Uncovering Non-native Speakers' Experiences in Global Software Development Teams -- A Bourdieusian Perspective

TL;DR

This study explores non-native English speakers' experiences in global software teams, revealing how language barriers hinder their access to other forms of capital and perpetuate disadvantages within the field.

Contribution

It applies Bourdieu's framework to empirically analyze non-native developers' experiences, highlighting systemic inequalities in global software development.

Findings

Language capital is crucial for accessing other capitals.

Non-native speakers face systematic disadvantages due to language barriers.

Interrelations among different types of capital affect developers' positions.

Abstract

Globally distributed software development has been a mainstream paradigm in developing modern software systems. We have witnessed a fast-growing population of software developers from areas where English is not a native language in the last several decades. Given that English is still the de facto working language in most global software engineering teams, we need to gain more knowledge about the experiences of developers who are non-native English speakers. We conducted an empirical study to fill this research gap. In this study, we interviewed 27 Chinese developers in commercial software development and open source global software development teams and applied Bourdieu's capital-field-habitus framework in an abductive data analysis process. Our study reveals four types of capital (language, social, symbolic, and economic) involved in their experiences and examines the interrelations among them. We found that non-native speakers' insufficient language capital played an essential role in prohibiting them from accessing and accumulating other capital, thus reproducing the sustained and systematic disadvantaged positions of non-native English speakers in GSD teams. We further discussed the theoretical and practical implications of the study.