• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, April 17, 2023

Caution, email teams: Have you looked over into the development area recently to see how those guys are going?

They’re not doing well, judging by The State of Developer Experience 2023, a study by Nylas.  

For starters, 48% of developers are overwhelmed by the sheet number of tools they use every day. On average, they spend 54% of their time on non-coding tasks, leading to higher turnover rates and longer development cycles. 

And they are skeptical about the hot new buzzword of the moment. 

“Despite the popularity and attention surrounding conversational AI — with emerging technologies like ChatGPT and Bard A.I. making headlines — only 14% of developers surveyed reported it as a useful area their companies should invest in over the next year,” the study notes.

Maybe that’s because they have enough problems dealing with email, the second-most complex communication channel, behind message apps.

The study notes that “there is a discrepancy when looking at the expectation versus the reality of the time it takes to build new email and calendar integrations from scratch.”

Of those polled, 53% estimate that it would take one to five to months to build a full email integration for a single email provider. And 49% feel it will take the same amount of time to create a full calendar integration. 

Make that a year for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) — and with three senior engineers working on it. 

Now you may question the premise that application program interfaces (APIs) are the answer. But that seems to be the thrust of this report. 

A full 98% of developers say that APIs would reduce the number of workplace tools they have to deal with daily. And 86% expect to increase their use of APIs in 2023.  

Overall, 95% of all respondents would like to see their company invest more heavily in APIs over the next year, and 78% say they expect to increase their use. 

SMBs especially need an API to reduce their time investment. 

Is your firm planning an email build over the next year? Here are some questions you should ask, according to the study: 

• How big is your development team, and what is their level of expertise? 
• What other projects are your developers working on? Does an email or calendar integration take precedence over developing other product features? 
• Does your development team have the bandwidth to manage ongoing maintenance? 
• Will a knowledge gap exist if the team building the integration leaves the organization?

Nylas surveyed over 1,200 developers, technical leaders, and executives across the U.S. and U.K. in January and February of 2023.