A programmer’s salary depends on multiple factors. AnswerMiner can help you find out which factors are important related to salaries. StackOverflow published an exhausting 51,392 respondent, 140 question survey of developers, programmers, their habits, and their salaries. The survey was done in 2017, so the numbers will surely be higher in 2018.
Typical Salary: Approximately $50,000/ Year
The question was,
“What is your current annual base salary, before taxes, and excluding bonuses, grants, or other compensation?”
This means that salary data contain gross values, not net values. Programmers receive about only 70% of it, depending on tax percentage.
The answers might be biased because
a) overpaid programmers could be more likely to answer this question
b) underpaid programmers could be more likely to answer this question
However, based on a full examination of this dataset and a comparison of results from other sources, we can say that the earnings-related answers in this survey are similar to the truth.
| Calculation | Explanation | Gross Salary in USD/Year |
|---|---|---|
| Full Range | Lowest and highest values | $0-197,000 |
| Mean | Mathematical average | $56,298 |
| Median | 50% are below this, 50% are above | $50,000 |
| Usual Range | 10% are below this, 10% are above | $6,636-115,000 |
The distribution of wages can be best represented on a histogram.
What Does Salary Depend On?
Many things are correlated with developers’ salaries, and some factors are not related.
The most important factors are
- Country
- Number of years of experience
- Company size
The least important factors are
- Programming language
- Dislikes that a coworker uses a mechanical keyboard
- Thinks StackOverflow makes the world a better place
- Influence on hardware decisions
- Importance of job title
- IDE used
- Gender
Salary by Country
The intensity of the bars on the bar chart above reflect the number of respondents.
The countries with the top salaries are
- USA
- Switzerland
- Israel
- Australia
- Canada
- Germany
- Sweden
- UK
The countries with the lowest salaries are
- Iran
- India
- Brazil
- Russia
- Romania
Salary by Experience
On this line chart, you can easily see that more years of experience means a higher salary.
Salary by Company Size
The trend is obvious from this column chart: the bigger the company, the higher the salary.
At small companies that employ only fewer than 10 programmers, the median salary is only $36,124/year.
At large companies that employ 10,000+ programmers, the median salary is $68,750/year.
The salary of developers at the most common companies (20-99 employees) is about $45,455/year.
Salary by Experience and Company Size
The above heat-map chart combines company size, experience, and salary. The darker cells mean a higher median salary, and lighter cells mean a lower median salary.
Does Money Buy Happiness?
Yes, up to a point. Where is that point? At around $160,000. Job satisfaction and salary are positively correlated, but it does not mean that money causes satisfaction. Maybe satisfaction causes money, or there are some other hidden factors that cause money and satisfaction together.
It’s interesting that
the bigger the company, the higher salary, and
the higher salary, the more satisfaction,
but the bigger company, the less satisfaction
(large companies: ~6.81 satisfaction level; small companies: 7.01 satisfaction level).
Therefore, it seems that you must decide if
you want more money or
greater satisfaction.
What drives satisfaction besides money? People who are not seeking a new job and think that they are overpaid are much more satisfied with their job than others. Among many other factors, the satisfaction is mostly correlated with
- Country (most satisfied countries are Israel, the Netherlands, and Romania, despite low wages)
- Influence on purchasing personal workstation hardware
Final Thoughts
Data science is not only good for analyzing your salary. Developers with data science knowledge earn +7.5% more money than those who don’t have this knowledge. This exploratory data analysis was made with the AnswerMiner app.
