84% of respondents are working: either part-time, freelancing, or full-time.

Full-time employment has decreased in the U.S. since last year's survey (69% to 65%). Looking at employment in the top five countries, in the U.K. and Ukraine respondents not employed full-time are more likely to be independent contractors and in Germany and India are more likely to be a full-time student if not employed full-time.

The number of hybrid developers has stayed consistent this year with last year (42%), while the percentage of developers working in-person has increased (20%) for the third year in a row compared to 15% in 2022 and 16% in 2023.

47% of respondents work for organizations that have fewer than 100 employees.

The highest-paid developers of all respondents are site reliability and cloud infrastructure engineers, as both roles are pivotal in keeping digital services up and running.

Looking at top-responding regions, mobile developers report higher earnings in the U.S., data engineers are the highest-paid in Germany and Ukraine, and back-end developers are top earners in India and the U.K.

Developer experience is highly valued and this is confirmed by this year's top-earning roles that relate to the DevRel scaffolding. Senior executives are making the most with the most experience on average, followed by developer advocates, engineering managers, and developer experience professionals.

Developers that are using Erlang and Clojure are top earners in the past year, averaging more than $95K annually (USD) with about 12 years experience. Developers working with Dart and Prolog are earning the least annually (< $45K annual USD) with less experience on average (< 10 years).

Most developers are reporting their salary range is averaging $10K USD less this year: $60 - $75K USD compared to $70 - $85K USD in 2023.

Most respondents have influence over technology purchases (62%). Those roles with the highest levels of influence are senior executives (99%), engineering managers (87%), and product managers (77%).

60% of respondents endorse technology purchases that are build-and-buy as opposed to purely build or buy. Database administrators, developer advocates, and security professionals are less likely to endorse a build-and-buy approach possibly due to the need to document and safeguard customizations.

Starting a free trial is the most common way to evaluate new tools (75%) followed closely by asking other developers (73%).

Backend developers, embedded app developers, and academic researchers prefer to ask other developers than to start a free trial.

APIs are pretty cool, but did you know that 75% of developers are more likely to endorse your technology if you provide access to APIs? Make sure to let back-end developers and engineering managers know about the API integrations you offer: they are even more likely to endorse your tech than the average coder.

Most developers code outside of work as a hobby (68%), and almost 40% code outside of work for professional development or self-paced learning from online courses.