developer profile

Almost 41 percent (2020: 40 percent) of participants identify as fullstack developers. 17 percent (2020: 17 percent) work on the backend, while frontend developers account for around 6 percent. The proportion of mobile developers fell to just over 2.6 percent (2020: 4 percent). Desktop or enterprise application developers also dropped to about 2.3 percent (2020: 6 percent). Despite a large selection, the next largest group could not locate themselves - they are "other." 

Also interesting: 45 people, or about 6 percent (2020: 4 percent), are C-level - so appear to be coding or formerly coding management personnel.

Open source: Around 11 percent (2020: 10 percent) regularly contribute to open source projects, 38 percent occasionally, 9.5 have given up on it and 42 percent have not yet found the time.

Thus, a large proportion of coders (48 percent) contribute or have contributed to open source software development - the very technologies that make most innovation possible in the first place. On the other hand, 42 percent have never contributed to open source, which is very sad because today we owe practically everything in some form to open source.

63 percent (2020: 65 percent) of participants code in their free time. This figure is understandably a little lower among participants with children. Where else is there a professional group that enjoys pursuing its occupation in its "free" time? Perhaps the work-life balance is less of an issue for these software developers, since "work" is already "life" for them.

People have been coding for a long time: only 22 percent (2020: 26 percent) have been doing so for less than 10 years - over 48 percent (2020: 40 percent) have been doing so for more than 18 years.

Compared to the preliminary question, this is purely about professional coding. The pattern is similar. However, it becomes clear that many of the participants have been developing software privately for longer than professionally.

About 12 percent (2020: 12 percent) of participants are currently studying or in formal continuing education - of which 8 percent are studying for a degree such as a bachelor's or master's and 4 percent are studying for diplomas such as CAS, MAS, DAS, COS.

Education: 37 percent have a bachelor's degree (2020: 37 percent), 36 percent a master's degree (2020: 38 percent) and just over 3 percent a doctorate. The majority of master's degree holders are university graduates, while bachelor's degree holders are graduates of universities of applied sciences.

Participants diligently continue their education in more than one way. The 635 participants in this question attended 1706 different trainings. That's almost three per person. Online training is the absolute leader. No wonder, if you look for frequently viewed video training courses on Udemy, LinkedIn Learning or YouTube, they are almost exclusively software development courses.

When it comes to courses, around 25 percent (2020: 15 percent) favor public events, 30 percent (2020: 40 percent) prefer an in-house trainer and the rest don't care. This means that the proportion of those who prefer in-house training is up again by 5 percent on the previous year. This strong shift could again be due to Corona.