
Stack Overflow Annual User Survey Results - rayvega
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/01/survey-says/
======
jasonkester
I'm a little floored by the average compensation of StackOverflow users. 70%
report being in the game more than 6 years, but only 5% are making more than
$75/hr ($150k/year).

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.

~~~
_delirium
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...](http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Salary/Google-
Salaries-E9079.htm?filter.jobTitleFTS=engineer)

Or, say, IBM engineers: [http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Salary/IBM-
Salaries-E354.htm?fil...](http://www.glassdoor.com/GD/Salary/IBM-
Salaries-E354.htm?filter.jobTitleFTS=engineer)

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praptak
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.)

------
yuvadam
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.

~~~
_delirium
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:

    
    
                             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 two biggest differences are: 1) Asians from countries other than India
basically don't use SO; and 2) users from English-speaking countries use SO
more than everyone else (there's between 3x and 5x more people from each of
the US, UK, Australia, and Canada as their proportion of internet users).

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blasdel
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.

------
axod
Question 14 is quite telling - 66%+ are using Windows :/

I'd think that the % here would be significantly less.

~~~
Jem
I expected it to be less (and I'm a Windows user).

------
rick_2047
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?"

~~~
NickPollard
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?

~~~
michaelbuckbee
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.

