The State of Devs 2025 survey results are now available, and they contain quite a few interesting insights! I encourage you to check out the whole thing for yourself, but in the meantime I thought we could explore some of the data together—and maybe learn a little about statistics in the process.
Zelda Players Earn $30,843 More on Average Compared to Minecraft Players??
Let's start with an “insight” that well… isn't really one! You'll see what I mean.
When talking about surveys or scientific research, you often hear that “correlation is not causation”. But what does that mean exactly?
Here's a concrete example. It turns out Minecraft players earn way less on average than developers who play Tears of the Kingdom:
In other words, a developer's income is correlated with their favorite game.
But does that mean that switching from Tears of the Kingdom to Minecraft will magically results in a salary increase? Of course not!
What's going on here is that the median age for Minecraft players is 27, vs 35 for Zelda players. And naturally, older developers with more professional experience earn more.
Now we could draw a causality link between both age and income on one hand, and age and video game preference on the other. But even that would purely be a hypothesis informed by our pre-existing knowledge about the world, and not something the data can prove one way or another.
So whenever you're exposed to any kind of statistical data, keep in mind that:
- Correlation is not causation.
- Statistics can only show correlation.
Engineers Earn $44,939 More on Average Compared to Developers??
The previous example was easy to debunk, but let's look at something a bit trickier. It turns out, job titles containing “engineer” in them carry quite a premium!
So what's going on here? Do engineer positions really pay that much better, even though the e.g. “frontend engineer” and “frontend developer” are virtually synonymous?
U.S. vs The World
Before we can advance a hypothesis, we need to consider an important variable that has a huge impact on income: respondent country.
It turns out, U.S. respondents earn a lot more than any other country:
And while positions containing the word “engineer” only make up 30% of responses worldwide, they represent 56% of responses in the U.S.:
In other words, the fact the engineers earn more than developers could be due at least in some part due to the fact that a larger proportion of engineers live in the U.S.–and all programmers earn more in the U.S., no matter their job title.
Looking at the U.S.
But if respondent country is the only reason for this income gap, we would expect it to disappear when controlling for the respondent's country.
And when excluding the U.S. from the dataset, the gap does shrink quite a bit:
Yet somehow it's still very much present when limiting the data to U.S. respondents:
And just to eliminate one more variable, the gap also exists even when comparing the exact same position (“Frontend Developer” vs ”Frontend Engineer”).
Company Size Enters the Chat
There's one more factor that has a big impact on income: company size. Larger companies typically can afford to pay their employees higher salaries, and guess what: in the U.S., engineers are also more likely to be working for large companies!
But Why?
So is the developer-engineer pay gap entirely explained by the fact that the word "engineer" seems to be code for "developer working in a large company"? Maybe. But sadly, this is where this kind of surface-level statistical analysis shows its limits, and where real, on-the-ground research would be needed–a.k.a. what actual researchers do.
Because even though I might play one on TV, at the end of the day I'm not a data scientist. I'm just a regular frontend developer–I mean, engineer–with an affinity for charts and graphs.
Yet call be naive, but before embarking on this analysis I wasn't even aware of this gap; or of the fact that "software engineer" and "developer" might have slightly different connotations. So maybe sometimes, even surface-level explorations can have value?
The Query Builder
I've always believed data scientists shouldn't have all the fun. This is why all the charts I've shown today were created with the survey's own built-in query builder, which anybody can use:
The query builder makes it super easy for anybody to dig deeper into the data to find interesting correlations without having to learn data processing tools or import the whole dataset, and I encourage you to try it out!
Discover the State of Devs Results
This whole article was just one big long preamble to encouraging you–now that you have a solid understanding of what you should or shouldn't conclude from survey data–to explore the survey results by yourself.
So go ahead and get lost in the data, then let me know on Bluesky what you found!
Top comments (11)
In the UK software developers with evidence of experience and qualification can register as a chartered Engineer. This is a protected title. It does show you've had senior responsibilities.
Real developers don’t let charts define them. The problem isn’t being called “frontend” — it’s whether you build real systems or just assemble templates. Calling yourself something else won’t raise your value. Building what others can’t — will.
Not sure if you've read the whole thing, but the title was a bit tongue-in-cheek. As the article show the title itself has little to do with the income discrepancy. The (likely) cause is that the term "engineer" is used more commonly for positions in larger companies, which also pay more.
So it's not so much what you call yourself, but what kind of position you apply to.
Totally understood the tone — but for many devs reading posts like this, even tongue-in-cheek titles reinforce the wrong instincts: to chase labels instead of build capability. Most will walk away thinking “rebrand for more money” instead of “develop deeper skill so it doesn’t matter what you're called.”
If we’re telling devs to chase roles with better-sounding titles rather than build the skill sets those roles demand, we’re teaching brand strategy, not engineering.
Whether you're called "engineer" or "developer" doesn’t matter — what matters is whether you can build systems that justify either.
definitely don't refer to yourself as a vibe coder...
Do we have data of developer whose their job description doesn't match his tasks? (Like me)?
No, maybe next time we can ask about what actual tasks people perform in more details.
Looking forward to it. Thanks!
This is why I call myself a Web Application Engineer - full-stack dev just sounds too much like what I don't want to do.
I've enjoyed all of the research you've put into this project, it adds up. Reminds me why I like geeking out on these surveys
In my country, to be recognized as a Software Engineer, you have to go through a very specific university program. This path demands a lot of study in physics, electronics, automation, telecommunications, and then how to apply software development to solve real-life, multi-disciplinary problems effectively.
If you pursue Computer Science, focusing mainly on software development skills, you're not typically considered an engineer here; you're more of a scientist, strong on the theoretical side.
But honestly, I think my country is a bit stuck in the past; the world has evolved so much. Nowadays, there isn't really a clear-cut distinction between a developer and an engineer in practice. Still, a Computer Scientist leans more towards the theoretical, logical, and mathematical aspects, whereas an Engineer focuses more on the hardware, electronic, and automation side of things.
Personally, I hold an Italian IT diploma (or high school diploma in Computer Science). I didn't go to university, but I had an intensive study path focused on computer science, systems, statistics, electronics, and mathematics. I spent 6 hours a day, for 3 consecutive years, diving deep into these subjects, including Assembly and C++. I identify as a frontend developer because I mainly work on the frontend part of applications, and I don't have a specific engineering university degree.
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