How you define success influences how and what you build. With that in mind, Cate Huston set out to learn how we developers do.

I started with the Stack Overflow survey. Caveat: I hate it and I think it’s riddled with bias. For example, women make up ~fifty percent of the population, around ~twenty percent of technical roles… and 7.2% of the respondents to this survey.

The SO survey is imperfect in many ways, but unfortunately it’s also one of the only quantitative datasets we have. Cate also asked her followers on Twitter (which she admits is also riddled with bias):

Many of the themes from the Stack Overflow survey showed up here – shipping code, learning and developing, autonomy….Another theme, though, was the theme of impact. People using what was built, benefitting others in some way.

That’s just a few of her findings. Definitely read the entire piece as it’s riddled (😏) with insights. Also check out part 1 in this series.