Josh W. Comeau
It’s no secret that the tech industry has been rocky for the past couple of years. It’s never been easy to get started as a software developer, but these days it can feel impossible; even developers with years of experience report that they’re struggling to find work.
And yet, these survey results suggest that things aren’t quite as bad as they seem. We’ve all seen the headlines about huge rounds of tech layoffs, but only a small minority of developers report having been laid off in the past year (and this is true even for junior devs!).
A majority of developers say their salary increased in the past year, with only 9% saying their compensation was reduced. The median junior developer submitted just 10 applications to land their current role. And only 14% of respondents say that they’re unhappy or very unhappy with their job.
The tech industry still has major issues (for example, almost half of women/non-binary respondents report facing discrimination based on their gender or gender identity), so I’m not claiming that everything is great 😅.
But the prevailing wisdom online is that software development is facing an existential threat from AI, that we’re in the process of being replaced by LLMs. And I think if that were true, these survey results would look very different.