Stack Overflow Annual User Survey Results(blog.stackoverflow.com)
blog.stackoverflow.com
Stack Overflow Annual User Survey Results
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/survey-says/
6 comments
I'm not too surprised by 5% making more than $150k/year; there aren't that many $150k/year engineering jobs even in high-cost-of-living countries. Usually you have to move into management, start a business, or have a successful consulting gig if you want that kind of money.
For example, the vast majority of Google engineers make under $150k: http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm...
Or, say, IBM engineers: http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Salary/IBM-Salaries-E354.htm?fil...
For example, the vast majority of Google engineers make under $150k: http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Salary/Google-Salaries-E9079.htm...
Or, say, IBM engineers: http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Salary/IBM-Salaries-E354.htm?fil...
I think perhaps you are jaded by location? I can make that 150k a year in Cali, Seattle, and a few other popular locations... (I've been offered a few) but you've got to understand that the 75k a year folks are making in the middle of the country provides a very similar standard of living for the location that the 150k does elsewhere...
Perhaps developers making $150K+ don't need to read SO (and vice versa)?
It seems that the survey was only announced on the stackoverflow blog (I am a SO regular and haven't noticed any news about it.) This might have skewed the results a bit.
Update: I have found out they ran a banner on SO to promote it, so my concern becomes less valid. (Not totally invalid, advertising the survey on the blog might still have skewed the statistics towards people who read the SO blog, which might be a little different demographics than the general SO population.)
Update: I have found out they ran a banner on SO to promote it, so my concern becomes less valid. (Not totally invalid, advertising the survey on the blog might still have skewed the statistics towards people who read the SO blog, which might be a little different demographics than the general SO population.)
Actually what strikes me the most interesting is the fact that Stack's largest audience is still from the US.
I would think that by now SO would see (much) more international traffic.
I would think that by now SO would see (much) more international traffic.
Well, it does get quite a lot of international traffic. For example, a lot of my colleages (here in the Netherlands) are using it. The site is very famous with programmers.
I think that the uptake from the large, non-English countries is less because, for example, in my experience, Russians usually prefer Russian sites to ask their questions,
I think that the uptake from the large, non-English countries is less because, for example, in my experience, Russians usually prefer Russian sites to ask their questions,
Well, the U.S. has the 2nd-most internet users after China, and there aren't many Chinese SO users, so I'm not surprised the U.S. ends up as the largest single country.
If we compare some general internet-user stats by continent (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm) to SO's respondents, we get:
If we compare some general internet-user stats by continent (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm) to SO's respondents, we get:
of internet % of SO
Asia 42.0% 6.3%
Europe 24.2% 37.8%
US/Canada 13.5% 42.4%
Latin America/Caribbean 10.4% 4.1%
Africa 5.6% 1.5%
Middle East 3.2% 2.6%
Oceania/Australia 1.1% 5.0%
The selection of answers for #9 ("What is your involvement in purchasing?") were incredibly well formulated — one of the best survey questions I've ever seen.
I don't use SO very much, but this poll looks interesting.
The most interesting thing (not disclosed in the results) is what people wrote for "other (please specify)" in the question "13. Which languages are you proficient in?"
The most interesting thing (not disclosed in the results) is what people wrote for "other (please specify)" in the question "13. Which languages are you proficient in?"
The results were downloadable from the website if you took part. I copied the "other" column from the .xls file and here's a sort | uniq -c | head -21 of that table. 2188 people didn't mention other languages.
Here's the text file of that column for you to see for yourself http://pastebin.com/wMZUBMub
2188
55 Objective-C
40 Delphi
36 Java
24 VB.NET
19 VB
16 Haskell
14 vb.net
13 Objective C
12 Scala
11 ColdFusion
10 VB.Net
10 ActionScript
9 HTML
8 R
6 Lua
6 F#
5 vb
5 PowerShell
5 objective-c
5 Groovy
Here's the text file of that column for you to see for yourself http://pastebin.com/wMZUBMub
I'm very surprised that C# rated so highly - maybe I'm out of touch - has it really gained that much traction? Which sectors is it focused in? Is it largely due it being pushed strongly by Microsoft, or are there other reasons for large takeup?
The initial set of SO users were from the Joel on Software forums and from Coding Horror readers (neither of which were strictly Microsoft development sites, but both had audiences that skewed heavily in that direction).
One of the simple genius things that SO did was deliberately not segregate the community into product silos: no C#overflow, RubyOverflow, etc. even though at the beginning there was a fairly vocal outcry from users for them to do so.
One of the simple genius things that SO did was deliberately not segregate the community into product silos: no C#overflow, RubyOverflow, etc. even though at the beginning there was a fairly vocal outcry from users for them to do so.
I think Jon Skeet attracts them. http://stackoverflow.com/users/22656/jon-skeet and (for fun) http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/9134/jon-skeet-facts :-)
Stack Overflow was created by a very Microsoft-oriented team.
C# is also new "Visual Basic" for many internal corporate development projects.
I understand that the numbers are a bit skewed by people in countries with lower costs of living, but seriously, a developer in the 'states who can code his way out of a paper bag shouldn't be taking a job for $60k a year. Yet it looks like a lot of people are settling for them.
Guys, you gotta stand up for yourselves.