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6 Signs You Should Be Making 6 Figures

In the Developer Survey released by the great minds over at Stack Overflow, we had the chance to study not just what developers are doing at work, but how they are living when they aren’t disrupting industries.

The results paint a pretty interesting picture: Not only would you want a developer living nextdoor, but there is a good chance you are close to being one.

Here are 6 signs you should be making 6 figures as a developer.

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1. You are your family’s IT person

Did you set up your grandparent’s Apple TV? Did you convince your parents to use a password other than “1234”? Did you tell your aunt and uncle to unplug something and then plug it back in? 

Over 92% of devs are the fam’s go-to IT person (to our knowledge, an unpaid position).

2. You use Reddit & YouTube way more than Snapchat

Whether you’re scrolling through /aww, /science, /mildlyinteresting or, most likely, all three, Reddit is where you choose to spend your free screentime.

According to Stack Overflow, the favorite social media platform for developers is the interest-based network Reddit (17%), while YouTube (16.4%) and Whatsapp (15.8%) come right behind.

Influence-driven social media like Snapchat (0.7%) are barely used.

3. You actually like talking to people

Spoiler No. 1: In order to code you need to talk to people about what to code. Spoiler No. 2: Talking to people face-to-face is often the best way to do it! In the developer survey, 60.5% prefer interactions IRL with 28.6% opting for online communication tools.

Shying away from contact might be associated with developers in Hollywood fiction, but only 10.9% are introverts in reality.

4. You look to Elon Musk more than you do Mark Zuckerberg

Elon Musk

The CEO of Tesla may be worth less than half of what the founder of Facebook is, but in the developing community, Elon Musk is 30X more influential.

Over 30% of developers named Elon Musk as the most influential person in tech for 2019 while Mark Zuckerberg only polled at 1.7%. Jeff Bezos came in second at 7.2%.

5. You’re under 35

Though the biggest names in tech tend to be 40-plus, the people who are actually making the code that is changing the world are still relatively young. For developers in the U.S., the average age is 32.8, while India has the youngest coders with an average age of 25.9.

6. You’re a cautious optimist 

Pop culture can sometimes portray anyone who knows their way around a coding stack as looking to tear down the system.

In reality, developers live in a world of rainbows & sunshine compared to their gloomier cohorts.

Close to 64% of developers are optimists, believing that people born today will have a better life than their parents. Compare that to Generation Y surveys, where only 33% believe they will have a better life than their parents.

The first step to 6 figures? Call us.

Over 6,000 people added “Developer” to their resumes as Coding Dojo. The very first thing each of them did on that journey? They booked a time to speak with our Admissions team.