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Software Developer Tops List of U.S. News & World Report's Annual Best Jobs Rankings (usatoday.com)
According to U.S. News and World Report's annual best jobs rankings, software developer is the top pick for the new year. "The publication's Best Jobs of 2019 list takes seven factors into account, including median salary, employment rate and stress level," reports USA Today. "The median salary for a software developer is $101,790, and the unemployment rate is 1.9 percent, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics." From the report: Though software developers have neither the highest median salary nor lowest unemployment rate on the U.S. News Best Jobs of 2019 list, the position's projected increase in demand -- roughly 30 percent between 2016 and 2026 -- and average stress levels helped it land the top spot, said Rebecca Koenig, careers reporter at U.S. News and World Report. "Unlike some other jobs that do pretty well on the list, which are very demanding, software developer tends not to be a really stressful profession," Koenig said. Here are the Top 10, in order:
1. Software Developer
2. Statistician
3. Physician assistant
4. Dentist
5. (tie) Orthodontist
6. (tie) Nurse anesthetist
7. Nurse practitioner
8. Pediatrician
9. (tie) Obstetrician and gynecologist
9. (tie) Oral and maxillofacial surgeon
9. (tie) Prosthodontist
9. (tie) Physician
1. Software Developer
2. Statistician
3. Physician assistant
4. Dentist
5. (tie) Orthodontist
6. (tie) Nurse anesthetist
7. Nurse practitioner
8. Pediatrician
9. (tie) Obstetrician and gynecologist
9. (tie) Oral and maxillofacial surgeon
9. (tie) Prosthodontist
9. (tie) Physician
The effective salary average may not be quite as high as one would think compared to other professions. Silicon Valley and some other parts of California tend to have a lot of software people. They also tend to have high prices and salaries - a devalued dollar.
Iowa and Nebraska tend to have a much higher numbers of corn farmers, and much lower prices. A Silicon Valley software developer making $100K isn't doing nearly as well as a Nebraska corn farmer averaging $100K. You can live pretty well on $100K in Nebraska.
So looking at national averages using nominal dollars overstates the effective pay for jobs that tend to cluster in California and and understates the buying power of jobs that tend to be found more in inexpensive areas.
As a specific example, the cost of living is about 2 1/2 times higher in San Jose than Dallas. That makes a difference. It means people working in aerospace and defense on average have more buying power than someone with the same salary working in solar-electric development.
Well, many of the others listed are medical-related. Those professions often have to deal with life-threatening emergencies, people in severe pain/duress, etc. For most software dev jobs, nobody gets injured, dies, nor puked on no matter how bad you or your colleagues screw up.
The big problem with software development is it has no direct future. If you don't move into management-esque positions, your career will plateau early. It can be decent money, don't get me wrong, but it's a poor ticket to a bigger and better future.
"Old" developers are typically not very welcomed. The reasons are a long and winding topic, and there are exceptions, but the bottom line is the software biz is not kind to "age".
Table-ized A.I.
A software engineer over 40 is considered used up by a lot of companies, and it only gets worse as you get older.
This meme is created to pit older developers against younger developers and drive down salary costs. It's a pretty ugly thing to have to consider at the beginning of your career, at 25, that you only have 15 years left - so most people don't because who would start a career in software development knowing that?
I think companies are starting to realize that this attitude simply shrinks the availability of software developers. In the meantime more experienced developers find their way into better shops or work on their own business.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
At what point does this age problem kick in? I'm 50 and not seeing it. I have coworkers in their 60s and they're not seeing it. Heck, I know one guy in his early 70s who just likes to work and doesn't want to retire. He's independently wealthy at this point, having been through a couple of successful startups, so he tends to work for a year or two (at a premium salary, given his incredible depth and breadth of experience) and then take a year off.
That's pretty far from the norm, few life-long developers are startup millionaires, especially now that the startup culture mostly died out and the industry matured more (that happened around the .com bubble popping for anyone who didn't already have a name for themselves or know someone who did.)