The report in context

Overview

The worldwide process of digital transformation, while something of a buzzword, reflects a critical truth: every company is now a technology company. Whether the company is Bank of America, Alaska Airlines, Sainsbury’s, or Tesla, investment in top software engineering talent isn’t a future ambition, it’s a matter of survival. At Hired, we sit on the frontlines of helping innovative companies build great teams. As part of that mission, we strive to empower hiring companies and job seekers through data.

Our State of Software Engineer Report is a collection of insights designed to bring to life the trends driving digital transformation, and Hired is in a unique position to share these insights because of our unprecedented visibility into the hiring process. Our hope is that publishing this report will continue fueling meaningful career conversations among the developer community and give software engineers the actionable data they need to achieve their professional goals.

CEO Insights, Mehul Patel

It’s critical for hiring managers to focus on assessing a candidate’s skills rather than over indexing on education. While 50% of software engineers have a computer science degree, another 32% either taught themselves to code or learned through a coding bootcamp — and they may very well have the same set of programming skills. That’s why Hired places so much emphasis on relevant skills when matching talent with opportunities.

While salaries for software engineers continue to rise, investing in top-tier talent should remain an executive-level priority for employers. A company’s hiring funnel is just as important as their revenue funnel. Offering competitive pay and deeply understanding what top talent wants are both critical for maintaining and growing that hiring funnel.

Macro Trends

“According to Robert Half, 67% of IT managers plan to expand their teams in areas such as security, cloud computing and business intelligence, but 89% reported challenges in recruiting that talent. Those challenges in hiring are even greater for roles related to machine learning, artificial intelligence, and blockchain.” “The increasing demand of tech talent is driven by companies in two sectors: telecom/information services and retail.” “There were 23 million software developers in 2018. This number is expected to reach 26.4 million by the end of 2019 and 27.7 million by 2023.” “Companies [in August 2019] added 104,000 information-technology workers, boosting the number of US information-technology jobs to more than 5.6 million.”

Unprecedented Tech Hiring Visibility:

Hired’s marketplace is uniquely positioned to share career insights for both companies and tech talent since we have unprecedented visibility into the entire hiring process - from the candidate’s initial job search expectations to the first interview and final offer. With over 10,000 companies, 420,000 interview requests, and 98,000 job seekers, our scale gives us a unique window into everything from in-demand candidate skills, to company needs, all the way through to salary negotiations between real candidates and companies. You won’t find this data anywhere else.