

Results of The Hacker Survey - tialys
http://davelyon.net/mldata.html

======
nod
Six people expect to make negative income this year. Highest incomes are 110M,
98M, 68M, 25M, and 10M (watch out, that last guy took the survey 6 times with
bad data).

In the bell curve of "# of years in industry", there are spikes at 10, 12, 15,
and 20 -- looks like people rounding.

27% work 40 hours a week. 15% work 50, 10% work 45, 9% work 60, 4% work 35 and
30.

Unemployed hackers are very much more likely to be single (compared to the
ratio for all types of employment).

I can see no noticeable correlation between hours worked and expected income.

------
defunkt
Mirror: <http://defunkt.github.com/hacker-survey/>

CSV: <http://defunkt.github.com/hacker-survey/data.csv>

~~~
extofer
Mirror: <http://go.cleverinnovative.com/hacker-survey.htm> CSV:
<http://go.cleverinnovative.com/data.csv>

------
bufordtwain
Thanks for posting the data/results. Only 2% of the respondents are female.
Wow.

~~~
Jem
Why was this voted down? I was fairly shocked too. I mean, I know we're in the
minority at HN but not by this amount.

~~~
frossie
Not sure what conclusion you can draw from that - it was a self-selected
sample. For example I didn't vote because of the non-existent
"academia/research" option.

I think if you wanted to get a better handle of how many women are in HN, a
poll entitled "Are you female" with the options of yes-no-it's complicated-
will give you better traction.

~~~
arantius
> I think if you wanted to get a better handle of how many women are in HN, a
> poll ...

You mean: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=749617> ? There, female was
about 6%.

~~~
Dove
Both groups are self-selected, though one of the samples is larger. But I've
no reason to doubt the numbers--they seem to be in the right ballpark. In a
competitive, technical community like this one, 2-5% women is about what
experience tells me to expect. Fighter pilots are a similar, if more extreme,
example: <http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/fighters.html>

The phenomenon simply is what it is -- I do not know or speculate on the
cause. But I find it fascinating that many people feel compelled to quickly
invent stories to explain it away. A little encounter with heresy seems to
provoke a defensive rush into mythology.

I think a little cognitive dissonance, a little acceptance of heretical fact,
a little uncomfortable admission of ignorance, is good for intellectual
hygeine; I welcome and cherish odd little phenomena like this, even if--in
fact, _especially because_ \--they run so counter to my beliefs and
expectations.

~~~
frossie
Not sure what the point you are trying to make - there is a huge difference
between 2% and 6% (factor of 3 to be precise). I personally would think it
would be 5% at least, so I chose to believe the poll that confirms my
preformed opinion :-)

------
vitaminj
Will you remove some of the obvious fake outliers from the data set? eg. Line
338 on the .csv file is a 99 year old female self-employed, pre-high schooler
with 10+ kids working 140 hours per week and earning $1M per year. Sounds a
little suspect to me...

Not to mention the 22 year old student who completed the questionaire 4 times
and has 70 years of experience, works negative hours and earns $100M.

Or the divorced 407 year old female with 700 years of experience and 8 kids.

~~~
tialys
I decided not to filter the data in the interest of giving anyone the ability
to use the exact data set I received. For my personal use, yes, I removed the
bad data. But as far as giving out the csv, I thought it made more sense to
give people the full set and let them decide (honestly, some people are fishy,
but not obviously fake... so it'd be hard to be fair).

------
yan
I wonder what the =SUM() of the yearly wage is after all the 'for the lulz'
posts are filtered. Kinda curious what percentage of the US GDP the HN
readership is :)

~~~
auston
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.00318+percent+of+1415...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.00318+percent+of+14150000000000)

------
rudd
The CSV file is wonderful. Now I know (among numerous other things), how many
people took the survey before me.

My line in the survey can be defined by surprisingly few fields.

~~~
bockris
Me too. The first thing I did was try to find my record. It was easy because
my salary figure was fairly unique.

~~~
skolor
It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if your Age, Salary and hours are
unique in the table. In fact, I'm relative certain that any two of the
numerical fields (family excluded, since so many people had 0) would uniquely
identify you, or at least limit it to on a handful of individuals. The concept
of "Anonymous data" is largely non-existant; if you know who you're looking
for in a table of anonymous data, you can usually find them.

~~~
bockris
Hmm. I whipped up a quick python script to test this theory.

    
    
      Age,Hours Wrkd,Income was unique ~89% of the time
      Age,Hours Wrkd, Yrs in industy,Income was unique 97% of the time
      Age,Education,Hours Wrkd,Income was unique 94% of the time
      Age,Education,Hours Wrkd,Yrs in Industry,Income was unique 98% of the time
    
    

Here it is if anyone wants to play with it.
<http://paste.pocoo.org/show/136649/>

------
Oompa
91% of the people that answered attended college. Can we stop with all the
"College is useless" submissions now?

~~~
blhack
Could you please explain this logic? Wouldn't ~90% of us attending college,
then seeing its effects, qualify us to comment on the topic?

~~~
Oompa
You're telling the, at most 9% of the rest of us how useless it is. I just
don't think it really contributes anything.

~~~
blhack
By that logic, all of the linux zealots out there should stop encouraging
people to use linux since all the linux people already use it.

Is that about right?

We're telling the other 9% "Hey, guys, learn from our mistakes! Have a nice
day!".

~~~
prpon
I guess 91% of us are saying "Don't sweat the small stuff such as a degree".
However, I wish unlearning the college stuff would have been as easier as a
switch to linux :)

~~~
blhack
I wish getting the money that I spent back would have been as easy as
switching to linux.

Oh, idea, OPEN SOURCE SCHOOLING!

------
dfranke
Hackers appear to have a startlingly low divorce rate.

~~~
shaunxcode
perhaps they are more adapt at finding bugs and implementing fixes in all
realms of their lives?

~~~
astine
"I want a divorce.":

"Hold up, let's backtrack and work this through step by step to see if we can
isolate this bug."

~~~
shaunxcode
Yeah and unfortunately there comes a time when you have to admit that the
entire premise of the project was flawed and it's time to liquidate and start-
up a new.

------
sup7rstar
I was looking at the guys that make 100k+. It seems that there is a
correlation between having a girlfriend/wife and making more money. I'm
wondering why? Doesn't having a girlfriend/wife take some more of your time
when you could do some coding?

P.S. Wow. I've always thought that this is a very vibrant community and full
of intelligent people. It seems I was right. But man even if I'd wish I just
can't read all the comments and everything in here, and I'm sure there many
worth reading.

~~~
tigerthink
According to stereotype, the causality flows the other way, and having more
money is likely to get you a girlfriend or wife. I suspect the stereotype is
somewhat wrong and that more money leads to more free time, which leads to
more friends and fun activities, which leads to a girlfriend or wife.

~~~
araneae
The stereotype is not wrong at all. Women are attracted to resources, and this
is well established both in humans and in non-human animals. The reason is
because women bear most of the inherent costs of child rearing (9 months
gestation, breastfeeding, etc). However, providing sperm is not a very costly
endeavor. Since females can afford to be choosy (that is, there are many males
willing to spend the low cost of a load of sperm or two) they'll choose males
with resources, all things being equal. Theoretically this male will lessen
the inherent cost to the female by perhaps providing her with food during
pregnancy and breastfeeding as well as for the child after it's weaned.

In some birds and mammals, females will choose males that have a bigger or
better territory. In some cases, if a male has an especially big territory,
the male will attract more than one female. (Emlen S. & Oring, L. 1977.
Science 197 , 215-222)

In insects, which tend to not have bi-parental care, this is usually in the
form of a "nuptial gift" which is basically a nutritious package that comes
along with the sperm (Vahed, K. 1998. The function of nuptial feeding in
insects: A review of empirical studies. Biol. Rev, 73:43-78.)

~~~
sup7rstar
I agree too that women are attracted among other things
(celebrity,intelligence, etc) to resources. I would be more specific and
mention financial resources nowadays.

------
edw519
Great job!

You must know us as well as we know ourselves because you included the raw
data. For a hacker, this is a starting point, not a result. I can't help
myself; I've already started my mini-project of building my own data base and
reports from your data. Thank you!

(I'm curious what the 407 year old female and 7,000 year old male do to take
care of themselves :-)

~~~
skolor
Yep, thank you very much for releasing the raw data too. I've just been
playing with it a little, but here's some interesting factoids I've pulled out
so far:

* The only people to mark "Private" as their income had at least a bachelor's degree.

* Out of the responders, the average income for people with a High School education was 58,967.73, some college was 70518.36, and a bachelor's degree was 72603.26 (Note that I removed anyone who marked >1 million as their income, since it skewed things massively).

* The median incomes were HS: 50,000, Some College: 55,000, Bachelor's: 65,000.

I also noticed that several people marked that they made $0 this year, but
were not unemployed or students. Would anyone mind clarifying that one?

~~~
tialys
Good stuff! I think the employed, no income might be startup types who aren't
paying themselves (just a guess).

~~~
terpua
Your assumption is correct (at least for me).

------
jhawk28
Who are the 5 that have 10+ in their family?

------
theycallmepost
Perhaps it's the fact that I have to use IE to view certain sites from work
(had to vote Corporation), but the age, avg. hours, years in industry, and
pre-tax income results are not showing the horizontal bar charts like the
other question results.

Very interesting to see the data results, thanks!

~~~
tialys
This is due to how Google allows you to collect data. Those fields were 'open'
so Google doesn't know it can show them in any way other than a list.

------
ilyak
61% Single!

Horrible. I'd recommend getting a life.

