Are Developers with Python Skills in Switzerland Happy and Well-paid?
Introduction
A gratifying and well-paying job. In pursuit of this, software developers travel to foreign cities, and sometimes across the globe. Sometimes, they end up here, in picture-perfect Switzerland. Have they found what they were looking for?
Every year, Stack Overflow conducts surveys among developers to examine all aspects of the developer experience. Thanks to this, We can use data to answer some of our burning questions. As an avid Python user, I focus this analysis on the experience of developers who listed Python in their skill sets.
Question 1: Are developers with Python skills in Switzerland satisfied and well-paid?
And how do they compare to developers with skills in other popular languages, i.e. Javascript, HTML/CSS, SQL, Java?
I looked at the 978 respondents from Switzerland, and compiled their responses in terms of Job Satisfaction, Career Satisfaction, Percentage of Respondents Employed and Annual Compensation.
On the survey, respondents were asked to rate their job and career satisfaction from “Very dissatisfied” to “Very satisfied”. I translated this spectrum to a scale of -1 to 1. The results are shown below.
We see that average Job Satisfaction of respondents with extensive Python experience is 0.36, roughly corresponding to “Slightly satisfied”. The average Career Satisfaction is higher, at 0.53. Employment rate is 92%.
While the above three parameters are similar compared to developers with experiences in other popular languages, developers with Python experience stand out with an average annual compensation of 100K USD.
With the average personal earning in Switzerland at 62K USD per OECD data, these developers can indeed consider themselves well-paid.
Question 2: Do compensations and career satisfactions grow with experience for developers in Switzerland?
The average annual compensation previously is averaged over developers in Switzerland of all experience levels. Surely compensations grow with each additional year of coding experience? Perhaps career satisfaction too? Let’s look at what the data says.
For compensation, we see growth for both the general developer population and developers with Python skills. Career satisfaction, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to grow with experience. If anything, there seems to be a trend of decreasing career satisfaction in the first 10 years.
Let’s quantify the growth of compensation using linear regression.
According to the linear models, the starting compensation of a software developer in Switzerland in general is around 59000 USD and grows 4860 USD with each year of experience. The starting compensation of a developer with Python experience is around 63000 USD and grows 5110 USD with each year of experience.
Question 3: How do job satisfactions and compensations in Switzerland compare to those in Germany, UK and US?
Above we see that the average compensation is the 2nd highest in Switzerland compared to other countries, whereas average job satisfaction is the lowest.
We can also break this down by years of experience into Junior (0–2 years), Mid-Level (2–4 years), Senior (4–8 years), Fellow (8+ years).
The average compensation in Switzerland is the 2nd highest for all expect junior developers, where it is a close 3rd. Job satisfaction is lowest in Switzerland comparing to other countries also for all levels expect junior developers. We also see a trend of decreasing job satisfaction with increasing experience across all these countries.
Conclusion
Here are the main takeaways from this analysis:
- Developers with Python skills in Switzerland are indeed well-paid with 100k USD per year, and are on average “slightly satisfied” with their jobs and careers.
- For these developers, compensation does grow with experience, on average 5110 USD each year. Career satisfaction does not.
- Developers in Switzerland are on average the 2nd highest-paid group compared to those in Germany, the UK and the US. They are also on average the least-satisfied. In these countries, junior developers are most satisfied group with their jobs.
More insights from the survey can be found here on Stack Overflow. To see the code for this analysis, a link to my Github here.
