Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021

57 min read Original article ↗

Overview

The questions we ask in our annual survey will help us improve the Stack Overflow community and the platform that serves them.

This year, for example, we observed a significant evolution in the way developers educate themselves. For the rising cohort of coders under the age of 18, online resources like videos and blogs are more popular than books and school combined, a statistic that doesn’t hold for any of our other age cohorts. Overall, the profession is full of new joiners, with more than 50% indicating they have been coding for less than a decade, and more than 35% having less than five years in the trade.

The challenge and opportunity for us is to continue expanding and improving our ability to help all developers and to make them feel welcome in our community.

Read on for more great insights about the attitudes, tools, and environments that are shaping the art and practice of software today.

It is no surprise that almost 60% of respondents learned how to code from online resources. Younger respondents tend to learn from online courses, forums, and other online resources. Older respondents, on the other hand, learned from more traditional mediums like school and books.

Learning how to code →

AWS maintains its lead as the most widely used cloud platform, but Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure made substantial gains from last year. It is worth noting that this is the first year that we broke out cloud platforms from our general platforms question.

Cloud platforms →

This year, React.js surpassed jQuery as the most commonly used web framework.

Web frameworks →

Newcomer Svelte takes the top spot as the most loved framework. React is the most wanted, desired by one in four developers.

Web frameworks →

Perl moves from being the highest-paid language last year to the fifth highest-paid this year. Clojure developers have the highest median salary, 14k more than second place which belongs to F#.

Top paying technologies →

81% of professional developers are employed full-time, a decrease from 83% in 2020. The percentage of professional developers saying they were independent contractors, freelancers, or self-employed increased from 9.5% in 2020 to 11.2% in 2021 - indicating potential job insecurity or a shift to more flexible work arrangements.

Employment status →

Developer Profile

What we know about the global community of developers

Developer Profile

Key territories

Stack Overflow serves the international community, and our survey received responses from almost every country on Earth.

Geography

The United States and India continue to provide the highest volume of survey responses, followed by Germany and UKI (UK and Ireland). The top ten countries account for almost 60% of all respondents. To see the top ten countries, refer to the methodology section. When we zoom into the United States (our top-responding country), we see that the states with established tech hubs have the most respondents: California, New York, Washington, and Texas.

49,116 responses

United States of America 18.33% 15,288
India 12.61% 10,511
Germany 6.75% 5,625
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 5.37% 4,475
Canada 3.61% 3,012
France 3.25% 2,708
Brazil 2.7% 2,254
Poland 2.16% 1,805
Netherlands 2.13% 1,772
Italy 2% 1,666

Where do you live? *

83,439 responses

Response Percentage Responses
United States of America 18.33% 15,288
India 12.61% 10,511
Germany 6.75% 5,625
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 5.37% 4,475
Canada 3.61% 3,012
France 3.25% 2,708
Brazil 2.7% 2,254
Poland 2.16% 1,805
Netherlands 2.13% 1,772
Italy 2% 1,666
Australia 1.97% 1,646
Spain 1.78% 1,485
Russian Federation 1.77% 1,474
Sweden 1.43% 1,196
China 1.27% 1,055
Turkey 1.26% 1,054
Switzerland 1.11% 922
Israel 1.09% 913
Iran, Islamic Republic of... 1.08% 900
Pakistan 1% 838
Austria 0.97% 808
Czech Republic 0.95% 792
Ukraine 0.92% 770
Bangladesh 0.84% 704
Belgium 0.84% 697
Mexico 0.83% 695
Romania 0.78% 650
Indonesia 0.76% 632
Greece 0.72% 603
Norway 0.72% 602
Denmark 0.72% 599
Argentina 0.7% 587
South Africa 0.68% 571
Portugal 0.64% 530
Finland 0.63% 528
New Zealand 0.63% 522
Egypt 0.62% 521
Hungary 0.57% 478
Japan 0.51% 429
Nigeria 0.49% 409
Bulgaria 0.48% 402
Sri Lanka 0.47% 396
Ireland 0.46% 386
Viet Nam 0.46% 386
Philippines 0.46% 382
Colombia 0.46% 381
Singapore 0.41% 339
Nepal 0.4% 337
Malaysia 0.4% 333
Serbia 0.37% 310
Taiwan 0.36% 302
Kenya 0.32% 263
Slovakia 0.3% 252
Croatia 0.3% 250
Slovenia 0.28% 235
Chile 0.28% 230
Lithuania 0.25% 208
Morocco 0.24% 204
Hong Kong (S.A.R.) 0.24% 198
South Korea 0.23% 189
Thailand 0.22% 184
United Arab Emirates 0.22% 182
Belarus 0.2% 165
Georgia 0.19% 161
Tunisia 0.18% 150
Peru 0.18% 147
Uruguay 0.17% 144
Saudi Arabia 0.16% 137
Bosnia and Herzegovina 0.16% 130
Estonia 0.16% 130
Lebanon 0.14% 113
Latvia 0.13% 107
Dominican Republic 0.12% 104
Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of... 0.12% 104
Ecuador 0.12% 103
Armenia 0.11% 92
Ghana 0.11% 91
Costa Rica 0.09% 77
Iraq 0.09% 76
Albania 0.09% 73
Jordan 0.09% 72
Ethiopia 0.08% 69
Uzbekistan 0.08% 68
Afghanistan 0.08% 65
Kazakhstan 0.08% 65
Azerbaijan 0.08% 64
Uganda 0.08% 63
Guatemala 0.07% 58
Cyprus 0.07% 56
Myanmar 0.07% 55
Republic of Moldova 0.07% 55
Republic of Korea 0.06% 54
The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 0.06% 54
Luxembourg 0.06% 51
Syrian Arab Republic 0.06% 51
Bolivia 0.06% 48
Paraguay 0.06% 47
Algeria 0.06% 46
Kosovo 0.05% 45
Iceland 0.05% 43
United Republic of Tanzania 0.05% 43
Malta 0.05% 42
Cameroon 0.05% 38
Zimbabwe 0.04% 36
Cambodia 0.04% 35
Cuba 0.04% 34
Rwanda 0.04% 34
El Salvador 0.04% 32
Mauritius 0.04% 31
Panama 0.04% 31
Kuwait 0.03% 29
Qatar 0.03% 29
Bahrain 0.03% 28
Senegal 0.03% 28
Angola 0.03% 27
Sudan 0.03% 27
Palestine 0.03% 25
Honduras 0.03% 24
Zambia 0.03% 22
Kyrgyzstan 0.03% 21
Mongolia 0.03% 21
Jamaica 0.02% 20
Oman 0.02% 20
Trinidad and Tobago 0.02% 20
Yemen 0.02% 20
Madagascar 0.02% 18
Nicaragua 0.02% 18
Côte d'Ivoire 0.02% 17
Montenegro 0.02% 17
Maldives 0.02% 16
Benin 0.02% 15
Turkmenistan 0.02% 13
Andorra 0.01% 12
Barbados 0.01% 12
Congo, Republic of the... 0.01% 12
Mozambique 0.01% 12
Namibia 0.01% 12
Libyan Arab Jamahiriya 0.01% 11
Malawi 0.01% 11
Democratic Republic of the Congo 0.01% 10
Swaziland 0.01% 10
Tajikistan 0.01% 9
Bahamas 0.01% 7
Guyana 0.01% 7
Somalia 0.01% 7
Togo 0.01% 7
Botswana 0.01% 6
Cape Verde 0.01% 6
North Korea 0.01% 6
Belize 0.01% 5
Bhutan 0.01% 5
Burundi 0.01% 5
Haiti 0.01% 5
Isle of Man 0.01% 5
Mauritania 0.01% 5
Suriname 0.01% 5
Burkina Faso 0% 4
Fiji 0% 4
Lao People's Democratic Republic 0% 4
Lesotho 0% 4
Central African Republic 0% 3
Djibouti 0% 3
Liberia 0% 3
Niger 0% 3
Saint Lucia 0% 3
Chad 0% 2
Gambia 0% 2
Guinea 0% 2
Mali 0% 2
Micronesia, Federated States of... 0% 2
Monaco 0% 2
San Marino 0% 2
Sierra Leone 0% 2
Brunei Darussalam 0% 1
Dominica 0% 1
Liechtenstein 0% 1
Papua New Guinea 0% 1
Saint Kitts and Nevis 0% 1
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 0% 1
Tuvalu 0% 1

Where do you live? *

15,288 responses

Loading…

Where do you live? *

Developer Profile

Experience

Senior executives and managers tend to have the most years of coding experience, while those working in data science and machine learning tend to have the least, on average less than even an academic researcher.

Writing that first line of code

Coders start young: over 50% of respondents wrote their first line of code between the ages of 11 to 17.

83,243 responses

Younger than 5 years 1.09% 905
5 - 10 years 14.08% 11,720
11 - 17 years 53.06% 44,170
18 - 24 years 24.1% 20,065
25 - 34 years 5.04% 4,199
35 - 44 years 1.58% 1,312
45 - 54 years 0.65% 544
55 - 64 years 0.29% 245
Older than 64 years 0.1% 83

At what age did you write your first line of code or program? (e.g., webpage, Hello World, Scratch project)

Learning how to code

It is no surprise that almost 60% of respondents learned how to code from online resources. Younger respondents tend to learn from online courses, forums, and other online resources. Older respondents, on the other hand, learned from more traditional mediums like school and books.

82,963 responses

Other online resources (videos, blogs, etc) 59.53% 49,392
School 53.59% 44,462
Books / Physical media 51.53% 42,752
Online Courses or Certification 40.39% 33,511
Online Forum 31.62% 26,229
Friend or family member 18.28% 15,162
Colleague 17.15% 14,225
Coding Bootcamp 10.24% 8,496

How did you learn to code? Select all that apply.

82,963 responses

Loading…

How did you learn to code? Select all that apply.

Years coding

50% of respondents have been coding for ten years or less. Respondents from the United Kingdom, on average, have the most years coding out of our top ten countries.

81,641 responses

Less than 1 year 1.82% 1,489
1 to 4 years 17.8% 14,535
5 to 9 years 29.91% 24,418
10 to 14 years 18.9% 15,428
15 to 19 years 10.4% 8,492
20 to 24 years 8.17% 6,673
25 to 29 years 4.48% 3,661
30 to 34 years 3.41% 2,787
35 to 39 years 2.65% 2,166
40 to 44 years 1.75% 1,426
45 to 49 years 0.41% 338
More than 50 years 0.28% 228

Including any education, how many years have you been coding in total?

48,119 responses

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 16.34 4,377
United States of America 15.71 14,806
Netherlands 14.59 1,735
Italy 14.33 1,621
Germany 14.17 5,476
Canada 14.01 2,911
France 12.61 2,642
Brazil 11.5 2,191
Poland 10.74 1,766
India 7.43 9,753

Including any education, how many years have you been coding in total?

Years coding professionally

A majority of respondents have been working for ten or less years as a professional developer, meaning they’ve never worked in a world without Stack Overflow.

61,216 responses

Less than 1 year 4.41% 2,699
1 to 4 years 31.26% 19,134
5 to 9 years 27.31% 16,716
10 to 14 years 15.36% 9,405
15 to 19 years 8.29% 5,076
20 to 24 years 6.88% 4,213
25 to 29 years 2.99% 1,832
30 to 34 years 1.83% 1,121
35 to 39 years 0.95% 582
40 to 44 years 0.49% 302
45 to 49 years 0.12% 74
More than 50 years 0.1% 62

NOT including education, how many years have you coded professionally (as a part of your work)?

Years of professional coding experience by developer type

Developers in more senior roles have the most years of coding professionally. Data scientists and machine learning specialists, meanwhile, have the least experience, with fewer years than academic researchers.

61,216 responses

Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) 15.82 1,971
Engineering manager 13.82 3,652
Product manager 12.47 2,829
Database administrator 12.23 5,246
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications 12.19 10,182
System administrator 12.12 5,460
Marketing or sales professional 11.99 478
Educator 11.98 2,067
Designer 11.93 3,988
Developer, embedded applications or devices 11.62 4,211
Data or business analyst 11.4 3,342
Engineer, site reliability 11.33 2,276
DevOps specialist 11.26 6,752
Scientist 10.93 1,792
Developer, QA or test 10.55 3,310
Developer, game or graphics 10.53 1,724
Engineer, data 10 3,834
Developer, back-end 9.94 26,664
Developer, full-stack 9.62 29,981
Developer, mobile 9.46 8,762
Developer, front-end 9.32 16,341
Academic researcher 9.29 2,506
Data scientist or machine learning specialist 8.92 3,772
Student 4.37 1,890

NOT including education, how many years have you coded professionally (as a part of your work)?

Developer Profile

Developer roles

People holding full stack developer roles are the most prevalent. Interestingly, the role of designer has fallen since last year, swapping spots with system administrators.

Developer type

Full stack, back-end, front-end, and desktop developers continue to account for the majority of all respondents.

66,484 responses

Developer, full-stack 49.47% 32,891
Developer, back-end 43.73% 29,071
Developer, front-end 27.42% 18,231
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications 16.6% 11,036
Developer, mobile 14.74% 9,800
DevOps specialist 10.62% 7,058
System administrator 9.14% 6,079
Database administrator 8.51% 5,655
Designer 6.94% 4,611
Developer, embedded applications or devices 6.92% 4,598
Data scientist or machine learning specialist 6.43% 4,273
Student 6.3% 4,187
Engineer, data 6.28% 4,176
Engineering manager 5.73% 3,810
Data or business analyst 5.7% 3,792
Developer, QA or test 5.43% 3,611
Product manager 4.62% 3,074
Academic researcher 4.36% 2,899
Engineer, site reliability 3.68% 2,448
Educator 3.56% 2,369
Developer, game or graphics 3.18% 2,112
Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) 3.16% 2,103
Scientist 3.03% 2,015
Marketing or sales professional 0.96% 638

Which of the following describes your current job? Please select all that apply.

12,748 responses

Developer, full-stack 50.27% 6,408
Developer, back-end 41% 5,227
Developer, front-end 24.33% 3,102
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications 17.01% 2,168
DevOps specialist 11.84% 1,510
System administrator 10.17% 1,297
Developer, mobile 9.81% 1,250
Database administrator 9.43% 1,202
Designer 7.96% 1,015
Engineer, data 7.81% 996
Engineering manager 7.77% 991
Data scientist or machine learning specialist 7.08% 903
Developer, embedded applications or devices 7.03% 896
Data or business analyst 6.83% 871
Developer, QA or test 6.28% 801
Engineer, site reliability 5.37% 685
Product manager 4.2% 535
Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) 4.16% 530
Academic researcher 3.91% 498
Scientist 3.9% 497
Student 3.83% 488
Developer, game or graphics 3% 383
Educator 2.91% 371
Marketing or sales professional 1.15% 147

Which of the following describes your current job? Please select all that apply.

Developer Profile

Education

Developers are a highly educated bunch, with more than 65% holding a bachelor’s degree or higher. But a traditional university education isn’t everything, and around a quarter of respondents have less than a bachelor’s degree.

Educational attainment

70% of all respondents and 80% of professional developers have completed some form of higher education, a bachelor’s degree being the most common.

83,439 responses

Primary/elementary school 2.97% 2,479
Secondary school (e.g. American high school, German Realschule or Gymnasium, etc.) 11.43% 9,534
Some college/university study without earning a degree 12.69% 10,589
Associate degree (A.A., A.S., etc.) 2.67% 2,231
Bachelor’s degree (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.) 42.37% 35,357
Master’s degree (M.A., M.S., M.Eng., MBA, etc.) 20.99% 17,512
Professional degree (JD, MD, etc.) 1.51% 1,256
Other doctoral degree (Ph.D., Ed.D., etc.) 3.08% 2,567
Something else 1.92% 1,601

Which of the following best describes the highest level of formal education that you’ve completed? *

58,153 responses

Primary/elementary school 0.72% 420
Secondary school (e.g. American high school, German Realschule or Gymnasium, etc.) 5% 2,910
Some college/university study without earning a degree 11.94% 6,941
Associate degree (A.A., A.S., etc.) 2.77% 1,611
Bachelor’s degree (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.) 49.34% 28,691
Master’s degree (M.A., M.S., M.Eng., MBA, etc.) 24.56% 14,285
Professional degree (JD, MD, etc.) 1.63% 947
Other doctoral degree (Ph.D., Ed.D., etc.) 2.58% 1,502
Something else 1.24% 724

Which of the following best describes the highest level of formal education that you’ve completed? *

Developer Profile

Demographics

Roughly a third of respondents responded to our question on mental health. This is twice the percentage that offered feedback in 2020 and may reflect the growing awareness of mental health’s importance and the impact of the ongoing pandemic.

Age

48% of professional developers are 25-34 years old. Almost half of the respondents 65 years or older do not consider themselves professional developers.

82,407 responses

Under 18 years old 6.52% 5,376
18-24 years old 25.47% 20,993
25-34 years old 39.52% 32,568
35-44 years old 18.42% 15,183
45-54 years old 6.64% 5,472
55-64 years old 2.21% 1,819
65 years or older 0.51% 421
Prefer not to say 0.7% 575

What is your age?

57,573 responses

Under 18 years old 0.56% 322
18-24 years old 19.08% 10,987
25-34 years old 48.42% 27,874
35-44 years old 21.71% 12,497
45-54 years old 7.31% 4,210
55-64 years old 2.25% 1,294
65 years or older 0.35% 201
Prefer not to say 0.33% 188

What is your age?

Gender

91% of all respondents and 92% of professional developers identify as a man. The United States has the highest percentage of gender minorities (Woman, Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming). We have considerable work to do to ensure our platform is inclusive and that our survey is representative of developers everywhere.

82,286 responses

Man 91.67% 75,428
Woman 5.31% 4,372
Prefer not to say 1.75% 1,442
Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming 1.42% 1,168
Or, in your own words: 0.92% 756

Which of the following describe you, if any? Please check all that apply.

57,464 responses

Man 92.79% 53,319
Woman 4.8% 2,756
Prefer not to say 1.38% 794
Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming 1.26% 722
Or, in your own words: 0.72% 413

Which of the following describe you, if any? Please check all that apply.

82,286 responses

Percent who identify as Woman, Non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming

United States of America 9.12% 1,390
Canada 7.27% 218
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 6.87% 306
Netherlands 6.55% 116
France 6.44% 174
India 5.95% 614
Germany 5.72% 322
Brazil 5.25% 119
Poland 4.34% 79
Italy 4.27% 71

Which of the following describe you, if any? Please check all that apply.

Transgender

Only 1% of respondents identify as transgender, half of them being professional developers.

80,678 responses

No 95.78% 77,275
Prefer not to say 2.19% 1,764
Yes 1.28% 1,035
Or, in your own words: 0.75% 604

Do you identify as transgender?

56,401 responses

No 96.48% 54,417
Prefer not to say 1.83% 1,033
Yes 1.01% 567
Or, in your own words: 0.68% 384

Do you identify as transgender?

Sexual orientation

11.5% of respondents identify as something other than straight / heterosexual, with 6.5% preferring not to identify with any orientation. There’s still so much work to be done to ensure the developer community is more inclusive.

73,366 responses

Straight / Heterosexual 84.52% 62,006
Prefer not to say 6.52% 4,783
Bisexual 5.36% 3,929
Gay or Lesbian 2.39% 1,753
Prefer to self-describe: 2.29% 1,679
Queer 1.5% 1,101

Which of the following describe you, if any? Please check all that apply.

51,802 responses

Straight / Heterosexual 86.5% 44,811
Prefer not to say 5.5% 2,851
Bisexual 4.9% 2,539
Gay or Lesbian 2.21% 1,144
Prefer to self-describe: 1.85% 957
Queer 1.35% 701

Which of the following describe you, if any? Please check all that apply.

Race and ethnicity

We continue to see evidence that people of color are underrepresented among professional developers.

79,464 responses

White or of European descent 58.43% 46,434
South Asian 11.6% 9,214
Hispanic or Latino/a/x 7.01% 5,570
Middle Eastern 5.31% 4,222
Southeast Asian 5.14% 4,083
East Asian 4.7% 3,735
Prefer not to say 3.85% 3,062
Or, in your own words: 3.67% 2,916
Black or of African descent 3.38% 2,686
I don't know 3.38% 2,684
Multiracial 1.66% 1,317
Biracial 1.18% 939
Indigenous (such as Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian) 0.72% 575

Which of the following describe you, if any? Please check all that apply.

55,569 responses

White or of European descent 61.37% 34,101
South Asian 10.46% 5,813
Hispanic or Latino/a/x 7.62% 4,234
Middle Eastern 5.15% 2,863
Southeast Asian 4.39% 2,440
East Asian 4.2% 2,332
Prefer not to say 3.37% 1,872
Or, in your own words: 3.28% 1,824
Black or of African descent 3.13% 1,741
I don't know 2.79% 1,552
Multiracial 1.62% 902
Biracial 1.13% 630
Indigenous (such as Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian) 0.69% 381

Which of the following describe you, if any? Please check all that apply.

Disability status

2,960 respondents have a physical difference, with the majority of these respondents being blind or having difficulty seeing.

2,960 responses

I am blind / have difficulty seeing 1.6% 1,238
Or, in your own words: 1.24% 962
I am deaf / hard of hearing 0.77% 595
I am unable to / find it difficult to walk or stand without assistance 0.42% 325
I am unable to / find it difficult to type 0.41% 315

Which of the following describe you, if any? Please check all that apply.

Mental health

Over 16,000 respondents replied to our question on mental health, with almost 10% of all respondents indicating they deal with anxiety.

16,529 responses

I have an anxiety disorder 9.53% 7,334
I have a mood or emotional disorder (e.g. depression, bipolar disorder) 8.94% 6,873
I have a concentration and/or memory disorder (e.g. ADHD) 8.51% 6,549
I have autism / an autism spectrum disorder (e.g. Asperger's) 3.7% 2,843
Or, in your own words: 1.81% 1,392

Which of the following describe you, if any? Please check all that apply.

Technology

Each year we explore the tools and technologies developers are currently using. And, as always, we ask them what technologies are most Loved, Dreaded, and Wanted across several categories.

This year we also introduced a new section, Worked With vs. Want to Work With, which shows us precisely what developers used in the past year and what they want to work on in the following year. If you need a refresher on how we structure Loved, Dread and Wanted, or if you want to read about the intuition behind Worked With vs. Want to Work With, check out this post our meta post.

Technology

Most loved, dreaded, and wanted

Rust reigns supreme as most loved. Python and Typescript are the languages developers want to work with most if they aren’t already doing so.

Programming, scripting, and markup languages

For the sixth-year, Rust is the most loved language, while Python is the most wanted language for its fifth-year.

82,914 responses

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Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the language and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

82,914 responses

% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it

Python 19.04% 8,212
TypeScript 15.29% 8,867
JavaScript 14.59% 4,279
Go 14.54% 10,911
Rust 14.09% 10,864
Node.js 11.9% 6,536
C++ 8.8% 5,531
Kotlin 8.57% 6,519
Java 6.79% 3,648
C# 6.45% 3,865
SQL 6.3% 2,775
Dart 4.99% 3,892
Swift 4.74% 3,731
HTML/CSS 4.67% 1,712
C 4.52% 2,965
Haskell 3.14% 2,551
Elixir 2.9% 2,361
R 2.82% 2,218
Assembly 2.63% 2,062
Ruby 2.6% 2,011
Scala 2.57% 2,075
PHP 2.55% 1,652
Bash/Shell 2.48% 1,504
Julia 2.1% 1,717
F# 2.04% 1,678
PowerShell 1.47% 1,090
Clojure 1.45% 1,179
Erlang 1.28% 1,049
LISP 1.13% 926
Objective-C 1% 806
Matlab 0.96% 763
Crystal 0.65% 533
Perl 0.58% 470
Groovy 0.5% 406
APL 0.45% 374
VBA 0.39% 310
COBOL 0.32% 260
Delphi 0.22% 178

Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the language and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Databases

Redis is in its fifth year as the most loved database. PostgreSQL barely passes MongoDB with less than a percent as the most wanted database. And IBM DB2 is on its second year in a row as the most dreaded database.

72,517 responses

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Which database environments have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the database and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

72,517 responses

% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it

PostgreSQL 17.99% 7,931
MongoDB 17.86% 9,475
Redis 12.58% 7,294
Elasticsearch 10.52% 6,646
MySQL 9.76% 3,635
Firebase 8.09% 4,945
SQLite 7.74% 3,861
Cassandra 5.14% 3,632
DynamoDB 5.03% 3,392
Microsoft SQL Server 3.11% 1,666
MariaDB 2.93% 1,772
Oracle 2.8% 1,781
Couchbase 1.88% 1,345
IBM DB2 0.57% 407

Which database environments have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the database and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Platforms

AWS is leading as not only the most loved cloud platform but also the most wanted.

60,516 responses

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Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

60,516 responses

% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it

AWS 40.35% 12,660
Google Cloud Platform 22.56% 9,886
Microsoft Azure 21.12% 9,289
DigitalOcean 8.46% 4,315
Heroku 7.31% 3,482
IBM Cloud or Watson 3.24% 1,914
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2.6% 1,550

Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Web frameworks

Newcomer Svelte takes the top spot as the most loved framework. React is the most wanted, desired by one in four developers.

66,202 responses

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Which web frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

66,202 responses

% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it

React.js 25.12% 10,275
Vue.js 16.69% 9,054
Django 9.21% 5,230
Angular 8.47% 4,380
Svelte 6.57% 4,233
Flask 5.89% 3,299
Express 5.84% 2,989
Angular.js 5.8% 3,417
ASP.NET Core 5.2% 2,851
FastAPI 4.13% 2,635
Spring 3.89% 2,219
jQuery 3.67% 1,635
Ruby on Rails 3.28% 2,028
Gatsby 2.74% 1,747
Laravel 2.67% 1,595
ASP.NET 2.39% 1,346
Symfony 1.14% 727
Drupal 0.57% 370

Which web frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Other frameworks and libraries

While Tensorflow is the most wanted library, Pytorch is a more loved library. As .NET Core users here at Stack Overflow, we’re pleased to see it in the top spot.

58,282 responses

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Which other frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

58,282 responses

% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it

TensorFlow 21.37% 10,736
React Native 17.75% 9,096
Flutter 16.43% 8,496
Torch/PyTorch 12.06% 6,448
NumPy 9.93% 4,153
.NET Core / .NET 5 8.98% 3,860
Pandas 8.34% 3,720
Keras 5.06% 2,702
Apache Spark 4.98% 2,764
Hadoop 4.87% 2,735
.NET Framework 4.56% 1,899
Qt 4.16% 2,223
Cordova 1.29% 709

Which other frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Other tools

Earlier, we saw that Git was used by 93% of all respondents. Now we saw that 85% of those respondents want to continue working with Git. Git, Docker, and Kubernetes are both the most loved and most wanted tools.

75,793 responses

Which tools have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the technology and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

75,793 responses

% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it

Docker 29.7% 11,926
Git 29.69% 2,263
Kubernetes 21.97% 13,992
Unity 3D 7.6% 5,215
Unreal Engine 6.75% 4,955
Terraform 5.94% 4,177
Deno 5.68% 4,246
Ansible 4.21% 2,954
Yarn 2.94% 1,847
Xamarin 2.8% 2,041
Puppet 1.42% 1,055
Chef 1.27% 953
Pulumi 0.95% 719
Flow 0.84% 632

Which tools have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the technology and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Collaboration tools

While Neovim is the most loved editor it is the 10th most wanted editor.

81,838 responses

Which development environments did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Please check all that apply.

81,838 responses

% of developers who are not developing with the language or technology but have expressed interest in developing with it

Visual Studio Code 11.11% 2,646
Android Studio 4.67% 2,975
Xcode 4.04% 2,939
IntelliJ 3.42% 1,994
Vim 3.09% 1,921
Visual Studio 2.89% 1,583
PyCharm 2.82% 1,862
IPython/Jupyter 1.81% 1,292
Webstorm 1.53% 1,153
Sublime Text 1.27% 825
Neovim 1.25% 972
Rider 1.18% 926
Atom 1.14% 811
Eclipse 1.05% 725
Emacs 1.03% 798
PHPStorm 0.85% 642
RStudio 0.72% 570
Notepad++ 0.68% 391
NetBeans 0.54% 414
RubyMine 0.42% 338
TextMate 0.16% 129

Which development environments did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Please check all that apply.

Technology

Worked with vs. want to work with

Programming, scripting, and markup languages

There is a lot to unpack here, but here are some of the most notable trends we uncovered. There are over 10k Javascript developers that want to start or continue developing in Go or Rust. The majority of developers that want to use Dart are currently using JavaScript. We also see the only developers that want to work in PHP are SQL developers.

80,496 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

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Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the language and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

56,289 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

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Which programming, scripting, and markup languages have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the language and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Databases

12,590 MySQL developers want to work with PostgreSQL, while 6,429 PostgreSQL developers want to work with MySQL.

67,942 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

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Which database environments have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the database and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

49,010 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

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Which database environments have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the database and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Platforms

While AWS is the most loved platform, we see a large influx of AWS developers wanting to develop in Google Cloud next year. 8,586 AWS developers want to work with Google Cloud, while only 7,668 Google Cloud developers want to work in AWS. Developers currently using Heroku or Digital Ocean prefer to start working with or continue working with AWS, then Google Cloud, and lastly Azure. Very few developers currently using Azure want to move to Heroku.

51,638 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

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Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

39,840 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

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Which cloud platforms have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the platform and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Web frameworks

Django, Flask, and Spring developers are content to continue working in their respective frameworks. Very few developers want to work with ASP.NET.

59,625 responses

Minimum 4,000 respondents per connection.

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Which web frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

42,918 responses

Minimum 4,000 respondents per connection.

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Which web frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Other frameworks and libraries

The developers who want to work in Hadoop are currently using Pandas or Numpy. There and 3,328 Tensorflow developers that want to continue to use PyTorch, but only 2,328 Pytorch developers that want to move to Tensorflow.

46,811 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

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Which other frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

31,814 responses

Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.

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Which other frameworks and libraries have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the framework and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Other tools

71,828 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.

Which tools have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the technology and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

52,592 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.

Which tools have you done extensive development work in over the past year, and which do you want to work in over the next year? (If you both worked with the technology and want to continue to do so, please check both boxes in that row.)

Collaboration tools

We see IPython/Jupyter users want to work in VS Code. This is likely due to VS Codes adding a Notebook API to their IDE.

79,419 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

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Which development environments did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Please check all that apply.

55,375 responses

Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.

Click to toggle the visibility of a language.

Which development environments did you use regularly over the past year, and which do you want to work with over the next year? Please check all that apply.

Technology

Learning & problem solving

What do you do when you get stuck

Respondents most often use Google when they get stuck or visit Stack Overflow.

83,052 responses

Google it 89.69% 74,491
Visit Stack Overflow 79.96% 66,410
Do other work and come back later 48.01% 39,871
Watch help / tutorial videos 43.56% 36,181
Call a coworker or friend 39.5% 32,805
Go for a walk or other physical activity 37.04% 30,760
Play games 14.63% 12,152
Panic 11.99% 9,962
Meditate 9.37% 7,785
Visit another developer community (please name): 7.92% 6,577

What do you do when you get stuck on a problem? Select all that apply.

57,910 responses

Google it 89.88% 52,050
Visit Stack Overflow 79.48% 46,024
Do other work and come back later 48.45% 28,055
Call a coworker or friend 46.2% 26,752
Go for a walk or other physical activity 39.8% 23,051
Watch help / tutorial videos 39.39% 22,811
Play games 12.22% 7,074
Panic 10.33% 5,981
Meditate 9.62% 5,571
Visit another developer community (please name): 7.26% 4,204

What do you do when you get stuck on a problem? Select all that apply.

Technology

Top paying technologies

Top paying technologies

Perl moves from being the highest-paid language last year to the fifth highest-paid this year. Clojure developers have the highest median salary, 14k more than second place which belongs to F#.

46,693 responses

Clojure $95,000 1,074
F# $81,037 502
Elixir $80,077 1,013
Erlang $80,077 401
Perl $80,000 1,227
Ruby $80,000 3,872
Scala $77,832 1,411
Rust $77,530 2,938
Go $75,669 5,053
LISP $75,669 516
APL $75,631 160
Groovy $75,002 1,747
Crystal $72,400 243
Bash/Shell $71,340 13,723
PowerShell $68,824 5,483
Haskell $67,021 708
Julia $65,228 475
Objective-C $64,859 1,437
Python $59,454 19,915
R $59,454 2,050
TypeScript $59,172 16,670
Swift $58,910 2,472
C# $58,368 13,704
SQL $56,228 23,791
Assembly $55,211 1,651
Kotlin $55,071 3,935
Node.js $54,672 16,443
C++ $54,049 8,465
JavaScript $54,049 31,506
VBA $53,825 2,202
C $53,184 6,925
HTML/CSS $52,980 25,738
COBOL $52,340 230
Java $51,888 14,916
Delphi $46,704 1,031
Matlab $43,948 1,507
PHP $38,916 10,014
Dart $32,986 2,423

What is your current total compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent weekly, monthly, or yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

41,360 responses

DynamoDB $80,936 3,803
Elasticsearch $67,021 6,923
Cassandra $64,930 1,180
Redis $64,548 10,453
IBM DB2 $64,044 945
Couchbase $63,018 704
PostgreSQL $59,454 18,784
Microsoft SQL Server $58,167 12,692
SQLite $51,704 12,496
Oracle $48,644 5,235
MariaDB $45,678 7,200
MongoDB $45,401 11,150
MySQL $43,404 19,324
Firebase $37,834 5,976

What is your current total compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent weekly, monthly, or yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

32,695 responses

AWS $66,810 20,108
Microsoft Azure $64,630 11,251
Google Cloud Platform $55,600 9,815
IBM Cloud or Watson $52,942 637
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure $51,888 462
DigitalOcean $51,704 6,028
Heroku $45,000 6,588

What is your current total compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent weekly, monthly, or yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

37,246 responses

Ruby on Rails $77,556 3,220
Svelte $62,520 1,011
ASP.NET Core $60,744 7,876
Gatsby $60,129 1,645
React.js $58,128 15,540
ASP.NET $56,220 6,584
Flask $54,876 5,349
FastAPI $54,049 1,492
Spring $51,888 5,984
Drupal $51,429 961
Vue.js $50,000 7,598
Angular.js $49,450 4,649
Angular $48,852 9,613
Express $47,850 8,640
jQuery $45,797 12,808
Symfony $45,396 1,596
Django $45,379 4,778
Laravel $29,196 3,881

What is your current total compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent weekly, monthly, or yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

26,412 responses

Apache Spark $67,464 1,736
.NET Core / .NET 5 $62,520 9,735
Hadoop $60,624 1,260
.NET Framework $59,185 10,188
NumPy $54,049 7,517
Pandas $54,049 6,841
Torch/PyTorch $52,869 2,147
Qt $51,888 2,240
TensorFlow $50,000 3,660
Keras $45,396 2,165
React Native $44,160 4,162
Cordova $39,192 2,207
Flutter $32,429 3,224

What is your current total compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent weekly, monthly, or yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

43,047 responses

Pulumi $109,824 248
Terraform $90,482 4,293
Chef $90,000 659
Puppet $76,000 883
Kubernetes $75,000 8,804
Ansible $72,000 3,983
Deno $64,859 516
Docker $63,469 24,507
Yarn $57,696 8,574
Git $56,798 40,904
Flow $51,887 567
Xamarin $51,704 1,727
Unreal Engine $49,228 880
Unity 3D $45,396 2,749

What is your current total compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent weekly, monthly, or yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

46,329 responses

TextMate $80,000 394
Emacs $77,832 2,503
RubyMine $70,264 815
Rider $68,724 2,087
Vim $67,452 11,886
Neovim $67,052 2,076
IntelliJ $56,427 12,977
Xcode $55,680 5,605
Visual Studio $55,224 14,785
RStudio $54,289 1,539
Visual Studio Code $54,000 32,733
IPython/Jupyter $52,942 4,742
PyCharm $51,228 7,323
Notepad++ $50,262 13,276
Webstorm $49,725 3,987
Sublime Text $45,401 8,684
Atom $45,396 4,571
Eclipse $41,508 6,171
PHPStorm $39,768 3,757
Android Studio $38,508 9,012
NetBeans $25,128 2,661

What is your current total compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent weekly, monthly, or yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

Work

Work

Employment

We see a greater percentage of respondents working part time or in school, while those indicating full time employment decreased. This may reflect the effects of the pandemic, which saw workers from all industries stepping back and reevaluating their relationship to full and in-person employment.

Employment status

81% of professional developers are employed full-time, a decrease from 83% in 2020. The percentage of professional developers saying they were independent contractors, freelancers, or self-employed increased from 9.5% in 2020 to 11.2% in 2021 - indicating potential job insecurity or a shift to more flexible work arrangements.

83,323 responses

Employed full-time 64.31% 53,584
Student, full-time 14.14% 11,781
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 9.65% 8,041
Not employed, but looking for work 3.55% 2,961
Employed part-time 2.95% 2,461
Student, part-time 2.46% 2,051
Not employed, and not looking for work 1.47% 1,228
I prefer not to say 1.07% 890
Retired 0.39% 326

Which of the following best describes your current employment status?

58,110 responses

Employed full-time 80.68% 46,884
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 11.21% 6,515
Employed part-time 2.82% 1,637
Student, full-time 2.12% 1,230
Not employed, but looking for work 1.71% 994
Student, part-time 0.82% 479
Not employed, and not looking for work 0.28% 161
I prefer not to say 0.27% 155
Retired 0.09% 55

Which of the following best describes your current employment status?

Employment status by geography

The percent of employed full-time respondents from India decreased by 15 percentage points compared to last year. In contrast, the number of students increased by 9 percentage points.

15,266 responses

Employed full-time 73.46% 11,214
Student, full-time 11.06% 1,689
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 6.39% 976
Not employed, but looking for work 2.78% 425
Employed part-time 1.72% 263
Not employed, and not looking for work 1.6% 244
I prefer not to say 1.21% 185
Student, part-time 0.92% 140
Retired 0.85% 130

Which of the following best describes your current employment status?

10,491 responses

Employed full-time 58.39% 6,126
Student, full-time 21.25% 2,229
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 6.53% 685
Not employed, but looking for work 5.19% 544
Student, part-time 4.03% 423
Not employed, and not looking for work 1.67% 175
Employed part-time 1.53% 161
I prefer not to say 1.37% 144
Retired 0.04% 4

Which of the following best describes your current employment status?

5,618 responses

Employed full-time 63.46% 3,565
Student, full-time 16.16% 908
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 7.92% 445
Employed part-time 5.55% 312
Student, part-time 3.29% 185
Not employed, but looking for work 1.6% 90
Not employed, and not looking for work 0.94% 53
I prefer not to say 0.84% 47
Retired 0.23% 13

Which of the following best describes your current employment status?

4,471 responses

Employed full-time 71.37% 3,191
Student, full-time 12.41% 555
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 9.17% 410
Employed part-time 1.81% 81
Not employed, but looking for work 1.79% 80
Not employed, and not looking for work 1.16% 52
Retired 0.87% 39
I prefer not to say 0.74% 33
Student, part-time 0.67% 30

Which of the following best describes your current employment status?

3,009 responses

Employed full-time 64.77% 1,949
Student, full-time 15.75% 474
Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 9.07% 273
Not employed, but looking for work 2.96% 89
Not employed, and not looking for work 2.19% 66
Employed part-time 1.86% 56
Student, part-time 1.4% 42
I prefer not to say 1.26% 38
Retired 0.73% 22

Which of the following best describes your current employment status?

Work

Company info

Company size

This year we saw an increase in respondents that are freelancing compared to last year.

54,982 responses

Just me - I am a freelancer, sole proprietor, etc. 6.5% 3,573
2 to 9 employees 11.06% 6,081
10 to 19 employees 9.26% 5,092
20 to 99 employees 21.3% 11,709
100 to 499 employees 17.52% 9,631
500 to 999 employees 6.16% 3,388
1,000 to 4,999 employees 9.95% 5,472
5,000 to 9,999 employees 3.52% 1,937
10,000 or more employees 12.66% 6,961
I don’t know 2.07% 1,138

Approximately how many people are employed by the company or organization you currently work for?

Work

Salary

Salary by developer type

Across the board, engineering managers, SREs, DevOps specialists, and data engineers tend to receive the highest salaries. When focusing on the US, we see some differences at the bottom of the salary spectrum. In the US, mobile developers and educators tend to have a higher salary relative to other occupations when compared to the global developer population.

46,092 responses

Median yearly salary in USD

Engineering manager $95,976 2,803
Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) $94,996 1,322
Engineer, site reliability $84,000 1,849
DevOps specialist $70,264 5,481
Engineer, data $68,034 3,076
Scientist $64,859 1,349
Data scientist or machine learning specialist $63,216 2,978
Data or business analyst $60,505 2,536
Product manager $60,000 1,999
Marketing or sales professional $58,772.5 302
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications $58,639 7,959
Developer, embedded applications or devices $58,373 3,207
Developer, back-end $56,723 21,617
Developer, full-stack $56,038 24,439
Developer, QA or test $55,973 2,629
System administrator $55,271 4,230
Database administrator $55,224 4,042
Developer, game or graphics $54,480 1,304
Educator $53,832 1,511
Designer $51,647 2,912
Developer, front-end $49,725 13,129
Academic researcher $49,457.5 1,872
Developer, mobile $41,597 6,694
Student $19,452 1,592

What is your current total compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent weekly, monthly, or yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

9,649 responses

Median yearly salary in USD

Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) $177,500 320
Engineering manager $165,000 759
Engineer, site reliability $150,000 557
DevOps specialist $135,000 1,259
Developer, back-end $133,000 4,279
Product manager $130,000 364
Engineer, data $129,250 774
Developer, game or graphics $128,000 249
Marketing or sales professional $127,500 82
Data scientist or machine learning specialist $125,000 673
Developer, desktop or enterprise applications $120,000 1,708
Developer, embedded applications or devices $120,000 677
Developer, full-stack $120,000 5,259
Developer, mobile $120,000 960
Scientist $120,000 351
Database administrator $115,000 950
Developer, front-end $115,000 2,488
Educator $115,000 263
System administrator $115,000 952
Developer, QA or test $110,000 643
Designer $108,000 733
Data or business analyst $102,000 658
Academic researcher $100,000 365
Student $70,000 218

What is your current total compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent weekly, monthly, or yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

Salary and experience by developer type

Even though Engineering managers, SREs, DevOps specialist roles pay the most, we see they also have, on average, over ten years of professional experience. Data scientists or machine learning specialists are the 8th most paid but, on average, have the fewest years of experience. Designers are the lowest paid even though they have over ten years of experience on average.

43,800 responses

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What is your current total compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent weekly, monthly, or yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

Salary and experience by language

PHP developers are disproportionately underpaid compared to other languages with the same experience.

43,676 responses

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Hover over each point for full details.

What is your current total compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)? Please enter a whole number in the box below, without any punctuation. If you are paid hourly, please estimate an equivalent weekly, monthly, or yearly salary. If you prefer not to answer, please leave the box empty.

Methodology

How we planned and analyzed our survey

Methodology

General

This report is based on a survey of 83,439 software developers from 181 countries around the world. This is the number of responses we consider “qualified” for analytical purposes based on time spent on the full, completed survey; another approximately 172 responses were submitted but not included in the analysis because respondents spent less than three minutes on the survey.

The survey was fielded from May 25 2021 to June 15 2021.

The median time spent on the survey for qualified responses was 10.21 minutes.

Respondents were recruited primarily through channels owned by Stack Overflow. The top sources of respondents were onsite messaging, blog posts, email lists, banner ads, and social media posts. Since respondents were recruited in this way, highly engaged users on Stack Overflow were more likely to notice the prompts to take the survey over the duration of collection promotion.

As an incentive, respondents who finished the survey could opt in to a “Census” badge if they completed the survey.

Due to United States transport/export sanctions, our survey was unfortunately unaccessible to prospective respondents in Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria, due to the traffic being blocked by our third party survey software. While some respondents used VPNs to get around the block, the limitation should be kept in mind when interpreting survey results.

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.

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.

The salary question, like most on the survey, was optional. There were 46,844 respondents who gave us salary data.

We converted salaries from user currencies to USD using the exchange rate on 2021-06-16, and also converted to annual salaries assuming 12 working months and 50 working weeks.

The top approximately 2% of salaries inside and outside of the US were trimmed and replaced with threshold values. The threshold values for inside and outside the US were different.

To identify which technologies to include on the survey this year, we looked at both the most popular and fastest growing tags on Stack Overflow (in terms of questions posted). We compared these to the technologies we included last year and looked at how many people chose each option. We synthesized all this together to curate a collection of technologies to include.

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

Methodology

Feedback

How do you feel about the length of the survey this year?

The majority of respondents felt like this year’s survey was an appropriate length.

81,711 responses

Appropriate in length 78.95% 64,514
Too long 16.02% 13,087
Too short 5.03% 4,110

How do you feel about the length of the survey this year?

How easy or difficult was this survey to complete?

Less than one percent of respondents felt like this year’s survey was difficult.

81,948 responses

Easy 76.98% 63,087
Neither easy nor difficult 22.08% 18,091
Difficult 0.94% 770

How easy or difficult was this survey to complete?

Methodology

Participants

Who participated in this survey

Similar to previous years the overwhelming majority of respondents are a developer by profession

82,926 responses

I am a developer by profession 69.7% 58,153
I am a student who is learning to code 14.42% 12,029
I am not primarily a developer, but I write code sometimes as part of my work 7.88% 6,578
I code primarily as a hobby 5.91% 4,929
I used to be a developer by profession, but no longer am 1.48% 1,237

Which of the following options best describes you today? Here, by "developer" we mean "someone who writes code." *

Where do you live?

The following countries are the top 10 countries that we received responses from.

49,116 responses

United States of America 18.32% 15,288
India 12.6% 10,511
Germany 6.74% 5,625
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 5.36% 4,475
Canada 3.61% 3,012
France 3.25% 2,708
Brazil 2.7% 2,254
Poland 2.16% 1,805
Netherlands 2.12% 1,772
Italy 2% 1,666

Where do you live? *