MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Feb. 4, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — HackerRank, the developer skills company, today released its third annual Developer Skills Report. The report offers unparalleled insight into the professional skills, goals and desires of more than 116,000 developers and hiring managers from 162 countries: what they know, what they plan to learn and how they see the evolution of their roles. As the largest survey of its kind ever released, it provides valuable insights for employers and hiring managers in a tight labor market.
As tech becomes a core business driver for companies in every industry, demand for software developers is growing. The U.S. alone is expected to add nearly 300,000 new software developer jobs over the next decade. Moreover, people from all demographics and educational backgrounds are now venturing into tech thanks to the rise of new forms of education like coding bootcamps. This is transforming the way companies vet and hire technical talent.
“Using success metrics like a degree from a four year university has never been the best way to evaluate developers’ skills,” said Vivek Ravisankar, co-founder and CEO of HackerRank. “As the competition to hire developers becomes more and more fierce, companies need better ways to tune into what developers actually know, and what they really want in a job.”
This report provides an insider’s perspective on the state of hiring and retaining top developers, no matter their background. Key findings from the report include:
- Are developers being paid fairly? It depends who you ask. On average, U.S.-based developers earned $109,000—the highest of any country—while the average U.S. worker earned $47,000 in 2019. But globally, 39% of developers don’t believe they’re paid fairly compared to their peers, and 26% are unsure. Based on our analysis, this is most true for junior and mid-level engineers, while just 22% of Directors/VPs of engineering feel they are compensated unfairly, the lowest percentage of any group. Tools like Glassdoor and LinkedIn, which empower developers to push for fair pay, also allow for constant comparisons to peers, which may contribute to uncertainty about pay and encourage more frequent job changes.
- Hiring managers are increasingly looking to bootcamp grads to fill developer roles. Nearly one in six Gen Z respondents have learned from a coding bootcamp, and 32% of hiring managers have hired a bootcamp grad. More than 70% of them believe bootcamp grads may be even better equipped for the job than others based on their ability to learn new technologies and languages due to the way many bootcamps structure their curriculum. This suggests more companies may go the way of Google, Apple and IBM, getting rid of college degree requirements to focus on skills. While those companies make headlines, our data shows that 32% of developers who work for companies with fewer than 49 employees have less than a bachelor’s degree, compared to 9% for companies with more than 10,000 employees.
- Professional growth should be highlighted in the hiring process. Last year, we learned that competitive compensation is the number three criteria developers look for in a job—but professional growth and learning is number one. 59% of developers ranked professional growth as the most important aspect of their job.
- The top three frameworks are still dominated by AngularJS; Django is gaining in popularity; .NET has fallen behind. AngularJS has kept its position as the best-known framework since 2018, with React and Spring filling in the top three. Python-based Django rose to fourth place, leaving the .NET framework, ASP behind.
The full report with these findings and others is available here.
About HackerRank
HackerRank, the developer skills company, helps businesses attract, evaluate and hire the best technical talent from around the world. Over 2,000 customers across all industries, including 25% of the Fortune 100, rely on HackerRank to raise their hiring bar. More than 7 million developers (almost 30% of the global developer population) trust HackerRank to learn and practice coding skills. Every eight seconds, a developer completes a HackerRank assessment. For more information, visit www.hackerrank.com.
