Introduction
The question and answering site Stack Overflow is one of the popular online support for Software Developers. Instead of digging into the documentation, developers can check the highlighted posts already answered, thereby increasing their efficiency. Based on its multiple years survey data, from 2011 to 2019, I am excited about analyzing what it takes to navigate the technology career landscape.
Motivation
The new year 2020 began with hopes and plans, until the world hit Covid-19 pandemic. But, this is not the first time we are having an economic crisis. In the past we have experienced entities and organizations crashing, especially related to business mistakes.
In a difficult environment everything including our careers begin to appear a personal failure. We may decide to make a career transition but can sense the skepticism in people around us. The roller-coaster of emotions we experience in our careers often leads us to engage in “sense making”.
However, we don’t need a crisis to realize all of this. Answering some questions relevant to navigating the career landscape can help maintain our perspective. It’s our vision that helps us push through the pain, overcome self-doubt, and prevent others from moving off our path.
Asking Questions
Oftentimes, we wonder: What does it take to switch to a related role in our industry? What new programming language to learn next? How to upskill towards an in-demand skill? What resources to trust in our decision making? The goal is to shift our trajectory towards a longer-term economically successful future.
Knowing what we need to learn is a chance to evolve our identities and move forward into future possibilities. In times of crisis or otherwise, a thoughtful exploration of a feasible career path prevents us from feeling insignificant.
Therefore, through an exhaustive analysis of the Stack Overflow survey datasets, I am trying to answer some questions of my interest, formulated as:
- Who commands the highest salary in each year?
- What programming languages are popular each year?
- Why should developers invest in training and education?
- Can we predict Stack Overflow frequency of visits?
Who commands the highest salary?
The salary trend for the past 3 years:
What programming languages are popular?
The programming languages trend for the past 3 years:
Why should developers invest in training and education?
Heatmap of 2019 dataset related to training and education:
Can we predict Stack Overflow frequency of visits?
The r-squared value of the machine learning model is 0.41 on both the training and test data.
The Insights
The analysis of Stack Overflow survey data from year 2011 to 2019 suggests the following:
- The highest paid professionals have been: kernel or driver developers, managers of developers or team leaders and recently the trend seems to be oriented towards devops specialists, machine learning specialists, and senior executives or VPs.
- The most popular programming languages have been: SQL, JavaScript, Java, and Python.
- The correlation information from the heatmap suggests that in order to have better job satisfaction, salary, and full-time employment status, it is important to pursue professional degrees and continue learning through on the job training and industry certificate programs.
- Based on the recent 2019 dataset, the Stack Overflow visit frequency can be predicted with an r-score of 41%.
Note: Details of the data analysis for all the years from 2011 to 2019 can be located at my GitHub repository.