Nylas recently held a webinar exploring a topic rising to the top of every software company’s – and every company that uses software, for that matter – priority list: the developer experience (DevEx) in 2023.
The role of the developer is becoming increasingly critical as businesses look to technology to build resilience and position themselves for future growth amidst a looming recession. According to Gartner, nearly 60% of IT executives say they already have increased, or plan to increase, emerging technology investments.
However, the same survey found 64% of respondents feel that talent availability is the largest challenge to adopting emerging technologies. Businesses with developers – and perhaps more importantly, those creating developer-facing tools – must bring DevEx to the forefront of their strategies.
In our webinar, Nylas’ Senior Vice President of Product Isaac Nassimi and Director of Developer Relations Ash Arnwine gave their expert takes on the DevEx trends that will significantly impact companies in 2023. A few key themes emerged from the conversation, including:
Let’s dive deeper into these themes and reflect on key highlights from the discussion. If you missed the session, don’t worry! You can check out the full video on demand here.
To kick us off, Isaac shared his definition of developer experience:
“[DevEx] is just like a user experience (UX). In a normal web application today, your UX is the interface you’re interacting with – how it feels, how intuitive it is, how hard it is to work with, how easy it is to learn… what you expect to get out of the interface and what you actually get out of that interface.”
However, he described a nuance between UX and DevEx:
“DevEx functions in the way developers work. Developers write, deploy, run, and maintain code; DevEx has interplay with how developers do those four functions.”
There are two ways to think about DevEx. Internal DevEx is the experience developers and engineers have within a company. For example, are they continuously learning, being challenged in their roles, and solving meaningful problems? External DevEx looks at developers as customers. Is the technology you offer developers intuitive, and does it bring quick value? Can users easily find help when needed?
Isaac and Ash highlighted a few areas businesses should consider from an internal and external perspective when searching for opportunities to improve their DevEx.
DevEx is becoming strategically important at the executive level as business leaders are starting to recognize how removing developer friction can directly increase ROI.
Isaac and Ash took a look at this trend from an internal and external DevEx perspective as well.
“Everyone understands that interfaces have to have good UX… and the market has shifted accordingly. Where the attention hasn’t been put is where the improvement hasn’t been made, up until now. Many companies – even smaller companies, maybe even companies that don’t produce software as an end product – now have internal software development teams. And those teams are expensive…, and usually, they’re backlogged pretty far into the future and have a million things to do that they haven’t done yet.”
Isaac Nassimi, Senior Vice President of Product at Nylas
So, we know that DevEx is essential, but what can businesses do to enhance this experience and make it their next competitive advantage? Isaac and Ash discussed many actionable trends in detail, but we’ll highlight a few examples here.
From an internal DevEx perspective, our experts explain that businesses should focus on the following:
From an external DevEx perspective, businesses should focus on the following:
Looking for more details and in-depth examples from the webinar, “Improving the Developer Experience in 2023 & Beyond”? Watch the full session on-demand now. Or, for more information on Nylas, register for one of our upcoming Nylas 101 demo sessions.
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Erin is a content marketing professional at Nylas, where she creates digital assets that connect the organization to individuals. Before Nylas, she spent eight years working in public relations specializing in corporate communications strategy, B2B/B2C writing and editing, executive thought leadership, and other storytelling. In her free time, she enjoys volleyball, karaoke, and baking.
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