The Unicorn CTO #122 - Why Are Developers Unhappy

Daniel Jarjoura -

Hello friend,

According to the latest Stack Overflow Developer Survey, 80% of developers are either unhappy or just complacent at work.

Of course, the recent massive layoffs in the tech industry have contributed to this feeling. But, I think the malaise is more profound and goes beyond the usual suspects like workload or tooling, especially when developers are some of the most paid professionals in the labour market. So, why are they unhappy?

1. Many developers feel stuck in their current roles, lacking challenges or opportunities to grow, especially now that the job market is less fluid than in previous years.

2. Developers are frustrated by inefficient processes and subpar coding practices that hinder productivity.

3. There's a gap in continuously updating skills with new technologies, which is crucial for career advancement.

I believe this trend will continue, especially now that the labour market is less fluid for developers who have to stick to workplaces that don't necessarily fit with their expectations. I do think, though, that most tech leaders will try to address these challenges with Developer eXperience tools, especially AI tools that care for grunt, meaningless work, freeing developers to focus on more creative tasks.

P.S.: if you're a CTO or tech leader, you can join the free Unicorn CTO Slack community. We're a small group of international CTOs and tech leaders, and we often meet for virtual (or not) coffees.

P.P.S.: Last week's webinar on H1 2024 developer-first transactions was a blast. If you want access to the replay (or the report), just let me know.

Now, let's dive into last week's developer-first transactions.

💰 Market Summary - Week of September 16th

  • 8 companies raised $75M across 6 product categories in 2 countries.
  • Europe-based companies attracted 5.3% of the total funding vs 94.7% for US-based companies.
  • Cloud attracted the highest funding.
  • 2 companies were acquired.

🧩 Funding by Product Category

🌎 Funding by Region

🏢 Funding By Company

DeltaStream, headquartered in Menlo Park 🇺🇸, raised $15M in a Series A round with New Enterprise Associates, Galaxy Interactive and Sanabil Investment, to scale their serverless platform to manage and secure streams. (more)

fal, based in Seattle 🇺🇸, raised $14M in Series A funding to offer Serverless GPUs on Python Cloud, with backing from Kindred Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. (more)

Supermaven, located in New York 🇺🇸, garnered $12M in Series A funding. They are focused on simplifying developer tools, supported by Bessemer Venture Partners and other notable investors. (more)

e6data, from San Francisco 🇺🇸, achieved $10M in Series A funding. Their lakehouse compute engine promises significant performance enhancements and cost savings, backed by Accel and Beenext. (more)

Martian, also in San Francisco 🇺🇸, secured $9M in Seed funding. Martian developed a model router optimising LLMs, with investment from NEA and General Catalyst among others. (more)

c/side, based in San Francisco 🇺🇸, raised $6M in Seed funding to secure and optimise third-party scripts in browser environments, funded by Uncork Capital and Mantis VC. (more)

Edera, in Seattle 🇺🇸, garnered $5M in Seed funding. Edera is revolutionising container security with their enterprise infrastructure solutions, backed by 645 Ventures and Eniac Ventures. (more)

ContextSDK, headquartered in Vienna 🇦🇹, secured $4M in Seed funding. They enhance mobile app engagement with machine learning and real-world user context, supported by Speedinvest and First Momentum Ventures. (more)

🤝 Mergers & Acquisitions

Goast.ai, based in New York 🇺🇸, was acquired by Datadog. Goast.ai enhances productivity by automating bug fixing, allowing developers to focus entirely on building outstanding products. (more)

Clayton, located in London 🇬🇧, was acquired by Gearset. Clayton offers a developer-first approach to ensuring secure and well-architected Salesforce applications by catching, blocking, and automatically fixing bad code. (more)

Thanks for reading this far! I'm excited to make this newsletter as helpful as possible and I would appreciate if you could share feedback or anything you want to find here.

Farewell,

Daniel