Feed: Slashdot
Feed Link: https://slashdot.org/
---

Title: Amid Turmoil, Stack Overflow Asks About AI, Salary, Remote Work in
15th Annual Developer Survey

Link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/05/31/054520...

Stack Overflow remains in the midst of big changes to counter an AI-fueled
drop in engagement. So "We're wondering what kind of online communities Stack
Overflow users continue to support in the age of AI," writes their senior
analyst, "and whether AI is becoming a closer companion than ever before."
For their 15th year of their annual reader survey, this means "we're not just
collecting data; we're reflecting on the last year of questions, answers,
hallucinations, job changes, tech stacks, memory allocations, models, systems
and agents - together..." Is it an AI agent revolution yet? Are you building
or utilizing AI agents? We want to know how these intelligent assistants are
changing your daily workflow and if developers are really using them as much
as these keynote speeches assume. We're asking if you are using these tools
and where humans are still needed for common developer tasks. Career shifts:
We're keen to understand if you've considered a career change or transitioned
roles and if AI is impacting your approach to learning or using existing
tools. Did we make up the difference in salaries globally for tech
workers...? They're also re-visiting "a key finding from recent surveys
highlighted a significant statistic: 80% of developers reported being unhappy
or complacent in their jobs." This raised questions about changing office
(and return-to-office) culture and the pressures of the industry, along with
whether there were any insights into what could help developers feel more
satisfied at work. Prior research confirmed that flexibility at work used to
contribute more than salary to job satisfaction, but 2024's results show us
that remote work is not more impactful than salary when it comes to overall
satisfaction... [For some positions job satisfaction stayed consistent
regardless of salary, though it increased with salary for other positions.
And embedded developers said their happiness increased when they worked with
top-quality hardware, while desktop developers cited "contributing to open
source" and engineering managers were happier when "driving strategy".] In
2024, our data showed that many developers experienced a pay cut in various
roles and programming specialties. In an industry often seen as highly
lucrative, this was a notable shift of around 7% lower salaries across the
top ten reporting countries for the same roles. This year, we're interested
in whether this trend has continued, reversed, or stabilized. Salary dynamics
is an indicator for job satisfaction in recent surveys of Stack Overflow
users and understanding trends for these roles can perhaps improve the
process for finding the most useful factors contributing to role satisfaction
outside of salary. And of course they're asking about AI - while noting last
year's survey uncovered this paradox. "While AI usage is growing (70% in 2023
vs. 76% in 2024 planning to or currently using AI tools), developer sentiment
isn't necessarily following suit, as 77% in of all respondents in 2023 are
favorable or very favorable of AI tools for development compared to 72% of
all respondents in 2024." Concerns about accuracy and misinformation were
prevalent among some key groups. More developers learning to code are using
or are interested in using AI tools than professional developers (84% vs.
77%)... Developers with 10 - 19 years experience were most likely (84%) to
name "increase in productivity" as a benefit of AI tools, higher than
developers with less experience (

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

---
VRSS v2.1.180528