Survey of Developers in the SL Developer Directory

On March 20th, The Lab announced some factoids derived from a survey distributed to developers listed in the SLDD in February. Of the 90 developers listed (a number that had doubled in the last three months), about 1/3 responded to the survey (approximately 30 for the purposes of analysis).

Though The Lab's announcement mentions that the actual data totals could be 3 times that indicated by the responses, that is speculation and not something I would be comfortable stating. I would argue that the larger and more known of the developers were more likely to respond and that a full accounting of raw data from the 90 would slue the data downward. That, of course is also speculation. The point being that absent the actual data, it is difficult to extrapolate the facts for the total population given what data is available, particularly for such a small group.

Respondents indicated that there were a total of 559 employees (average:19 median:5). Further, the largest number of employees was 175 and 3 companies listed over 50 employees. If we sum that to 275 at minimum (includes the 175 as one of the three companies with over 50, plus a min of 50 each for the other two), then three companies accounted for 49% of the employees among the survey respondents. This is fairly significant.

As one would predict, a decent percentage (24%, or 134) resided in a different country than the employer's main office (average:4 median: 0) and 47% had employees in another country than their main office. Also not surprising was the fact that 41% recruited primarily in SL and 41% in both SL and RL.

Data collected indicated that, for the companies responding, there were 380 (average:12 median:4) projects currently in the work pipeline. This equates to approximately 0.68 projects per employee. This is also predictable as data indicates that the growth in number of projects is pacing the employee growth rate and further, that the 9 largest companies have an average of 15 projects (35.5% of the pipeline for 30% of the companies) and the 17 smallest companies had an average of 4 projects. Given the size of the three largest respondents, one would expect that the projects are of a scope that requires a larger work taskforce.

Estimated Q1 2007 revenue from SL for these companies was $6.7MM (average: $161,500 median: $31,500), with a range from $45 to $2MM. As reported by LL, the largest 10 companies had revenue approximately 35x the smallest 10 companies. In keeping with the size gap, the total number of regions purchased in January and planned for February purchase were 38 and 93, respectively. However, the average was 1 Jan, 3 Feb and the median was 0 Jan, 1 Feb.

Companies can and do work, in conjunction with clients, on regions they have not directly purchased. Nevertheless, in January, LL delivered 799 regions. While the 38 regions indicated in the aforementioned data would equate to 4.76% of the total, LL would like to extrapolate it out to 114 (38 for 1/3 of the developers would blow out to 114 for all 90 developers). This would put the total at 14.3% (not the 15% indicated in The Lab's release). Given the average and median data, my comments regarding who is most likely to respond to the surverys, and the fact that so many developers have just recently joined the fold*, I won't go that far (though LL has enough information as to which large scale developers didn't respond to make a better judgement call than I can).

The upshot is that, as you would expect, a few larger companies are responsible for a hefty chunk of the developer activity. On the flip side, the ease of entry is also allowing many smaller players to get a toe in the water. Let's hope the next go around gets a better survey response and there is more data to play with.

*Listing in the Developer Directory is open to any individual or company who has completed at least two projects for hire in-world.