Mobile development fifth: 6 most popular positions for new programmers

[Bole Online Guide]: In March this year, FreeCodeCamp, a foreign training organization, conducted a "New Programmer Questionnaire Survey", in which more than 15,600 people participated and shared their careers and methods of learning programming. The FCC has made their survey data public. This article will classify them according to their job preferences and find out the differences between them.

Bole Online added: Among the 15,655 people who participated in the survey:

• 21% were female;
• Average age: 27 years;
• On average, they started learning programming 11 months ago;
• 28% have already got their first development job;

More than 15,000 people participated in the Free Code Camp 2016 New Programmer Survey, so researchers (like me) can get a better idea of ​​how people learn to program. The entire dataset is available on Kaggle.

6503 new programmers answered the question "Which of the following roles are you most interested in?"

Here’s an analysis of the 6 best programming jobs and the (very different) people who want them

These six jobs are: full-stack engineer, front-end engineer, back-end engineer, data scientist/engineer, mobile application engineer, and user experience designer*.

For each job type, we will analyze three categorical variables:

• gender
• Nationality (by continent)
• ***Education

and five numerical variables

• age
• Programming experience
• Study time per week (hours)
• Current salary level
• Expectations for next-stage salary (their first job after promoting their new programming skills)* Although there is still controversy over whether UX designer is a programming job, having a certain understanding of programming is helpful for this job. This job was the default answer in the original questionnaire.

gender

In terms of gender, user experience designer is the most diverse profession, with 52% male, 46% female, and the largest number of neutral, transgender and transsexual people (2%). Mobile application engineer is the most male-dominated profession, and the male ratio of full-stack engineer and back-end engineer is also close.

Geographical Distribution

In terms of the continents where the practitioners are located, mobile application engineers are the most widely distributed, while user experience designers are mainly distributed in North America.

Free Code Camp is based in the United States, which explains why the data is biased towards North America.

Education

Data scientists and data engineers are the groups with the most college degrees. Many mobile app developers have no academic background or only high school education, followed by backend developers.

I wonder if these biases are influenced by age.

age

Mobile app developers are indeed the youngest group, 2 years younger than the second youngest group. This may be related to the fact that mobile app development is a relatively new field. Front-end development is the oldest field, with an average age of 29. Note that data scientists/engineers, not back-end developers, are the second (youngest) in terms of age.

By the way, here’s a quick note on how to read this (and other) graphs: The “x” is the mean. The white line is the median (50% quantile). The top of the box is the 25% quantile, and the bottom is the 75% quantile. The length of the data line is 1.5 times the height of the box. The circles represent outliers. All y-axes are on a logarithmic scale to better visualize data with a lot of outliers.

Programming experience

Data scientists, data engineers, and backend developers in training have the longest median experience of eight months. The 25th percentile median for UX designers is the highest, two months less than the previous group, and only two months total. Programming experience has many large outliers, so that some averages are greater than the 75th percentile.

Time spent on learning

Full stack engineers spend the most time studying each week. 25% of respondents spend more than 30 hours studying each week. UX designers spend the most time studying each week, averaging 12 hours.

However, there is no significant difference in the time spent on learning between genders and continents. (My analysis is here)

Current salary

Active Data Scientists/Engineers clearly have the highest current salary. Their 75th percentile is $60k, $8k higher than the next highest occupation. There is no significant difference in income for the rest of the concentrated occupations, though all income levels are above the 2014 US median annual income of $28,900.

Expected compensation for next job

Those interested in data scientists/engineers have the highest expected salary for their next job, with a median of $60,000. Front-end developers are the most pessimistic about the outlook (yes, the difference in the mean is statistically significant). It is worth mentioning that the expected salary is higher than the current income.

Radar chart

Next, let's put all the numerical variables into a radar chart. Each point in the chart is the average value of the data (normalized to between 0 and 1):

Right away, it’s clear that Data Scientists/Engineers lead the pack in terms of programming experience, current income, and future income expectations.

Front-end and mobile application development have the smallest area - thanks to the least programming experience, low future income expectations, age, and current income.

Please note that we are using these charts to better compare the data of these jobs, not to determine which industry is better. It is a common misconception to interpret radar charts by overall area size.

What did we learn from this?

A lot! Every programmer has unique traits.

Relatively speaking, women are more inclined to user experience design. Asia, South America and Africa are more inclined to engage in mobile application development. Data scientists/engineers and mobile developers occupy the high and low ends of education respectively.

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Image via Riccardo Carlet

Data scientists/engineers have the highest current income and the highest expected future salary, and they also have the most programming experience. Front-end developers have the highest average age, but the difference is not significant. Full-stack engineers spend the most time learning each week.

(Bole Online/Xiaomi Yundouzhou compiled from FreeCodeCamp)