedtheimportanceofinitiatives to minimize unconscious bias, stereotypes, and
impostor syndrome thatcompaniesaredoingintheirhiring processandtheprocessof
development oftheirtechnicalteam.

38. Future Work
Weseeopportunitieswhenweselectedmore specific aspects in the spectrum of the diversity.
Forexample,forcognitive diversity,sincetherehasbeen an increaseincomputersciencestudents
with theAsperger Syndrom (Ribu,2010)(Egan,2005),it isalsoimportanttotacklethisissuegloballyin
SoftwareEngineering.
Thereisalsoaneedforteachinginstitutionsandsoftwarecompaniestoworktogethertounderstand
thesedifferencesbetterto includethem.

39. Thanks
Acknowledgements
ThisprojectispartiallyfundedbyFAPERGS,
project 17/2551-0001/205-4
Globo.com