Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2021
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
Key territories
Stack Overflow serves the international community, and our survey received responses from almost every country on Earth.
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.
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.
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% 5 - 10 years 14.08% 11 - 17 years 53.06% 18 - 24 years 24.1% 25 - 34 years 5.04% 35 - 44 years 1.58% 45 - 54 years 0.65% 55 - 64 years 0.29% Older than 64 years 0.1%
At what age did you write your first line of code or program? (e.g., webpage, Hello World, Scratch project)
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.
All Respondents By Age 82,963 responses
Other online resources (videos, blogs, etc) 59.53% School 53.59% Books / Physical media 51.53% Online Courses or Certification 40.39% Online Forum 31.62% Friend or family member 18.28% Colleague 17.15% Coding Bootcamp 10.24%
How did you learn to code? Select all that apply.
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.
All Respondents Average by Top 10 Countries 81,641 responses
Less than 1 year 1.82% 1 to 4 years 17.8% 5 to 9 years 29.91% 10 to 14 years 18.9% 15 to 19 years 10.4% 20 to 24 years 8.17% 25 to 29 years 4.48% 30 to 34 years 3.41% 35 to 39 years 2.65% 40 to 44 years 1.75% 45 to 49 years 0.41% More than 50 years 0.28%
Including any education, how many years have you been coding in total?
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% 1 to 4 years 31.26% 5 to 9 years 27.31% 10 to 14 years 15.36% 15 to 19 years 8.29% 20 to 24 years 6.88% 25 to 29 years 2.99% 30 to 34 years 1.83% 35 to 39 years 0.95% 40 to 44 years 0.49% 45 to 49 years 0.12% More than 50 years 0.1%
NOT including education, how many years have you coded professionally (as a part of your work)?
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 Engineering manager 13.82 Product manager 12.47 Database administrator 12.23 Developer, desktop or enterprise applications 12.19 System administrator 12.12 Marketing or sales professional 11.99 Educator 11.98 Designer 11.93 Developer, embedded applications or devices 11.62 Data or business analyst 11.4 Engineer, site reliability 11.33 DevOps specialist 11.26 Scientist 10.93 Developer, QA or test 10.55 Developer, game or graphics 10.53 Engineer, data 10 Developer, back-end 9.94 Developer, full-stack 9.62 Developer, mobile 9.46 Developer, front-end 9.32 Academic researcher 9.29 Data scientist or machine learning specialist 8.92 Student 4.37
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.
Full stack, back-end, front-end, and desktop developers continue to account for the majority of all respondents.
All Respondents United States 66,484 responses
Developer, full-stack 49.47% Developer, back-end 43.73% Developer, front-end 27.42% Developer, desktop or enterprise applications 16.6% Developer, mobile 14.74% DevOps specialist 10.62% System administrator 9.14% Database administrator 8.51% Designer 6.94% Developer, embedded applications or devices 6.92% Data scientist or machine learning specialist 6.43% Student 6.3% Engineer, data 6.28% Engineering manager 5.73% Data or business analyst 5.7% Developer, QA or test 5.43% Product manager 4.62% Academic researcher 4.36% Engineer, site reliability 3.68% Educator 3.56% Developer, game or graphics 3.18% Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) 3.16% Scientist 3.03% Marketing or sales professional 0.96%
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.
70% of all respondents and 80% of professional developers have completed some form of higher education, a bachelor’s degree being the most common.
All Respondents Professional Developers 83,439 responses
Primary/elementary school 2.97% Secondary school (e.g. American high school, German Realschule or Gymnasium, etc.) 11.43% Some college/university study without earning a degree 12.69% Associate degree (A.A., A.S., etc.) 2.67% Bachelor’s degree (B.A., B.S., B.Eng., etc.) 42.37% Master’s degree (M.A., M.S., M.Eng., MBA, etc.) 20.99% Professional degree (JD, MD, etc.) 1.51% Other doctoral degree (Ph.D., Ed.D., etc.) 3.08% Something else 1.92%
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.
48% of professional developers are 25-34 years old. Almost half of the respondents 65 years or older do not consider themselves professional developers.
All Respondents Professional Developers 82,407 responses
Under 18 years old 6.52% 18-24 years old 25.47% 25-34 years old 39.52% 35-44 years old 18.42% 45-54 years old 6.64% 55-64 years old 2.21% 65 years or older 0.51% Prefer not to say 0.7%
What is your age?
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.
Only 1% of respondents identify as transgender, half of them being professional developers.
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.
All Respondents Professional Developers 73,366 responses
Straight / Heterosexual 84.52% Prefer not to say 6.52% Bisexual 5.36% Gay or Lesbian 2.39% Prefer to self-describe: 2.29% Queer 1.5%
Which of the following describe you, if any? Please check all that apply.
We continue to see evidence that people of color are underrepresented among professional developers.
All Respondents Professional Developers 79,464 responses
White or of European descent 58.43% South Asian 11.6% Hispanic or Latino/a/x 7.01% Middle Eastern 5.31% Southeast Asian 5.14% East Asian 4.7% Prefer not to say 3.85% Or, in your own words: 3.67% Black or of African descent 3.38% I don't know 3.38% Multiracial 1.66% Biracial 1.18% Indigenous (such as Native American, Pacific Islander, or Indigenous Australian) 0.72%
Which of the following describe you, if any? Please check all that apply.
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% Or, in your own words: 1.24% I am deaf / hard of hearing 0.77% I am unable to / find it difficult to walk or stand without assistance 0.42% I am unable to / find it difficult to type 0.41%
Which of the following describe you, if any? Please check all that apply.
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% I have a mood or emotional disorder (e.g. depression, bipolar disorder) 8.94% I have a concentration and/or memory disorder (e.g. ADHD) 8.51% I have autism / an autism spectrum disorder (e.g. Asperger's) 3.7% Or, in your own words: 1.81%
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 popular technologies
Python passed SQL to become our third most popular technology, and Node.JS moves to the sixth most popular technology.
JavaScript completes its ninth year in a row as the most commonly used programming language. For most developers, programming is web programming. Python traded places with SQL to become the third most popular language.
All Respondents Professional Developers 83,052 responses
JavaScript 64.96% HTML/CSS 56.07% Python 48.24% SQL 47.08% Java 35.35% Node.js 33.91% TypeScript 30.19% C# 27.86% Bash/Shell 27.13% C++ 24.31% PHP 21.98% C 21.01% PowerShell 10.75% Go 9.55% Kotlin 8.32% Rust 7.03% Ruby 6.75% Dart 6.02% Assembly 5.61% Swift 5.1% R 5.07% VBA 4.66% Matlab 4.66% Groovy 3.01% Objective-C 2.8% Scala 2.6% Perl 2.46% Haskell 2.12% Delphi 2.1% Clojure 1.88% Elixir 1.74% LISP 1.33% Julia 1.29% F# 0.97% Erlang 0.79% APL 0.65% Crystal 0.56% COBOL 0.53%
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.)
The most common databases are consistent between all respondents and professional developers. The only difference we observed is that professional developers are slightly more likely to use Microsoft SQL Server over MongoDB.
All Respondents Professional Developers 73,317 responses
MySQL 50.18% PostgreSQL 40.42% SQLite 32.18% MongoDB 27.7% Microsoft SQL Server 26.87% Redis 20.69% MariaDB 17.19% Firebase 16.17% Elasticsearch 13.27% Oracle 12.61% DynamoDB 7.3% Cassandra 2.66% IBM DB2 2.04% Couchbase 1.57%
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.)
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.
All Respondents Professional Developers 62,061 responses
AWS 54.22% Google Cloud Platform 31.05% Microsoft Azure 30.77% Heroku 24% DigitalOcean 17.67% IBM Cloud or Watson 2.55% Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 1.89%
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.)
This year, React.js surpassed jQuery as the most commonly used web framework.
All Respondents Professional Developers 67,593 responses
React.js 40.14% jQuery 34.42% Express 23.82% Angular 22.96% Vue.js 18.97% ASP.NET Core 18.1% Flask 16.14% ASP.NET 15.74% Django 14.99% Spring 14.56% Angular.js 11.49% Laravel 10.12% Ruby on Rails 7.04% Gatsby 3.97% FastAPI 3.88% Symfony 3.85% Svelte 2.75% Drupal 2.39%
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.)
The .NET framework gets the most love in other technologies, though several data science libraries for Python make strong showings.
All Respondents Professional Developers 59,921 responses
.NET Framework 34.2% NumPy 33.84% .NET Core / .NET 5 31.5% Pandas 28.12% TensorFlow 16.53% React Native 14.51% Flutter 13.55% Keras 10.14% Qt 9.9% Torch/PyTorch 9.89% Cordova 7.18% Apache Spark 5.83% Hadoop 4.43%
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.)
Over 90% of respondents use Git, suggesting that it is a fundamental tool to being a developer.
All Respondents Professional Developers 76,253 responses
Git 93.43% Docker 48.85% Yarn 17.73% Kubernetes 16.6% Unity 3D 9.88% Ansible 7.68% Terraform 7.46% Xamarin 3.9% Unreal Engine 3.21% Puppet 1.8% Deno 1.41% Chef 1.35% Flow 1.27% Pulumi 0.5%
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.)
Visual Studio Code has a significant lead as the IDE of choice across all developers.
All Respondents Professional Developers 82,277 responses
Visual Studio Code 71.06% Visual Studio 33.03% Notepad++ 29.71% IntelliJ 28.74% Vim 24.19% Android Studio 22.22% Sublime Text 20.47% PyCharm 19.29% Eclipse 15.87% Atom 12.94% IPython/Jupyter 12.63% Xcode 11.07% Webstorm 8.04% PHPStorm 7.47% NetBeans 7.15% Emacs 5.3% Neovim 4.99% Rider 3.99% RStudio 3.92% RubyMine 1.49% TextMate 0.83%
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.
Windows continues to be the most popular operating system, though slightly less so among professional developers. This year was also the first time we added WSL as an option.
All Respondents Professional Developers 82,719 responses
Windows 45.33% Linux-based 25.32% MacOS 25.19% Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) 3.29% BSD 0.18%
What is the primary operating system in which you work? *
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.
For the sixth-year, Rust is the most loved language, while Python is the most wanted language for its fifth-year.
Loved vs. Dreaded Want 82,914 responses
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.)
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.
Loved vs. Dreaded Want 72,517 responses
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.)
AWS is leading as not only the most loved cloud platform but also the most wanted.
Loved vs. Dreaded Want 60,516 responses
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.)
Newcomer Svelte takes the top spot as the most loved framework. React is the most wanted, desired by one in four developers.
Loved vs. Dreaded Want 66,202 responses
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.)
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.
Loved vs. Dreaded Want 58,282 responses
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.)
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.
Loved vs. Dreaded Want 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.)
While Neovim is the most loved editor it is the 10th most wanted editor.
Loved vs. Dreaded Want 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.
Technology
Worked with vs. want to work with
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.
All Respondents Professional Developers 80,496 responses
Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.
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.)
12,590 MySQL developers want to work with PostgreSQL, while 6,429 PostgreSQL developers want to work with MySQL.
All Respondents Professional Developers 67,942 responses
Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.
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.)
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.
All Respondents Professional Developers 51,638 responses
Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.
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.)
Django, Flask, and Spring developers are content to continue working in their respective frameworks. Very few developers want to work with ASP.NET.
All Respondents Professional Developers 59,625 responses
Minimum 4,000 respondents per connection.
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.)
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.
All Respondents Professional Developers 46,811 responses
Minimum 1,000 respondents per connection.
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.)
All Respondents Professional Developers 71,828 responses
Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.
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.)
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.
All Respondents Professional Developers 79,419 responses
Minimum 5,000 respondents per connection.
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
Respondents most often use Google when they get stuck or visit Stack Overflow.
All Respondents Professional Developers 83,052 responses
Google it 89.69% Visit Stack Overflow 79.96% Do other work and come back later 48.01% Watch help / tutorial videos 43.56% Call a coworker or friend 39.5% Go for a walk or other physical activity 37.04% Play games 14.63% Panic 11.99% Meditate 9.37% Visit another developer community (please name): 7.92%
What do you do when you get stuck on a problem? Select all that apply.
Technology
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#.
Programming, Scripting, and Markup Languages Databases Platforms Web Frameworks Other Frameworks and Libraries Other Tools Collaboration Tools 46,693 responses
Clojure $95,000 F# $81,037 Elixir $80,077 Erlang $80,077 Perl $80,000 Ruby $80,000 Scala $77,832 Rust $77,530 Go $75,669 LISP $75,669 APL $75,631 Groovy $75,002 Crystal $72,400 Bash/Shell $71,340 PowerShell $68,824 Haskell $67,021 Julia $65,228 Objective-C $64,859 Python $59,454 R $59,454 TypeScript $59,172 Swift $58,910 C# $58,368 SQL $56,228 Assembly $55,211 Kotlin $55,071 Node.js $54,672 C++ $54,049 JavaScript $54,049 VBA $53,825 C $53,184 HTML/CSS $52,980 COBOL $52,340 Java $51,888 Delphi $46,704 Matlab $43,948 PHP $38,916 Dart $32,986
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.
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.
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.
All Respondents Professional Developers 83,323 responses
Employed full-time 64.31% Student, full-time 14.14% Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 9.65% Not employed, but looking for work 3.55% Employed part-time 2.95% Student, part-time 2.46% Not employed, and not looking for work 1.47% I prefer not to say 1.07% Retired 0.39%
Which of the following best describes your current employment status?
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.
United States India Germany United Kingdom Canada 15,266 responses
Employed full-time 73.46% Student, full-time 11.06% Independent contractor, freelancer, or self-employed 6.39% Not employed, but looking for work 2.78% Employed part-time 1.72% Not employed, and not looking for work 1.6% I prefer not to say 1.21% Student, part-time 0.92% Retired 0.85%
Which of the following best describes your current employment status?
Company info
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% 2 to 9 employees 11.06% 10 to 19 employees 9.26% 20 to 99 employees 21.3% 100 to 499 employees 17.52% 500 to 999 employees 6.16% 1,000 to 4,999 employees 9.95% 5,000 to 9,999 employees 3.52% 10,000 or more employees 12.66% I don’t know 2.07%
Approximately how many people are employed by the company or organization you currently work for?
Salary
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.
All Respondents United States 46,092 responses
Median yearly salary in USD
Engineering manager $95,976 Senior Executive (C-Suite, VP, etc.) $94,996 Engineer, site reliability $84,000 DevOps specialist $70,264 Engineer, data $68,034 Scientist $64,859 Data scientist or machine learning specialist $63,216 Data or business analyst $60,505 Product manager $60,000 Marketing or sales professional $58,772.5 Developer, desktop or enterprise applications $58,639 Developer, embedded applications or devices $58,373 Developer, back-end $56,723 Developer, full-stack $56,038 Developer, QA or test $55,973 System administrator $55,271 Database administrator $55,224 Developer, game or graphics $54,480 Educator $53,832 Designer $51,647 Developer, front-end $49,725 Academic researcher $49,457.5 Developer, mobile $41,597 Student $19,452
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.
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
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.
PHP developers are disproportionately underpaid compared to other languages with the same experience.
43,676 responses
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.
Community
Stack Overflow site use
Less than 1% of respondents have never visited Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange Network.
All Respondents Professional Developers 83,171 responses
Stack Overflow 98.47% Stack Exchange 69.77% Stack Overflow for Teams (private knowledge sharing & collaboration platform for companies) 4.85% I have never visited Stack Overflow or the Stack Exchange network 0.9%
Which of the following Stack Overflow sites have you visited? Select all that apply.
We know that developers visit Stack Overflow a lot, and earlier this year, we confirmed that they copy code just as much. From this year’s survey, we also know that 80% of respondents visit Stack Overflow weekly, and 55% of them visit daily.
All Respondents United States 82,413 responses
Multiple times per day 23.76% Daily or almost daily 30.65% A few times per week 27.28% A few times per month or weekly 15.42% Less than once per month or monthly 2.89%
How frequently would you say you visit Stack Overflow?
8 out of 10 respondents have a Stack Overflow account.
82,525 responses
Yes 82.17% No 12.74% Not sure/can't remember 5.09%
Do you have a Stack Overflow account?
Of those with a Stack Overflow account, 46% are participating on the site less than once per month or monthly.
All Respondents United States 67,553 responses
Multiple times per day 1.86% Daily or almost daily 3.87% A few times per week 8.42% A few times per month or weekly 19.21% Less than once per month or monthly 45.56% I have never participated in Q&A on Stack Overflow 21.08%
How frequently would you say you participate in Q&A on Stack Overflow? By participate we mean ask, answer, vote for, or comment on questions.
Only 44% of respondents consider themselves “somewhat” or “definitely” a member of the Stack Overflow community. Of these respondents, we see that gender minorities are less likely to consider themselves a member of the Stack Overflow community.
All Respondents By Gender By Age 82,319 responses
Yes, somewhat 28.65% No, not really 25.14% Neutral 20.75% Yes, definitely 15.66% No, not at all 8.06% Not sure 1.74%
Do you consider yourself a member of the Stack Overflow community?
Community
Stack Overflow community now
Most respondents do not belong to any other development communities online.
82,828 responses
No 64.43% Yes 35.57%
Are you a member of any other online developer communities?
Almost 25 thousand respondents belong to other online developer communities. 85% of the them are open to the public for anyone to join. The majority of these other communities belong on Reddit, Github or Discord.
All Respondents Top Other Communities 24,534 responses
Public - Anyone can join 84.76% Private - Invitation required to join 15.24%
Please name up to 5 other online developer communities you belong to, and indicate whether they are public (anyone can join) or private (invitation required).
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
The majority of respondents felt like this year’s survey was an appropriate length.
81,711 responses
Appropriate in length 78.95% Too long 16.02% Too short 5.03%
How do you feel about the length of the survey this year?
Less than one percent of respondents felt like this year’s survey was difficult.
81,948 responses
Easy 76.98% Neither easy nor difficult 22.08% Difficult 0.94%
How easy or difficult was this survey to complete?
Methodology
Participants
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% I am a student who is learning to code 14.42% I am not primarily a developer, but I write code sometimes as part of my work 7.88% I code primarily as a hobby 5.91% I used to be a developer by profession, but no longer am 1.48%
Which of the following options best describes you today? Here, by "developer" we mean "someone who writes code." *
The following countries are the top 10 countries that we received responses from.
49,116 responses
United States of America 18.32% India 12.6% Germany 6.74% United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 5.36% Canada 3.61% France 3.25% Brazil 2.7% Poland 2.16% Netherlands 2.12% Italy 2%
Where do you live? *
