A Large-scale Survey about the Essential Attributes of Software Engineering Expertise

Software engineers are fundamental to software engineering. Their importance belies a deficient understanding about the essential attributes of software engineering expertise. We present the results of a large-scale world-wide survey of 1,926 expert Microsoft engineers across 67 countries to learn about the importance of 54 previously identified attributes of great software engineers. To help interpret our quantitative findings, we followed up with brief email interviews with 77 of the survey respondents. We found that the two key drivers of the importance ratings were having the mental capacity to handle complexity and embracing life-long learning. We also found unexpected relationships between the respondents’ ratings and their level of experience, education history, and cultural background, for which we provide possible explanations. Relative to rankings in prior research, we found the essential attributes of software engineering expertise to encompass internal attributes of the engineers’ personality and decision-making abilities, in addition to external attributes of the software they produce and their interactions with teammates. We discuss the implications of our results for researchers, educators, and practitioners.