For me, surveys are just a general, bird's-eye view of the software engineering market, that's it. They give you a general sense of direction, but they've never provided real, actionable value.
We should always take them with a grain of salt, not because they're false. They're usually accurate within their own dataset. But that doesn't mean they're universally true in every context, region, company size or career stage.
"Think of it as a compass, not a GPS."
I like your analogy but I wouldn't even go as far as calling it a compass.
I'd say it's more like Google maps fully zoomed out.
I really like that “Google Maps fully zoomed out” analogy 😄 Someone in the comments even compared surveys to horoscopes for developers.
And yes - you’re absolutely right. I kind of wish I’d had that perspective at the beginning of my career. Not just me, actually - my whole local dev circle used to be super excited about these surveys and we treated them almost like gospel 😄
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For me, surveys are just a general, bird's-eye view of the software engineering market, that's it. They give you a general sense of direction, but they've never provided real, actionable value.
We should always take them with a grain of salt, not because they're false. They're usually accurate within their own dataset. But that doesn't mean they're universally true in every context, region, company size or career stage.
"Think of it as a compass, not a GPS."
I like your analogy but I wouldn't even go as far as calling it a compass.
I'd say it's more like Google maps fully zoomed out.
I really like that “Google Maps fully zoomed out” analogy 😄 Someone in the comments even compared surveys to horoscopes for developers.
And yes - you’re absolutely right. I kind of wish I’d had that perspective at the beginning of my career. Not just me, actually - my whole local dev circle used to be super excited about these surveys and we treated them almost like gospel 😄