2021 State of Software Engineers —Review
If there’s one thing 2020 showed us, it’s that Organizations and their respective HR departments must be nimble to successfully navigate the sudden shift to remote work, hiring, and onboarding.
The COVID-19 pandemic led to major dips and volatility in talent recruitment and employment, however, the tech industry has proven to be the most resilient. While some companies had to halt their hiring efforts last year, the tech industry overall saw continued demand and job growth — with increased 5% to 7%.
While some companies had to halt or pause hiring efforts last year, the tech industry saw an increase in demand and job growth. Looking at the year ahead, it will be more important than ever for companies to prioritize their staffing investments to acquire and retain qualified engineers. This is especially true when we compare unemployment rates across sectors .
In December 2020, the unemployment rate for the tech sector was only 3% compared to 6.7% for the overall U.S. economy, with tech jobs growing by an estimated 391,000 positions in that month.
While 2020 was a challenging year for most job seekers as companies were forced to furlough or terminate many employees due to COVID-19, the steady demand for software engineers and their unique skill sets remained stable averaging $107,000 in 2020.
Despite the overall drop in demand and hiring freezes due to the pandemic, all software engineering roles witnessed salary growth in 2020.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Every year, new roles are exploding onto the hiring scene. For example, In 2019 the AR/ VR engineer role grow strongly increasing by 1,400%.
What’s fascinating is even with year after year growth, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows an increasing number of engineers are self taught making traditional university degrees less relevant. Most companies are hiring for experience.
Stack Overflow compiled data from 50,000 developers for their 2016 Developer Survey The results found 56% of employed developers in fact do not have a college degree in computer science or related fields. The most popular way for developers to learn is by self-teaching in some way (69% of respondents told us they were at least partially self-taught; 13% said they were entirely self-taught).
Nick Larsen, a data engineer with Stack Overflow states it best — “The reality of getting hired as a developer is that it’s way easier to get hired if you show the company what you have done. A portfolio of projects and products you have made credible contributions to is worth more than years of experience or schooling.”
Extrapolating data from 4,499 jobs posted on the Stack Overflow Job Board, 61% of the listings did not require a degree as one of the requirements while 39% list a degree (or equivalent experience) somewhere in the job posting.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
In 2020, average salaries for top engineering roles went up by 5% to 7%
AR/VR engineers reaped the highest salaries in 2020, with a 13% increase in pay, from $158k/year to $180k/year on average.
Machine learning engineers, however, experienced the biggest salary growth with a 10% increase (from $145k/year to $160k/year on average).
Backend, full stack, and frontend engineers still saw the highest demand, making up more than half of all interview requests for software engineers.]
Engineers in smaller markets are more likely to get remote job offers compared to those in major tech hubs. They also receive a higher salary for remote jobs compared to local job offers.
54% of software engineers are MORE productive when working remotely.
Most software engineers’ primary motivation for learning a new programming language or framework is simply because they enjoy it. They specifically love the opportunities for new challenges and continuous learning.
Software engineers are increasingly self-taught and traditional university degrees are becoming less relevant compared to the previous year. The pandemic has accelerated this trend around upskilling even further, showing that companies are increasingly hiring for skills instead of credentials.
The highest in-demand skill for software engineers is Redux.js, landing engineers 2.9x more interview requests than the marketplace average. Engineers with Google Cloud, AWS and React.js skills received 2.7x more interviews than average.
AWS saw 8x the demand from employers compared to Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure skills.Want More?
