It's Not About Whom You Train: An Analysis of Corporate Education in Software Engineering
This research addresses the problem of optimizing corporate training investments for software engineering professionals, but it is incremental as it builds on existing literature about voluntariness and focuses on specific survey data.
The study investigated how sociodemographic and professional variables affect perceptions of corporate training quality and effectiveness in software engineering, finding that only 35 of 243 tested combinations were significant, with training mandatoriness as the dominant factor and no relevant differences from personal profiles or company size.
Context: Corporate education is a strategic investment in the software industry, but little is known about how different professional profiles perceive these initiatives. Objective: To investigate whether sociodemographic and professional variables influence the perception of quality and effectiveness of corporate training in Software Engineering (SE). Method: Non-parametric significance tests were applied to data from a survey with 282 Brazilian professionals, crossing 27 perception items with 9 sociodemographic variables (gender, age, education level, state, experience, professional level, company size, area of work, and nature of participation), totaling 243 combinations. Results: Of the 243 combinations tested, only 35 showed statistical significance. Training mandatoriness was the dominant factor, affecting 24 of 27 items. Length of experience revealed a non-linear descriptive pattern with a low-engagement zone between 3 and 6 years. Differences by area of work indicated an expressive gap in soft skills training for advanced technical roles. Personal profile variables and company size produced no relevant significant differences. Conclusion: Personal profile variables do not determine the perception of quality and effectiveness, while professional trajectory variables (experience, level, area of work) produce localized differences. The voluntariness of participation remains a determining factor, in line with the literature. The absence of gender differences in a sample with 23\% women suggests that barriers operate before training, in access and representation, not during the learning experience.