What's the ideal job situation for developers? Opportunities to work with the latest technologies within a supportive corporate culture rank on top for developers this year, a new survey finds. In addition, many developers have gotten behind DevOps, even though their organizations may be on the fence about the methodology.
These are the findings from Stack Overflow's latest survey of 65,000 software developers from 186 countries around the world, fielded in February 2020. Enterprises are split on their dedication to DevOps. About 44 percent report they have at least one dedicated employee handling DevOps, versus 44 percent who did not. This ambivalence toward DevOps is not seen among developers, however -- they are behind DevOps all the way. When asked about the importance of DevOps to scaling software development, close to 80% believed that DevOps is at least somewhat important, with almost half of the respondents, 48 percent, noting that it is "extremely important."
Along with DevOps, what else do developers want? The chance to experiment with new technologies tops the list, followed by a supportive company and workplace.
The following reflects the typical developer's wish list:
- Languages, frameworks, and other technologies I'd be working with 51%
- Office environment or company culture 45%
- Flextime or a flexible schedule 44%
- Opportunities for professional development 41%
- Remote work options 33%
Overall, developers tend to be satisfied with their jobs, with almost 65 percent reporting that they are either slightly or very satisfied with their job. On the other end of the spectrum, around 25 percent are slightly to very dissatisfied.
Developers also show a commitment to continuous learning. Three in four, 75 percent, noted that they learn a new technology at least every few months or once a year -- and 37 percent learn something new every few months. "This demonstrates how quickly innovations happen and developers are constantly learning to keep their skills fresh," the StackFlow survey's authors report.
Ninety-two percent of respondents state they work at least part time; 71 percent report being employed full time. Nine percent report they are independent contractors, freelancers, or self-employed.
Developers in the survey were asked what languages and frameworks they love, as well as the ones with which they "dread" working. Rust, TypeScript, and Python take the tops spots in this year's survey. The most dreaded languages are VBA, Objective-C and Perl.
What language skills are drawing the highest salaries? Respondents who use Perl, Scala, and Go tend to have the highest salaries, with a median salary around $75,000. "Interestingly, Perl is amongst the top most dreaded languages, so it's possible that this high salary is to compensate for the dearth of developers who want to use that technology," the survey's authors surmise.
Most Loved Languages
- Rust 86%
- TypeScript 67%
- Python 67%
- Kotlin 63%
- Go 62%
- Julia 62%
- Dart 62%
Most Dreaded Languages
- VBA 80%
- Objective-C 77%
- Perl 71%
- Assembly 71%
- C 67%
- PHP 63%
- Ruby 57%
Most Loved Frameworks, Libraries and Tools
- .NET Core 72%
- Torch/PyTorch 71%
- Flutter 69%
- Pandas 68%
- Teraform 68%
- Keras 67%
- Node.js 67%
- TensorFlow 65%
- Ansible 59%
- React Native 58%
- Apache Spark 58%
Most Dreaded Frameworks, Libraries and Tools
- Chef 72%
- Cordova 71%
- Puppet 62%
- Xamarin 55%
- Hadoop 54%
- .NET 53%
Highest-Paid Language Skills (Average Annual Salaries):
- Perl $76,000
- Scala $76,000
- Go $74,000
- Rust $74,000
- Ruby $71,000
- Bash/Shell/PowerShell $65,000
- Objective-C $64,000
- Haskell $60,000
- Julia $59,000
- Python $59,000
- Swift $58,000
- C# $57,000
- R $57,000