Welcome to the results of Ruby Australia's 2019 State of the Community survey. On this page we'll cover the summarised responses to some of the survey questions to help us all understand where our community's at.
While we in the committee are definitely finding the results useful, we are well aware our survey was only filled out by a small portion of the community (with a total of 134 responses). So, take all of these numbers with a grain of salt.
Demographics
How old are Australian Rubyists?
Nothing too surprising about these numbers, but perhaps we could be doing a better job at engaging university students?
What gender are Australian Rubyists?
We provided a text field for people to enter gender as they wished. Almost everyone opted for traditional binary labels: 80% male, 15% female, 1% male-ish, and the remaining 4% chose not to disclose.
While we feel anecdotally that the diversity of our corner of the industry is improving beyond these gathered statistics, we know there's still a long way to go (and in identity axes beyond gender too!)
Where do Australian Rubyists live?
It seems Victoria - and Melbourne especially - has the most Rubyists, which is perhaps not so surprising given the size of some Ruby-focused businesses in that city.
We also found that - much like the country's population generally - our community is heavily focused in our state capital cities, with just 4% living elsewhere.
And a shout-out to the 7% of respondants living outside of Australia - we're really glad that you feel welcome enough to consider yourself part of our community even while living elsewhere.
In what ways have Australian Rubyists been educated?
University degrees dominate here - which is perhaps a touch surprising given the anecdotal stories of developers succeeding in our industry without degrees, and/or through bootcamps and other less-traditional methods.
Granted, our question was not specifically tied to IT/Computer Science degrees, so those who've changed careers may have other degrees determining their answer here.
At Work
What is the employment status of Australian Rubyists?
These numbers are pretty clear: the vast majority of our respondants are working as full-time employees.
How experienced are Australian Rubyists?
From where do Australian Rubyists work?
It looks like most of our community embrace at least some remote work on a regular basis.
In what size companies do Australian Rubyists work?
There's quite an even spread of responses here - companies of all sizes are employing Rubyists.
How many Ruby developers in Australian Rubyists' workplaces?
Larger teams of Rubyists seem to be relatively rare - though one respondent did say they work with 500 other Rubyists!
How many new Ruby-focused colleagues have Australian Rubyists welcomed lately?
These statistics are for new colleagues in the past year. While most have had somewhere between one to ten new teammates, one outlier said they've had 60 new Ruby-coding colleagues join them!
How many Australian Rubyists work somewhere that is currently hiring?
Of the 125 responses received, it was almost an even split on this question: 63 respondents said their place of employment isn't currently hiring, while 62 said yes they are hiring.
Ruby and the Community
How long have Australians been using Ruby?
The spread here (and in the next chart as well) matches the job experiences results further up the page. It does raise questions about whether there are enough newer folks coming into the industry - or at least, whether relative newcomers have filled out the survey.
How long have Australians been working with Ruby professionally?
What are Australian Rubyists focusing on next?
We allowed people to choose more than one option here, and we're especially happy to see three quarters of respondents are expecting to remain working with Ruby over the next few years.
How often do Australian Rubyists contribute to open-source projects?
10% of respondents said they contribute to open-source projects at least once a month. 36% said a few times a year, another 36% said once a year or two, and 18% said they've not yet made any contributions.
Separate to open-source contributions, we'd love to highlight that almost 30 respondents said they've helped to organise events in our community. That’s a lot of contributions, and we’re super lucky to have so many people with the time and willingness to chip in. Thank you!
What's next?
Along with the above information, we also received a lot of valuable feedback on Ruby Australia events, which will be collated and shared with the relevant organisers and future committee members, to help ensure we're helping the community in ways that they need.
As always, if you have any questions or feedback for the Ruby Australia committee, we're very keen to hear from you. Please do get in touch!