Stack overflow’s developer survey data based analysis.
What does it take to become a DEVELOPER?
During the current scenario of the COVID pandemic, the tech industry is one of the least affected. This has attracted a large number of aspiring individuals in roles such as web developer, data scientist etc. Most of them who wish to acquire these technical skills ask individuals like existing developers for a roadmap. A number of these individuals suggest learning roadmaps, like a formal degree or some specialised course whereas others talk about the learning by doing strategies.
With the help of data from Stackoverflow’s 2017 Annual Developer Survey, this article aims to provide an explanation on what experienced developers believe is the requirement for being successful developer. The data comprises 64,000 reviews from 213 countries and territories. The columns are the questions like:
“Are you a professional developer or a student?”
“Which country are you from?”
“How long have you been coding?”
Part I: What is the first step?
After preprocessing the dataset, my initial data analysis pointed towards the column which corresponds to the mode of learning suggested by the developer for his/her cousin.
One of the questions was:
“Let’s pretend you have a distant cousin named Alice. She is 24 years old, has a college degree in a field not related to computer programming, and has been working a non-coding job for the last two years. She wants your advice on how to switch to a career as a software developer. Which of the following options would you most strongly recommend to Alice?”
By looking at the bar plot given in figure 1, we can infer that “online courses” and “books” were the top two suggested categories with a considerable popularity. Although this helps us get an idea but it doesn’t help us make a firm decision as it could be dependent on other factors as well. Consequently, we should consider factors to make the view clear.
Part II: How does educational background impact salary and job satisfaction trends?
With the help of figure 2 , I’ve tried to dig deep, whether a specific formal education results in a higher salary or job satisfaction or not. The bars on the left indicate the average salary levels, whereas the bars on the right depict the average job satisfaction.
There are two major takeaways from the above figure:
- Individuals with a bachelor’s or a master’s degree, tend to have a lower job satisfaction than the ones with a doctoral degree.
- A doctoral degree could make you land a high paying job.
Based on these findings, people who have a Ph.D degree are more likely to be satisfied with their job and get a higher salary. Since Ph.D degree is a specialised degree, it can be inferred that the job that you get afterwards could be in-line with your interest resulting in a higher job satisfaction.
Part III: What good does a bootcamp do?
Knowing that a plethora of respondents underwent some kind of bootcamp, they were asked about when did they get a job after the bootcamp.
Figure 3 indicates that more than half of the respondents who went for a bootcamp had a job before the commencement of the bootcamp. A significant amount of people who were currently enrolled in the bootcamp got a job and only 13.3% got it right after the bootcamp. Rest of the individuals landed a job within a couple of months and 0.13% didn’t get it even after the bootcamp. As per my understanding, the bootcamp didn’t play much role in the career advancement. This could be seen with the help of figure 4, which indicates that the salary trend didn’t not get affected with a significant amount.
Conclusion
Based on the analysis of the survey observations major takeaways from our analysis in this article are:
- Most of the respondents advised to take up online courses as the first step to enter into the field.
- Individuals holding a specialisation degree such as a doctoral, tend to earn more as compared to the counterpart.
- The data suggests that the people who enrolled in the bootcamps did not have any significant change in terms of their career progression.
However the observations mentioned above should be cautiously followed as this is dataset is self reported.
So, the main question is:
Are YOU geared up to become a developer?
To follow the in-depth approach of this analysis, see my GitHub repo here.
