And Which Industries Are They Involved In?

Understanding the developers who work at large organizations

From the increase in online shopping and consumption of social media, to the soaring desire for the latest devices that keep us connected to the outside world, the COVID-19 pandemic has extended the wealth and influence of the biggest tech companies. Amidst industry upheaval and worldwide economic contraction, these companies have arguably emerged as victors. In 2020, the five largest publicly-traded companies on Wall Street —Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Facebook —account for 20 percent of the total value of the stock market. This is the largest market share by a single industry on the US stock exchange in the last 70 years.

According to the Fortune Global 500 list, the ten biggest technology companies employ over 2.6 million people. Developers who work for these companies represent an important and valuable segment of the developer economy. According to our data, at least 21% of software developers currently work for companies with more than 1,000 employees.

We can separate developers by characteristics such as organisation size, but are these characteristics defining? Are enterprise developers a homogenous group?

Are they more likely than non-enterprise developers to be economic decision-makers within their organisations? Are enterprise developers trained differently? Do they work in different industries? Hold different attitudes? These are some of the questions that we will answer in this report, which presents our first dedicated look at the enterprise developer population. It provides an overview of enterprise developers: looking at their experience levels, how they learnt to code, which sectors they are involved in, and which industries they work in.

The report is based on data collected from 13,000+ self-identified professional developers in the 20th edition of our Developer Economics survey, which was fielded between November 2020 and February 2021. See the Methodology chapter for more information about how the survey was conducted.