Stack Overflow Releases 2017 Developer Survey Results

NEW YORK, March 22, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Stack Overflow, the world's largest online community for programmers to learn, share their knowledge and level up their careers, today released the Stack Overflow Annual Developer Survey results . With more than 64,000 responses fielded from 213 countries and dependent territories, the Stack Overflow Annual Developer Survey is the most comprehensive survey of the programmer workforce to date.

The 2017 report examines all aspects of the developer experience from education backgrounds and career satisfaction to what developers care about when searching for new job opportunities. These trends are invaluable for organizations looking to scale or cultivate technical teams.

"In a hiring landscape where developers are in constant demand, understanding the talent you want to hire is the single most important thing you can do to attract - and retain - the right developers," said Stack Overflow VP Jay Hanlon. "Thanks to the generosity of the largest community of developers in the world, the developer survey is an invaluable tool for any employer who wants insights into what actually drives and motivates developers throughout their careers."

What Employers and Recruiters Need to Know
To attract and hire the best developers, employers need insight into what motivates developers; how their education and skills are evolving; and where they look for new opportunities. While only 13.1 percent of developers are actively looking for a job, 75.2 percent of developers are interested in hearing about new job opportunities. Key findings from this year's survey indicate a few interesting trends:

• Working Remotely is Important. When asked what they valued most when considering a new job, 53.3 percent of respondents said remote options were a top priority. Sixty-four percent of developers reported working remotely at least one day a month, and 11.1 percent say they're full-time remote or almost all the time. Also, the highest job satisfaction ratings came from developers who work remotely full-time.
• Developers Feel Underpaid. A majority of developers — 56.5 percent — said they were underpaid. Developers who work in government and non-profits feel the most underpaid, while those who work in finance feel the most overpaid.
• Majority of Developers Continue to Learn Post Formal Education. Thirty-two percent of current professional developers said their formal education was not very important or not important at all to their career success. This is not entirely surprising given that 90 percent of developers overall consider themselves at least somewhat self-taught: a formal degree is only one aspect of their education, and so much of their practical day-to-day work depends on their company's individual tech stack decisions.
• Diversity is A Priority in the Workplace. Eighty-eight percent of developers at least somewhat agreed that diversity is important, up from 73 percent last year.
• Programming Didn't Always Start in Childhood. A common misconception about developers is that they've all been programming since childhood. In fact, the survey revealed that 11.3 percent of professional developers got their first coding job within a year of learning how to program. A further 36.9 percent learned to program between one and four years before beginning their careers as developers.

To learn more about how Stack Overflow helps employers find and recruit developers, download a free copy of the 2017 Developer Hiring Landscape.

The Developer Profile
Like all professionals, developers have preferences on their work environment and the tools they use. The developer survey zeroed in on some of those preferences:

• Silence Please. Nearly a quarter of developers, 24.2 percent, want complete silence when coding.
• Python and Node.js Continue to Be Popular. Since Stack Overflow started conducting the developer survey, Python and Node.js have grown in popularity, while the usage of C# and C has declined.
• So Much Love for Rust. For the second year in a row, Rust was the most loved programming language. This means that proportionally, more developers wanted to continue working with it than any other language. Swift, last year's second most popular language, ranked as fourth.
• Not So Much Love for Visual Basic. For the second year in a row, Visual Basic (for 2017, Visual Basic 6, specifically) ranked as the most dreaded language; 88.3 percent of developers currently using Visual Basic said they did not want to continue using it.
• Sounds Like Gift. Sixty-five percent of developers pronounce "GIF" with a hard "g," like gift.

You can view the full results of the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2017 now.

About Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow is the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and level up their careers. More than 40 million professional and aspiring programmers visit Stack Overflow each month to help solve coding problems, develop new skills, and find job opportunities.

Founded in 2008, Stack Overflow partners with businesses to help them understand, hire, engage, and enable the world's developers. To learn more about Stack Overflow's business solutions, which include market research, advertising, technical recruiting, and enterprise knowledge sharing, visit business.stackoverflow.com.

SOURCE Stack Overflow

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