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Only 22% make above $100k? [0] Those salary demographics makes me doubt the entire data set. Over 40% of respondents make less than $50k [0] https://2021.stat

by cj 5y ago

Only 22% make above $100k? [0] Those salary demographics makes me doubt the entire data set. Over 40% of respondents make less than $50k [0] https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/demographics/#yearly_salary https://2021.stateofjs.com/en-US/demographics/#yearly_salary Edit: Only 14% of respondents are in the US, which probably explains the above.

conradfr 5y ago
Yes, there's a "By Country" tab.
Narann 5y ago
There is a per country tab.
Vinnl 5y ago
There's also a tab that divides it up by country. In the US, 58.4% makes $100k-$200k, and 16.1% over $200k.
- sundarurfriend 5y ago
  The contrast is really stark when you compare it to for eg. India, where 64% of the respondents earn less than $50k. And this is likely with a skewed sample too - 343 respondents, of which I'd bet most are in FAANG and FAANG-adjacent companies (eg. Flipkart). The actual percentage that earn above 2 lakhs per month (= $50k p.a.) is likely less than 20%, even allowing for a strict definition of a "Javascript developer".
  - MisterSandman 5y ago
    Those numbers for India are way, way, way off, even more than you said. The average Indian dev working in TCS, Infosys or Cognizant isn't going to care about surveys like these. (Though, I don't know if any of these companies even hire too many JS devs?)
jillesvangurp 5y ago
Frontend development is not a great career path; it's mostly a young people's game. I know senior react developers in their thirties that are increasingly struggling to find well paying gigs because they are competing with young people at half their rate. A lot of frontend developers transition to full stack js and from there to doing more serious things using Go, Rust, or whatever. That's where the money is. It's a natural path for them. Frontend projects have a few issues: - They are mostly greenfield projects with relatively new and immature technology. - They mostly have short shelf lives since UIs get replaced after a few years. - A lot of the new and shiny stuff ends up moving the problem rather than solving it. So, there's a lot of change happening more or less continuously but a lot of the problems stay the same. - And of course there is the notion that developer demographics dictate that there are about 4x more developers available who never worked with what was fashionable 10 years ago. The amount of developers keeps on doubling every five years, so most of the talent on the market will never have heard of or worked with stuff fashionable ten years ago. So, hiring frontend developers to work on some old legacy code base built with whatever was fashionable 5-10 years ago is hard and expensive. First of all it's rare for projects to survive that long and usually they are not in a great shape if they do. So, you basically need people with lots of experience in completely outdated tech stacks that are willing to do that instead of using the new and shiny stuff that everybody else is doing. All of those people are now at an age where they would be charging senior rates with no guarantee that they are any good. It's a tough one. Paying more is a good strategy but you'd still need to find somebody willing to do it. Of course, all the good developers will prefer greenfield projects because if they are that good, they will have the choice and they'll mostly choose for investing in learning new stuff rather than working on somebody else's shitty code base. That actually drives a lot of frontend projects to an early death. They'd be salvageable in principle except there's nobody around still willing to do it. It's literally cheaper to start from scratch than it is to hire to keep an old project going. You actually risk losing good frontend developers if you fail to do that. Because they'll have options elsewhere.
- cageface 5y ago
  This hasn't been my experience at all. People are building increasingly complicated apps like Figma in the browser and are happy to hire senior developers and pay them well. If anything I see the number of back end roles diminishing as people increasingly delegate that stuff to various cloud services.

by cj 5y ago

conradfr 5y ago

Yes, there's a "By Country" tab.

Narann 5y ago

There is a per country tab.

Vinnl 5y ago

There's also a tab that divides it up by country. In the US, 58.4% makes $100k-$200k, and 16.1% over $200k.

sundarurfriend 5y ago
The contrast is really stark when you compare it to for eg. India, where 64% of the respondents earn less than $50k. And this is likely with a skewed sample too - 343 respondents, of which I'd bet most are in FAANG and FAANG-adjacent companies (eg. Flipkart). The actual percentage that earn above 2 lakhs per month (= $50k p.a.) is likely less than 20%, even allowing for a strict definition of a "Javascript developer".
- MisterSandman 5y ago
  Those numbers for India are way, way, way off, even more than you said. The average Indian dev working in TCS, Infosys or Cognizant isn't going to care about surveys like these. (Though, I don't know if any of these companies even hire too many JS devs?)

jillesvangurp 5y ago

Frontend development is not a great career path; it's mostly a young people's game. I know senior react developers in their thirties that are increasingly struggling to find well paying gigs because they are competing with young people at half their rate. A lot of frontend developers transition to full stack js and from there to doing more serious things using Go, Rust, or whatever. That's where the money is. It's a natural path for them. Frontend projects have a few issues: - They are mostly greenfield projects with relatively new and immature technology. - They mostly have short shelf lives since UIs get replaced after a few years. - A lot of the new and shiny stuff ends up moving the problem rather than solving it. So, there's a lot of change happening more or less continuously but a lot of the problems stay the same. - And of course there is the notion that developer demographics dictate that there are about 4x more developers available who never worked with what was fashionable 10 years ago. The amount of developers keeps on doubling every five years, so most of the talent on the market will never have heard of or worked with stuff fashionable ten years ago. So, hiring frontend developers to work on some old legacy code base built with whatever was fashionable 5-10 years ago is hard and expensive. First of all it's rare for projects to survive that long and usually they are not in a great shape if they do. So, you basically need people with lots of experience in completely outdated tech stacks that are willing to do that instead of using the new and shiny stuff that everybody else is doing. All of those people are now at an age where they would be charging senior rates with no guarantee that they are any good. It's a tough one. Paying more is a good strategy but you'd still need to find somebody willing to do it. Of course, all the good developers will prefer greenfield projects because if they are that good, they will have the choice and they'll mostly choose for investing in learning new stuff rather than working on somebody else's shitty code base. That actually drives a lot of frontend projects to an early death. They'd be salvageable in principle except there's nobody around still willing to do it. It's literally cheaper to start from scratch than it is to hire to keep an old project going. You actually risk losing good frontend developers if you fail to do that. Because they'll have options elsewhere.

cageface 5y ago
This hasn't been my experience at all. People are building increasingly complicated apps like Figma in the browser and are happy to hire senior developers and pay them well. If anything I see the number of back end roles diminishing as people increasingly delegate that stuff to various cloud services.