What Do Developers Discuss in Their Workplace? An Analysis of Workplace StackExchange Discussions

TL;DR

This study analyzes over 47,000 posts from Workplace StackExchange to identify key discussion topics among developers, revealing that workplace conflicts and culture issues are the most prominent concerns.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive categorization of developer workplace discussions using topic modeling, highlighting prevalent issues like conflicts and corporate policies.

Findings

30% of discussions involve workplace conflicts

Workplace culture and harassment are significant discussion topics

Developers frequently discuss challenges related to management and policies

Abstract

Software workplaces are increasingly recognized as key spaces for professional development, where developers encounter various challenges in their roles, which they often discuss in online forums. This paper analyzes 47,368 posts on the Workplace StackExchange site, aggregating developer insights and applying topic modeling techniques. Through manual analysis, we identified 46 distinct topics grouped into seven categories: Employee Wellness, Communication, Career Movement \& Hiring, Conflicts \& Mistakes, Corporate Policies, Management/Supervisor Responsibilities, and Learning \& Technical Skills. Our findings show that approximately 30\% of discussions involve workplace conflicts, marking this as the most prominent topic. Additionally, we found that workplace culture, harassment, and other corporate policy-related issues represent significant areas of difficulty commonly discussed among developers.