Low salaries for C++ developers in Stack Overflow annual surveys?

[alodhi]

I am curious why do Stack Overflow annual surveys show C++ salaries to be among the bottom half of the technology choices? Is that because of some sampling bias of the survey or is it really true that C++ is less attractive (from salary pov) than more than half the programming language choices out there?

 

[marcusaurelius]

I am curious why do Stack Overflow annual surveys show C++ salaries to be among the bottom half of the technology choices? Is that because of some sampling bias of the survey or is it really true that C++ is less attractive (from salary pov) than more than half the programming language choices out there?

Interested to get one's opinion on this too, especially given efinancialcareer articles, and overall discussions on the forum, seem to suggest the contrary!

 

[Paul Lopez]

You have a specific link?

 

[marcusaurelius]

The 23 year-old C++ developers with three job offers over $500k

How to render yourself the subject of a bidding war.

www.efinancialcareers.com

"Mike Sharpe, a partner at Peritium Search Associates says he looked at the salaries and bonuses of 50 C++ (and Python engineers) with an average of between four and six years' experience in the financial services industry, and that they were on packages averaging $984k in the first quarter. "The rule book as it relates to compensation for 2022 really does appear to have been well and truly ripped up," Sharpe added."

 

[Paul Lopez]

In another survey Zig was getting paid the most. That's fun.

 

[alodhi]

You have a specific link?

https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#technology-top-paying-technologies

 

[Paul Lopez]

That's the one I saw! Great!

 

[CharlieJ]

These numbers look off any way you slice them. True developers in tech/finance earn far more than any of those numbers indicate. An order of magnitude. True developers are also generally experts in several languages, with C++ very often among them.

Hard to say what the bias is, but my guess it it's either entry-level heavy, or predominately boutique developers with narrow skillsets (ie for startups or non tech/finance companies) responding.

Given the evident selection bias there, attempting to rank language vs. language earnings is not likely accurate either.

 

[marcusaurelius]

True developers are also generally experts in several languages, with C++ very often among them.

I heard some people are even forced to refactor code into Rust, while not having adequate libraries to do serious computations. @Paul Lopez

 

[Paul Lopez]

I heard some people are even forced to refactor code into Rust, while not having adequate libraries to do serious computations. @Paul Lopez

*gasps* the horror!