2018 GLOBAL DEVELOPER HIRING LANDSCAPE Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018

In today’s world, nearly every company is making the necessary shift towards embracing technology. Those TABLE OF CONTENTS that don’t are moving down a path towards eventual irrelevance. Naturally, developers are essential to this • What to Say When Recruiting Developers movement and therefore essential to every company’s Methodology • Qualified Responses Worldwide • The Job Search Process survival. Successful companies can embrace technology • Salary by investing in hiring developers, ensuring they Demographics • Coding as a Hobby are efficient and productive, and evangelizing their • Location • Connection & Competition technology to support the company’s greater mission. • Developer Type • Committing Code • Gender • Age Technology To achieve all of the above, it’s important to truly • Programming Languages developers. Education • Database Environments • Professional & Student Developers • Platforms As the largest, most trusted online developer community, • Educational Attainment • Libraries, Frameworks, & Tools • Field of Study • Development Environments more than 50 million professional and aspiring • Non-Degree Education • Operating Systems visit Stack Overflow each month. Each • Bootcamps • Methodologies year, we survey the programming community on topics • Hackathons • Version Control ranging from their ideal working environment to their • Years Since First Learning to Code • Knowledge-Sharing & Communication Tools thoughts on artificial intelligence. • Correlated Technologies Work • Employment Status Artificial Intelligence Over 100,000 respondents from around the world • Company Size • What Developers Think About AI participated this year, making it the world’s largest • Industry • Responsibilities for Considering Ramifications of AI and most comprehensive developer survey. Discover • Career & Job Satisfaction • The Future of AI everything you need to know about developers with • Five-Year Plan • Job-Seeking Status Stack Overflow The Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018. • Last Job • Visits • What’s Important in a New Job • Participation • How to Contact Developers • How to Describe • What Benefits Are Important

2 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018

Qualified Responses Worldwide METHODOLOGY •• The survey was fielded from January 8 to January 28. This report is based on a survey of 101,592 software developers •• The median time spent on the survey for qualified responses was 25.8 minutes, and the median time from 183 countries around the world. This number of responses for those who finished the entire survey was 29.4 minutes. are what we consider “qualified” for analytical purposes based •• Respondents were recruited primarily through channels owned by Stack Overflow. The top 5 sources of respondents were banner ads, email lists, house ads, blog posts, and Twitter. Since respondents on completion and time spent on the survey. Approximately were recruited in this way, highly engaged users on Stack Overflow were more likely to notice the links 20,000 additional responses were started, but not included for the survey and click to begin it. Respondents who finished the survey were awarded a “Census” in the analysis because respondents did not answer enough badge as a motivation to complete the survey. questions. Of the qualified responses, 67,441 (66.4%) •• We treated responses as qualified for analysis if the user spent a certain amount of time relative to how far they got into the survey. Most survey responses that spent less than 5 minutes were excluded completed the entire survey. from the final sample.

•• We asked respondents about their salary. First, we asked what currency each respondent typically used. Then we asked that respondent what their salary was in that currency, and whether that salary was weekly, monthly, or yearly.

•• For a short time on the first day, there was a bug that left out the last part of the question (weekly vs. monthly vs. yearly); those salary responses are not included here.

AFRICA •• We converted salaries from user currencies to USD using the exchange rate on 2018-01-18, ASIA EUROPE 24,700 2,869 and also converted to annual salaries assuming 12 working months and 50 working weeks. 39,001 •• This question, like most on the survey, was optional. There were 58,650 respondents SOUTH AMERICA AUSTRALIA/OCEANIA (57.7% of qualified respondents) who gave us salary data. NORTH AMERICA 4,162 2,591 •• The top approximately 1% of salaries inside and outside of the US were trimmed and 25,016 replaced with threshold values. The threshold values for inside and outside the US were different.

•• Many questions were only shown to respondents based on their previous answers. For example, questions about jobs and work were only shown to those who said they were working in a job.

•• The questions were organized into several blocks of questions, which were randomized in order. Also, the answers to most questions were randomized in order.

•• Due to an error, Oracle and SQLite were excluded from the question about databases for the first day of the survey. We carefully examined whether the results for the other databases changed from the first day compared to the rest of the survey fielding period and they did not. The results shown here for database use and most loved/dreaded/wanted databases only use responses from after Oracle and SQLite were added to the possible answers.

3 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018

Developer Type Gender DEMOGRAPHICS Over half of our respondents Over 90% of our respondents are male. According to Quantcast, Developers all over the world are writing the identified as Back-End Developers. women account for about 10% of Stack Overflow’s US traffic— this year 9% of US survey respondents are women. Therefore, script for the future. Here’s what they look like. Back-end developer we had survey participation at almost the rate we would expect 57.9% from our traffic. Full-stack developer 48.2% Front-end developer Location 37.8% 92.7% Male 6.8% Female Mobile developer Developers live (and code) all over the world. This year, about 20% of our 20.4% respondents said they are located in the United States. The next-most Desktop or enterprise applications developer represented countries are India, Germany, the UK, and Canada. 17.2% Non-binary, Student genderqueer, 0.9% 0.7% Transgender 17.1% or gender Database administrator non-conforming 14.3% Designer 13.1% System administrator 11.3% Age DevOps specialist 10.4% About three-quarters of professional developers Data or business analyst who took our survey are younger than 35. 8.2% United States Australia Turkey Data scientist or machine learning specialist 7.7% Under 20.6% 2% 1% 18 - 24 25 - 34 18 years India Netherlands Israel QA or test developer 1.9% 22.4% years 50.8% years old 13.9% 1.9% 1% 6.7% old old Germany Spain Iran, Islamic Republic of... Engineering manager 6.6% 1.8% 0.9% 5.7% United Kingdom Italy Romania Embedded applications or devices developer 35 - 44 45 - 54 55 - 64 6.3% 1.6% 0.8% 5.2% years years years Game or graphics developer 18.2% 5.1% 1.4% Canada Ukraine Austria old old old 3.4% 1.3% 0.8% 5% Russian Federation Sweden Czech Republic Product manager 2.9% 1.2% 0.8% 4.7% France Pakistan Belgium Educator or academic researcher 65 2.6% 1.1% 0.8% 4% 0.2% years Brazil China -suite executive (CEO, CTO, etc.) or older 2.5% 1.1% 3.8% Poland Switzerland Marketing or sales professional 2.2% 1% 1.2%

4 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018

EDUCATION Currently Enrolled Highest Level of Education Completed I never completed any formal education See how the world’s developers are 0.6% Primary/elementary school learning to code through traditional 74.2% 19.4% 6.4% 1.3% Secondary school and non-traditional forms of education. 8.2% No Yes, Yes, Some college/university study without earning a degree full-time part-time 12.1% Associate degree 3.1% Bachelor’s degree Professional & Student Developers 47.7% Developers in all stages of their careers come to Stack Overflow, Master’s degree including professionals, hobbyists, and students. About one- 23.2% quarter of this year’s respondents are currently enrolled in a full- Professional degree 1.5% time or part-time formal college or university program. Doctoral degree 2.2%

Computer science, computer engineering, or 64.4% 63.7% Educational Attainment Another engineering discipline (ex. civil, electrical, mechanical) 8.5% 8.8% About three-quarters of professional developers worldwide have Information systems, information technology, or system administration the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree or higher. However, it’s not 8.3% 8.2% rare to find accomplished professional developers who haven’t A natural science (ex. biology, chemistry, physics) 3.6% completed a degree or any type of “formal” schooling. 3.9% Mathematics or statistics 3.5% 3.6% Web development or Fields of Study of 3.1% 3.1% Professional Developers Field of Study A business discipline (ex. accounting, finance, marketing) 2.3% 2.4% Over 60% of professional developers who studied at the A humanities discipline (ex. literature, history, philosophy) university level said they majored in computer science, computer 2% 2% Fields of Study of engineering, or software engineering. Additionally, this proportion A social science (ex. anthropology, psychology, political science) 1.7% Student Developers is somewhat higher in currently-enrolled students (about 70%). 1.7% Fine arts or performing arts (ex. graphic design, music, studio art) 1.4% The proportion of respondents majoring in other engineering 1.4% disciplines, like electrical and mechanical engineering, is lower I never declared a major 0.8% among current students than among professionals. 0.9% A health science (ex. nursing, pharmacy, radiology) 0.3% 0.3%

5 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 EDUCATION

Non-Degree Education Non-Traditional Ways to Learn

Developers are lifelong learners—almost 90% of all Taught yourself a new language, framework, or tool without taking a formal course Participated in online coding competitions (e.g. HackerRank, CodeChef, TopCoder) developers say they have taught themselves a new 87% 24.5% language, framework, or tool outside of their formal Taken an online course in programming or software development (e.g. a MOOC) Taken a part-time in-person course in programming or software development education. Among professional developers, almost half 48.6% 17.8% say they have taken an online course like a MOOC, and Contributed to open source software Completed an industry certification program (e.g. MCPD) 41.6% 14.1% about a quarter have participated in a hackathon. Received on-the-job training in software development Participated in a full-time developer training program or bootcamp 36.1% 10.5% We also asked developers the ways that they learn new Participated in a hackathon skills or languages. Good documentation ranked highly, 26.9% as did Stack Overflow Q&A.

Ways Developers Learn on Their Own

The official documentation and/or standards for the technology Tapping your network of friends, family, and peers versed in the technology 83.5% 19.2% Questions & answers on Stack Overflow A college/university computer science or software engineering book 82.8% 19.2% A book or e-book from O’Reilly, Apress, or a similar publisher Internal Wikis, chat rooms, or documentation set up by my company for employees 50.4% 16.4% Online developer communities other than Stack Overflow Pre-scheduled tutoring or mentoring sessions with a friend or colleague 50% 4.1% The technology’s online help system 48.3%

Bootcamps Bootcamp Success

Bootcamps are typically perceived as a way for newcomers I already had a full-time job as a developer when I began the program Four to six months to transition into a career as a software developer— but 45.5% 5.2% according to our survey, many participants in coding Immediately after graduating Six months to a year bootcamps were already working as developers. Almost 16.3% 3.6% Less than a month Longer than a year half of our respondents who went to a coding bootcamp 7.5% 3.2% said they were already working as developers (these One to three months I haven’t gotten a developer job developers are likely updating their skills and moving 10% 8.7% to new areas of the tech industry.) Of other bootcamp participants, the most common outcome is to find a job immediately or soon after graduating.

6 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 EDUCATION

Hackathons To improve my knowledge Because I find of a specific programming To build my To win prizes 76.3% 51.2% 27.5% 18.9% We asked our respondents who said they have it enjoyable language, framework, or professional network or cash awards participated in hackathons or online coding other technology competitions why they invest their time this way. The number one answer is that developers find these events To improve my general enjoyable. Hackathons are also great opportunities for To improve my ability To help me find new 66.1% technical skills or 30% 20.8% to work on a team with job opportunities learning, both general and specific. programming ability other programmers

Years Since Learning to Code Years Since Professional How Long Developers Have Years of Experience by Developer Type Developers Learned to Code Been Coding Professionally There’s a wide range of experience levels among developers. Engineering manager 10.2 One-third of professional developers say they learned to code 0-2 years within the past five years. 9.6% DevOps specialist 30.1% 8 3-5 years We also asked developers how long they had been coding Desktop or enterprise applications developer 24.4% 7.7 professionally. Over 57% of developers have less than five 27.4% Embedded applications or devices developer 6-8 years years of professional coding experience. 7.5 21.4% 14.6% Data or business analyst Lastly, we can look at the differences in years of experience 9-11 years 7.2 by developer type. DevOps Specialists and developers who 13.5% System administrator code for desktop and enterprise applications have the most 9.7% 7 12-14 years Database administrator experience, while Game/Graphics Developers and Mobile 8.9% 6.9 Developers have the fewest years of experience. 5.5% 15-17 years Full-stack developer 6.8% 6.3 3.9% Back-end developer 18-20 years 6.2 5.6% Educator or academic researcher 3.6% 6.2 21-23 years 2.9% Designer 1.8% 6 24-26 years QA or test developer 2% 5.8 1.1% Front-end developer 27-29 years 5.5 1.2% 0.6% Data scientist or machine learning specialist 30 or more years 5.5 3.8% Mobile developer 1.7% 5.2 Game or graphics developer 4.6 7 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018

Company Size Industry WORK Developers work for companies of all sizes, ranging from small Developers work in a diverse range of industries, both Nearly every company employs developers. startups to enterprise organizations. inside and outside of technology. Web development or design was the most common industry for professional Here’s an inside look at the industries they developers to work in. work in and the companies they work for.

Web development or design 16.3% Fewer than 10 employees 10 to 19 employees Other industry not listed here 10.5% 11.2% 10.8% Information technology Employment Status 10.8% Software as a service (SaaS) development Over 90% of developers are employed at least part-time, 10.5% making the developer employment rate much higher than Other software development those of other professions. Only 16% of developers are 10% actively looking for a job, putting additional pressure on the Financial technology or services employers who are competing to hire tech talent. 20 to 99 employees 100 to 499 employees 8.8% 23.8% 19.6% Cloud-based solutions or services 7.2% Data and analytics Employed full-time 76.9% 5.8% Consulting Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 5.3% 10% Media, advertising, publishing, or entertainment 5.1% Employed part-time Retail or eCommerce 5.1% 500 to 999 employees 1,000 to 4,999 employees 5% Not employed, but looking for work 6.5% 10.7% Healthcare technology or services 5% 4.5%

Not employed, and not looking for work 2.8%

Retired 0.2%

5,000 to 9,999 employees 10,000 or more employees 4.2% 13.6%

8 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 WORK

Career & Job Satisfaction Job Satisfaction of Developers Career Satisfaction of Developers Developers tend to be more satisfied with their career Extremely dissatisfied Extremely dissatisfied in general than with their current job. Overall, career 3.6% 3.4% satisfaction does not vary significantly by industry. Moderately dissatisfied Moderately dissatisfied However, current job satisfaction is significantly lower 9.1% 6.9% for developers working in financial services and IT. Slightly dissatisfied Slightly dissatisfied 10.2% 8.6% Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied 7.2% 8.3% Slightly satisfied Slightly satisfied 14.5% 17.6% Moderately satisfied Moderately satisfied 37.5% 36.5% Extremely satisfied Extremely satisfied 18% 18.7%

Five-Year Plan What Developers Want to be Doing in Five Years This year, we asked developers what they hope to be Working in a different or more specialized technical role than the one I’m in now doing in five years time. Developers’ career goals are 33.9% largely focused on technical work, with just over half Working as a founder or co-founder of my own company of respondents saying they want to be in the same 25.7% or a different technical role in the future. About a Doing the same work quarter of developers say they want to start their 19.4% own company. Working as an engineering manager or other functional manager 9.9% Working as a product manager or project manager 6.6% Working in a career completely unrelated to software development 2.8% Retirement 1.7%

Job-Seeking Status I’m not actively I am not interested in I am actively While a full three-quarters of developers are interested 59.8% looking, but I am open 24.3% new job opportunities 15.9% looking for a job in hearing about new job opportunities, only 16% are to new opportunities actively looking.

9 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 WORK

Of the 16% of professional developers who are actively Developers Who Are Actively Looking for a Job looking for a job, those who work at the C-level or as Engineering Managers are looking for work the least. Educator or academic researcher QA or test developer Mobile Developers and Game/Graphics Developers are 18.5% 15.3% looking for work at higher proportions. Mobile developer Full-stack developer 18.1% 15.2%

Data scientist or machine learning specialist Embedded applications or devices developer 18% 14.8%

Data or business analyst System administrator 17.9% 14.5%

Game or graphics developer Desktop or enterprise applications developer 17.9% 14.4%

Designer Engineering manager 17.7% 13.6%

Front-end developer DevOps specialist 16% 13.5%

Database administrator Product manager 15.6% 13%

Back-end developer C-suite executive (CEO, CTO, etc.) 15.4% 12%

Last Job Less than Between 1 and 2 Between 2 and 4 Frequent job changes for developers are the 34.6% a year ago 22% years ago 18.8% years ago norm—about half of developers have taken a new job within the past two years.

More than 4 I’ve never 18.9% years ago 5.8% had a job

10 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 WORK

What’s Important in a New Job How Developers Assess Highest Lowest What Men What Women What Non-Binary Potential Jobs Priority Priority Look For Look For Developers Look For Developers assess potential jobs differently than their counterparts. Overall, their top priorities in a new job The compensation and benefits offered 18.3% 2.8% 19% 14.1% 14.6% are the compensation and benefits offered, followed by the specific technologies that they’ll work with. The languages, frameworks, and other technologies I’d be working with 17.3% 3.2% 17.6% 16.4% 15.9%

We looked into this criteria further by gender. We Opportunities for professional development 16% 2.6% 15.7% 16.8% 10.7% found that developers who are not men rank the The office environment or company culture 13.6% 3% 13.5% 16.9% 22.5% company’s culture and office environment as their highest concern when assessing a new job. If you’re The opportunity to work from home/remotely 10.3% 12.5% 10.3% 10.2% 11.9% looking to diversify your workforce, be sure to keep this in mind. The industry that I’d be working in 7.4% 13.7% 7.3% 7.3% 9.3%

How widely used or impactful the product or service I’d be working on is 6.5% 9.2% 6.6% 5.4% 7%

The specific department or team I’d be working on 5.5% 8.6% 5.5% 5.9% 6.4%

The financial performance or funding status of the company or organization 3.4% 14.1% 3.3% 2.6% 1.8%

The diversity of the company or organization 1.6% 30.4% 1.3% 4.3% 13.9%

How to Contact Developers Email to Message on We asked developers how they would prefer to 63.9% my private 13.7% Telephone call 10.9% address a job site be contacted about a job that is a good fit, and by far they choose an email to their personal address as their top option. An email to their work address is ranked lowest. Email to my Message on a 7.2% 4.3% work address social media site

11 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 WORK

What Benefits are Important What Developers Value in Benefits What Developers Value in Benefits and Compensation - Highest Priority When developers are assesing a potential job, they and Compensation - Lowest Priority care most about their salary and/or bonuses. They care Salary and/or bonuses Childcare benefit less about things like fitness benefits and company- 70.2% 21.7% provided meals. Health insurance Parental leave 8.6% 14.1% Computer/office equipment allowance Company-provided meals or snacks 4.7% 12.3% Conference or education budget Fitness or wellness benefit (ex. gym membership, nutritionist) 3.6% 11.1% Stock options or shares Stock options or shares 3.2% 10.3% Retirement or pension savings matching Transportation benefit (ex. company-provided transportation, public transit allowance) 2.1% 9.5% Parental leave Retirement or pension savings matching 2% 6.5% Fitness or wellness benefit (ex. gym membership, nutritionist) Conference or education budget 1.5% 5% Transportation benefit (ex. company-provided transportation, public transit allowance) Computer/office equipment allowance 1.5% 4.8% Company-provided meals or snacks Health insurance 1.4% 4% Childcare benefit Salary and/or bonuses 1.1% 0.7%

An estimate of the compensation range What to Say When 21.7% Recruiting Developers Details on the company I’d be working for 21% When we asked developers to rank what they most want Specifics of why they think I’d be a good fit for the role (ex. my prior work history, projects on GitHub) to see in an email from a company about a prospective 19.9% job, the top choices are specific details about Details of which technologies I’d be working with technologies used at the job and a salary estimate. 19.7% Details on the specific department I’d be working for or product I’d be working on 8.2% Information on the company’s hiring process 6% Details on the company’s product development process 3.4%

12 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 WORK

The Job Search Process Words Used to Describe Words Used to Describe the Annoying Part of Job Searching the Exhausting Part of Job Searching We asked developers what they found annoying, exhausting, interesting, and exciting about the job interview process of searching for a new job in separate free 19.8% 18.5% response questions. Respondents talked about the interview job new opportunities, technologies, and people that 13.3% 17.8% recruiter company a new job can offer, but expressed frustration with 12.3% 10.4% broken processes around interviews and recruiting. company finding 9.8% 10% time recruiter 6.6% 7% finding time 5% 4.8% salary waiting 4.3% 4.6% getting getting 4.2% 3.9% process application 3.5% 3.8% information good 3.4% 3.7% application letter 3.3% 3.4% employer process 3.2% 3.3% lack work 3.2% 3.1% experience resume 3.1% 3.1% work find 3.1% 3.1% resume right 2.9% 3% response writing 2.9% 2.9% waiting searching 2.9% 2.8% offer fit 2.7% 2.8% people interviewing 2.7% 2.8%

13 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 WORK

Words Used to Describe Words Used to Describe the Interesting Part of Job Searching the Exciting Part of Job Searching

new new 32.7% 42% company opportunity 18% 16.7% opportunity company 12.8% 9.8% people people 9.5% 8.9% technology job 9.4% 8.6% seeing interview 8.7% 7.6% learning technology 8.2% 6.6% job getting 7.9% 6.4% interview work 7.8% 5.9% finding finding 6.3% 5.8% different learning 5.8% 5.4% work meeting 5.4% 4.5% know know 5% 3.4% getting seeing 4.7% 3.4% meeting salary 4.6% 3.1% interesting thing 3.9% 3.1% get challenge 2.8% 2.9% working working 2.8% 2.9% market different 2.7% 2.8% thing something 2.7% 2.8%

14 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 WORK

Engineering manager Salary and Experience by Developer Type Salary $ 89,000 Across the globe, Engineering Managers, DevOps DevOps specialist Specialists, and Data Scientists command the $ 72,000

highest salaries. $90,000 Data scientist or machine learning specialist Engineering manager $ 60,000 Naturally, developers with more years of experience are paid more—but we also see that Data or business analyst some type of coding work is paid more highly at $ 59,000 $80,000 the same level of experience. Data Scientists and Embedded applications or devices developer DevOps Specialists are high earners for their level $ 59,000 DevOps specialist of experience. Full-stack developer CTO/CEO/etc $ 59,000 $70,000 Desktop or enterprise applications developer $ 57,000 Product manager

Data scientist Back-end developer Full-stack developer Embedded/devices developer $ 56,000 $60,000

Median salaryMedian (USD) Data or business analyst Back-end developer System administrator Desktop or enterprise applications developer $ 56,000 QA or test developer System administrator Front-end developer Database administrator QA or test developer

$ 55,000 $50,000 Designer Database administrator Educator or academic researcher $ 51,000 Mobile developer Front-end developer Game or graphics developer

$ 51,000 $40,000 6 7 8 9 10 11 Designer $ 46,000 Average years of professional programming experience

Educator or academic researcher $ 44,000 Number of respondents Mobile developer 10,000 20,000 $ 43,000

Game or graphics developer $ 40,000

15 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 WORK

Developers using languages that appear above the yellow Salary and Experience by Programming Language line in this chart, such as Go, , and F#, are being paid more even given how much experience they have. Developers using languages below the blue line, like PHP and 6, however, are paid less even given years of experience. Clojure The size of the circles in this chart represents how many developers are using that language compared to the others. $80,000 F#

Go Hack Groovy Scala Erlang Rust Perl Ruby Ocami $70,000 CoffeeScript

Bash/Shell Julia Objective-C TypeScript

Python Lua C# Cobol $60,000 Swift Median salaryMedian (USD) Haskell JavaScript SQL VBA Kotlin

CSS HTML

C++ VB.NET

$50,000 / C Visual Basic 6

Assembly Matlab PHP 6 8 10 12

Average years of professional programming experience

Number of respondents

10,000 20,000 30,000

Footnote See our Methodology section for information on how we converted local currencies used by respondents to U.S. dollars

16 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 WORK

Coding as a Hobby How Many Developers How Many Developers Code Outside of Work Contribute to Open Source Lots of developers code outside of work—in fact, over 80% of respondents said that they code as a hobby.

Additionally, 56% of respondents said that they contribute to open source projects. Yes No Yes No 80.8% 19.2% 56.4% 43.6%

Connection & Competition We asked respondents how much they agree or disagree with several statements about their place in the 3.6 5 2.7 5 2.2 5 developer community. Overall, 70% of developers agree or strongly agree that they feel a sense of connection I feel a sense of kinship or I think of myself as I’m not as good at programming with other developers. Developers are overall confident connection to other developers competing with my peers as most of my peers about their own skills compared to their peers, with only 18% agreeing or strongly agreeing that they are not as good at programming as their colleagues.

Committing Code Multiple times A few times The majority of developers check in code multiple 62.4% per day 18.5% per week 9.2% Once a day times per day, and professional developers are less likely to check in code “never” or “rarely”.

Weekly or Less than once 6.2% 2.7% 1.1% Never a few times per month per month

17 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 WORK

Developers’ feelings on how much they belong and how they Years of Experience and Feelings of Belonging stack up to their peers change with how much experience they have. More experienced developers feel more connected, more confident, and less competitive. Notice that feeling less skilled drops quickly with experience, while feeling less competitive drops more gradually and continues to drop into 80% the second decade of coding experience.

60%

40% % who agree or strongly agree

20%

0%

0 10 20 30

Years of coding experience

I feel a sense of kinship or connection to other developers

I think of myself as competing with my peers

I am not as good at programming as most of my peers

18 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018

TECHNOLOGY Most Popular Programming Scripting and Markup Languages JavaScript C# Assembly Kotlin 69.8% 34.4% 7.4% 4.5%

HTML PHP Go Scala 68.5% 30.7% 7.1% 4.4%

Programming Languages CSS C++ Objective-C Groovy For the sixth year in a row, JavaScript is the most commonly used 65.1% 25.4% 7% 4.3% programming language. Python continues to rise in the ranks, surpassing SQL C VB.NET Perl C# this year, much like it surpassed PHP last year. As a result, Python has 57% 23% 6.7% 4.2%

a solid claim to being the fastest-growing major programming language. Java TypeScript R 45.3% 17.4% 6.1% We see close alignment in the technology choices of professional developers and the developer population overall. Bash/Shell Ruby Matlab 39.8% 10.1% 5.8%

For the third year in a row, Rust is the most loved programming language Python Swift VBA among our respondents, followed close behind by Kotlin, a language we 38.8% 8.1% 4.9% asked about for the first time on our survey this year. This means that proportionally, more developers want to continue working with these than other languages. Most Loved Programming Scripting and Markup Languages

Rust C# CSS C++ 78.9% 60.4% 55.1% 46.7%

Kotlin F# Haskell Hack 75.1% 59.6% 53.6% 42.1%

Python Clojure Julia PHP 68% 59.6% 52.8% 41.6%

TypeScript Bash/Shell Java Ocaml 67% 59.1% 50.7% 41.5%

Go Scala R 65.6% 58.5% 49.4%

Swift SQL Ruby 65.1% 57.5% 47.4%

JavaScript HTML Erlang 61.9% 55.7% 47.2%

19 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 TECHNOLOGY

Also for the third year in a row, Visual Basic 6 ranks as the most Most Dreaded Programming Scripting and Markup Languages dreaded programming language. “Most dreaded” means that a high percentage of developers who are currently using the technology Visual Basic 6 Perl PHP Julia express no interest in continuing to do so. 89.9% 71.3% 58.4% 47.2%

Cobol Objective-C Hack Haskell Python is the most wanted language for the second year in a row, 84.1% 70.3% 57.9% 46.4% meaning that it is the language that developers who do not yet use it most often say they want to learn. CoffeeScript Lua C++ CSS 82.7% 68.2% 53.3% 44.9%

VB.NET Groovy Erlang HTML 80.9% 66.4% 52.8% 44.3%

VBA Delphi/Object Pascal Ruby 80% 65.1% 52.6%

Matlab C R 77.4% 62.6% 50.6%

Assembly Ocaml Java 71.4% 58.5% 49.3%

Most Wanted Programming Scripting and Markup Languages

Python Rust C Assembly 25.1% 8.3% 5.9% 3.4%

JavaScript C# Ruby Erlang 19% 8% 5.7% 3%

Go Swift Scala Clojure 16.2% 7.7% 5.6% 2.7%

Kotlin HTML Haskell Objective-C 12.4% 7.6% 5.3% 2.6%

TypeScript CSS Bash/Shell 11.9% 7.6% 4.9%

Java SQL PHP 10.5% 6.8% 4.1%

C++ R F# 10.2% 6.3% 4%

20 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 TECHNOLOGY

Database Environments Most Popular Databases

Much like last year, MySQL and SQL Server are the most commonly MySQL MariaDB Cassandra used databases. 58.7% 13.4% 3.7%

SQL Server Oracle IBM Db2 For the second year in a row, Redis is the most loved database, 41.2% 11.1% 2.5% meaning that proportionally more developers wanted to continue working with it than any other database. IBM’s Db2 offering ranks PostgreSQL Microsoft Azure (Tables, CosmosDB, SQL, etc) Neo4j 32.9% 7.9% 2.4% as the most dreaded database, and for the second year in a row, MongoDB is the most wanted database. MongoDB Google Cloud Storage Amazon Redshift 25.9% 5.5% 2.2%

SQLite Memcached Apache Hive 19.7% 5.5% 2.2%

Redis Amazon DynamoDB Google BigQuery 18% 5.2% 2.1%

Elasticsearch Amazon RDS/Aurora Apache HBase 14.1% 5.1% 1.7%

Most Loved Databases

Redis MariaDB Cassandra 64.5% 53.3% 46.4%

PostgreSQL Google BigQuery Apache Hive 62% 52.4% 46.2%

Elasticsearch SQL Server Amazon Redshift 59.9% 51.6% 44.8%

Amazon RDS/Aurora Amazon DynamoDB Apache HBase 58.8% 50.9% 43.6%

Microsoft Azure (Tables, CosmosDB, SQL, etc) Neo4j Memcached 56.7% 49.7% 42.2%

Google Cloud Storage MySQL Oracle 56.5% 48.7% 36.9%

MongoDB SQLite IBM Db2 55.1% 48.1% 21.8%

21 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 TECHNOLOGY

Most Dreaded Databases

IBM Db2 SQLite MongoDB 78.2% 51.9% 44.9%

Oracle MySQL Google Cloud Storage 63.1% 51.3% 43.5%

Memcached Neo4j Microsoft Azure (Tables, CosmosDB, SQL, etc) 57.8% 50.3% 43.3%

Apache HBase Amazon DynamoDB Amazon RDS/Aurora 56.4% 49.1% 41.2%

Amazon Redshift SQL Server Elasticsearch 55.2% 48.4% 40.1%

Apache Hive Google BigQuery PostgreSQL Redis 53.8% 47.6% 38%

Cassandra MariaDB Redis most loved 53.6% 46.7% 35.5% database Most Wanted Databases

MongoDB Cassandra Amazon Redshift 18.6% 6.1% 3.3%

Elasticsearch Amazon DynamoDB SQLite 12.2% 5.7% 3.3%

PostgreSQL Google BigQuery Memcached 11.4% 5.6% 2.7%

Redis SQL Server Apache Hive 9.7% 4.2% 2.6%

MySQL Neo4j Apache HBase 7.5% 3.9% 2.4%

Microsoft Azure (Tables, CosmosDB, SQL, etc) Amazon RDS/Aurora Oracle 7.3% 3.5% 2.3%

Google Cloud Storage MariaDB IBM Db2 7.3% 3.4% 0.7%

22 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 TECHNOLOGY

Platforms Most Popular Platforms

Linux and Windows Desktop or Server are the most common choices Linux iOS Drupal IBM Cloud or Watson that our respondents say they have done development work for this year. 48.3% 15.5% 3% 1.4% Windows Desktop or Server Firebase Amazon Echo Google Home Linux is once again the most loved platform for development, with 35.4% 14.5% 2.9% 1.4% serverless infrastructure also loved this year. SharePoint is the most Android Azure Windows Phone Gaming console dreaded development platform for the second year in a row, and many 29% 11% 2.7% 1.3% developers say they want to start developing for the Android platform and the Raspberry Pi. AWS Arduino SharePoint Mainframe 24.1% 10.6% 2.7% 0.8%

Mac OS Heroku ESP8266 17.9% 10.5% 2.2%

Raspberry Pi Google Cloud Platform/App Engine Salesforce 15.9% 8% 2.2%

WordPress Serverless Apple Watch or Apple TV 15.9% 4.5% 1.9%

Most Loved Platforms

Linux Mac OS Arduino Windows Phone 76.5% 63.9% 58.1% 31.2%

Serverless Firebase Google Home Mainframe 75.2% 63.8% 57.6% 31.1%

AWS Android Amazon Echo Salesforce 68.6% 63.8% 53.2% 30.3%

Raspberry Pi Google Cloud Platform/App Engine Heroku Drupal 67.7% 62.5% 52.2% 29.6%

ESP8266 Gaming console IBM Cloud or Watson 67.4% 61.3% 43.7%

iOS Windows Desktop or Server Predix 64.6% 61.2% 39.1%

Apple Watch or Apple TV Azure WordPress 64% 61% 36.8%

23 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 TECHNOLOGY

Most Dreaded Platforms

SharePoint IBM Cloud or Watson Gaming console ESP8266 71.8% 56.3% 38.7% 32.6%

Drupal Heroku Google Cloud Platform/App Engine Raspberry Pi 70.4% 47.8% 37.5% 32.3%

Salesforce Amazon Echo Android AWS 69.7% 46.8% 36.2% 31.4%

Mainframe Google Home Firebase Serverless 68.9% 42.4% 36.2% 24.8%

Windows Phone Arduino Mac OS Linux 68.8% 41.9% 36.1% WordPress Azure Apple Watch or Apple TV most loved 63.2% 39% 36% Predix Windows Desktop or Server iOS platform for 60.9% 38.8% 35.4% development Most Wanted Platforms

Android Arduino Apple Watch or Apple TV Salesforce 16% 7.7% 3.3% 1.1%

Raspberry Pi Mac OS Heroku Drupal 13.1% 6.6% 3.2% 0.9%

AWS Azure Windows Desktop or Server SharePoint 12% 6.4% 2.7% 0.7%

Linux Amazon Echo IBM Cloud or Watson Mainframe 10.9% 6.3% 2.3% 0.6%

iOS Serverless WordPress 9.6% 5.6% 2.3%

Firebase Google Home Windows Phone 8.3% 5.1% 1.2%

Google Cloud Platform/App Engine Gaming console ESP8266 8.2% 4.4% 1.1%

24 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 TECHNOLOGY

Libraries, Frameworks, & Tools Most Popular Libraries, Frameworks, & Tools

Node.js and AngularJS continue to be the most commonly Node.js TensorFlow used technologies in this category, with React and .NET Core 49.6% 7.8% also important to many developers. Angular 36.9% 7.4% TensorFlow, one of the fastest growing technologies on Stack Overflow, is most loved by developers, while Cordova React Spark 27.8% 4.8% is most dreaded. React is the framework developers say they most want to work with if they do not already. .NET Core Hadoop 27.2% 4.7%

Spring Torch/PyTorch 17.6% 1.7%

Django 13%

Cordova 8.5%

Most Loved Libraries, Frameworks, & Tools

TensorFlow Django 73.5% 58.3%

React Angular 69.4% 54.6%

Torch/PyTorch Hadoop 68% 53.9%

Node.js Xamarin 66.4% 49%

.NET Core Cordova 66% 40.4%

Spark 66%

Spring 60%

25 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 TECHNOLOGY

Most Dreaded Libraries, Frameworks, & Tools

Cordova .NET Core 59.6% 34%

Xamarin Node.js 51% 33.6%

Hadoop Torch/PyTorch 46.1% 32%

Angular React 45.4% 30.6%

Django TensorFlow 41.7% 26.5%

Spring 40%

Spark 34% TensorFlow Most Wanted Libraries, Frameworks, & Tools

most loved React Xamarin by developers 21.3% 6.1% Node.js Spark 20.9% 4.8%

TensorFlow Torch/PyTorch 15.5% 4.5%

Angular Spring 14.3% 3.7%

.NET Core Cordova 9.3% 2.6%

Django 6.7%

Hadoop 6.4%

26 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 TECHNOLOGY

Visual Studio Code NetBeans Coda Development Environments 34.9% 19.3% 8.2% 0.6%

Visual Studio Code just edged out Visual Studio as the most popular developer Visual Studio IPython / Jupyter Komodo environment across the board, but there are differences in tool choices by 34.3% 18.9% 7.4% 0.6% developer type and role. Developers who write code for mobile apps are more Notepad++ Zend likely to choose Android Studio and , the most popular choice by DevOps 34.2% 18% 4.1% 0.4% and Sysadmins is , and Data Scientists are more likely to work in IPython/ Jupyter, PyCharm, and RStudio. PyCharm RStudio Light Table 28.9% 12% 3.3% 0.2%

Vim XCode RubyMine 25.8% 10.6% 1.6%

IntelliJ PHPStorm TextMate 24.9% 9% 1.1%

Operating Systems We asked our respondents what operating systems they use for work. About half said they mainly use Windows, and the remainder were Windows MacOS Linux-based BSD/Unix about evenly split between MacOS and Linux. 49.9% 26.7% 23.2% 0.2%

Agile Formal standard such as ISO 9001 or IEEE 12207 (aka “waterfall” methodologies) Methodologies 85.4% 15.1% Agile and Scrum are popular methodologies for developers Scrum Lean 62.7% 9.6% to keep their projects on track. Kanban Evidence-based software engineering 35.2% 3.5% Pair programming Mob programming 28.4% 3.3% Extreme programming (XP) PRINCE2 15.7% 1.5%

27 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 TECHNOLOGY

Git Copying and pasting files to network shares Version Control 87.2% 7.9%

Git is the dominant choice for version control for developers today, Subversion I don’t use version control with almost 90% of developers checking in their code via Git. 16.1% 4.8%

Team Foundation Version Control Mercurial 10.9% 3.6%

Zip file back-ups 7.9%

Knowledge-Sharing & Communication Tools About half of professional developers use Slack, with Jira coming in as second most used. Slack Jira Office / productivity suite Other wiki tool (Github, Google 51.8% 41.6% (Microsoft Office, Google Suite, etc.) Sites, , etc.) 39.3% 31.4%

Confluence Google Hangouts/Chat Other chat system Trello 29.8% 21.7% (IRC, proprietary software, etc.) 17.9% 21.5%

Facebook HipChat Stack Overflow Enterprise 10% 6.2% 3.3%

28 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018 TECHNOLOGY

CoffeeScript Mainframe Correlated Technologies RubyMine % of Respondents Technologies cluster together into related ecosystems that C++ Ruby Cobol 20% tend to be used by the same developers. In this chart we use C Google Cloud Storage Delphi/Object Pascal a large central cluster for web development (with JavaScript, 40% HTML, and CSS) connected via SQL to one for Microsoft Assembly Delphi RStudio 60% technologies (with C#, Visual Studio, and .NET Core). Along the Google Cloud Platform Google BigQuery MongoDB bottom we see a constellation connecting Java, Android, and Visual Studio Code iOS across to Linux, bash/shell, and Python. Other smaller R correlated clusters include Scala/Spark, C/C++, and other smaller technologies that include language-specific IDEs. React TypeScript Eclipse Scala PHPStorm Node.js Spring Angular Hadoop Kotlin JavaScript Apache HBase IntelliJ Java CSS Spark

Android Studio WordPress Apache Hive PHP HTML Firebase MariaDB Android SQL Raspberry Pi XCode MySQL

Xamarin Arduino iOS SQL Server Swift Objective-C Azure C# ESP8266 Apple Watch or Apple TV Microsoft Azure Visual Studio Mac OS .NET Core VB.NET VBA Vim Windows Desktop or Server TensorFlow Linux Visual Basic 6 Torch/PyTorch Notepad++ Bash/Shell IPython/Jupyter Type Python Amazon RDS/Aurora Memcached Database PyCharm Framework AWS Redis Django IDE Amazon DynamoDB Language Elasticsearch Platform Serverless PostgreSQL

29 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018

ARTIFICIAL What’s Dangerous About AI What’s Exciting About AI Algorithms making important decisions Increasing automation of jobs INTELLIGENCE 28.6% 40.8% Artificial intelligence surpassing human intelligence (“the singularity”) Algorithms making important decisions What Developers Think About AI 28% 23.5% More and more developers are involved in the increasing role Evolving definitions of “fairness” in algorithmic versus human decisions Artificial intelligence surpassing human intelligence (“the singularity”) 23.7% 23.3% of machine learning and artificial intelligence. When asked about AI, there is not much consensus among developers about Increasing automation of jobs Evolving definitions of “fairness” in algorithmic versus human decisions what is most dangerous—each answer was chosen roughly 19.8% 12.4% equally. The top choice for what is exciting about increasing AI is that jobs can be automated, with over 80% of developers not considering this dangerous.

Responsibilities for Considering Who Should Be Responsible for Issues Around AI Ramifications of AI The developers or the people creating the AI 47.8% Developers are most likely to think that the creators and technologists behind the machine learning and AI algorithms A governmental or other regulatory body are the ones who are ultimately most responsible for the 27.9% societal issues surrounding artificial intelligence. About a Prominent industry leaders quarter of respondents think that a regulatory body should 16.6% be primarily responsible. Nobody 7.7%

The Future of AI How Developers Feel About the Future of AI Developers are mostly optimistic about the possibilities I’m excited about the possibilities more than worried about the dangers. 72.8% that artificial intelligence offers our world, with almost three-quarters of respondents saying that they are overall I’m worried about the dangers more than I’m excited about the possibilities. more excited than worried about the AI future. 19% I don’t care about it, or I haven’t thought about it. 8.2%

30 Global Developer Hiring Landscape 2018

How Often Developers How Developers STACK OVERFLOW Visit Stack Overflow Describe Stack Overflow

How developers use and describe the world’s I have never visited Stack Overflow (before today) helpful 0.5% 18.7% largest programming community. community Less than once per month or monthly 12.2% 2% developer 10.2% A few times per month or weekly 11.5% people Visits 8.7% A few times per week question Developers visit Stack Overflow. A lot. Over half of our 22.4% 7.3% respondents say they are at least daily visitors. great Daily or almost daily 7% 32.5% good Multiple times per day 6.9% Participation 31.1% help 6.7% Developers use Stack Overflow for a variety of reasons. Some answer programmers visit only to find answers to their questions, while 5.8% others participate in the community by asking, answering, best 5.8% voting for, or commenting on questions. Over 42% of developers How Often Developers knowledge participate on Stack Overflow at least once per week. Participate in Stack Overflow 5.2% place 4.9% I have never participated in Q&A on Stack Overflow 17.3% awesome How to Describe 4.2% Less than once per month or monthly problem Using free text responses, we asked developers how 39.2% 3.7% they would describe Stack Overflow. Developers were sometimes A few times per month or weekly 3.5% overwhelmingly positive about Stack Overflow, focusing 22.6% on the helpful nature of the community. useful A few times per week 3.5% 11.7% friendly 3.2% Daily or almost daily helping 5.9% 3.2% Multiple times per day can 3.2% 3.1% learn 2.8%

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