Incapsula just released their DevOps Salary Survey 2015: Facts About DevOps Careers and Salaries. Developers already working and anyone considering a developer career can gain valuable insights by downloading the full DevOps Salary Survey here.
Why Analyze the DevOps Salary Survey Data?
The information given by employed developers provides insights into what skills you should develop or improve. More importantly, it reveals which jobs are in demand and where salaries are growing and declining. By adjusting your focus you can increase your earnings and improve the odds of landing a career that will still exist years in the future.
These are the most important general skills according to developers:
There is also a graph showing the Most Important Technical Skills (page 23). By reviewing these skills it is possible to know what developers are being employed to work on most. Cloud deployment and virtualization ranks first with 30.8%.
It is important to review all the most in-demand skills. By improving and adding to your knowledge you can greatly increase your income. I encourage you to download the entire free Executive Summary and survey data.
Top Paying Verticals and Titles for Developers
I published a post on LinkedIn today with another graph from this survey showing the top paying verticals for developers. Knowing which industries pay best is one factor in what career to choose.
Another is knowing what job titles pay best. There is a large salary range between specific titles. Most DevOps careers do not have DevOps in their titles. This survey revealed 26 job titles. Use these titles to search for positions. This will expand the number of openings you find.
Also use them to choose your career and what to study. Developers should always be expanding their areas of expertise. By knowing what is most in demand you can know what to focus on next. Position yourself where the money is or avoid jobs that are being phased out.
How Education Affects Developer Salaries
Although 52% of respondents had at least a bachelor’s degree, there is good news for developers who chose not to get college degrees:
“Based on survey results, it does not seem that education level is a determining factor regarding DevOps salaries. In some cases, professionals with high school diplomas are earning salaries comparable to those with master’s degrees.”
In the survey, high school graduates actually out-earned developers with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees. College is only one way to learn a skill; actual work experience is a better teacher.
More important than how many degrees you obtain is focusing on developing valuable skills – both soft skills like communication and technical skills.
It is unusual to see this kind of data available at no cost. Download the DevOps Salary Survey. Study the graphs; and read the summaries. If you do you will have a great advantage towards developing your career as a developer.
