The global developer population is expected to reach 28.7 million people by 2024, an increase of 3.2 million from the number seen in 2020. According to the source, much of this growth is expected to occur in China, where the growth rate is between six percent to eight percent heading up to 2023. How much do software developers earn in the U.S.? Software developers work within a wide array of specialties, honing their skills in different programming languages, techniques, or in disciplines such as design. The average salary of U.S.-based designers working in software development reached 108 thousand U.S. dollars as of June 2021, while this figure climbs to 165 thousand U.S. dollars for engineering managers. Salaries are highly dependent on location, however, with an entry-level developer working in the San Francisco/Bay area earning an average of 44.79 percent more than their counterparts starting out in Austin. JavaScript and HTML/CSS still the most widely used languages While programming languages continue to emerge or fall out of favor, JavaScript and HTML/CSS are mainstays of the coding landscape. In a global survey of software developers, over 60 percent of respondents reported using JavaScript, and HTML/CSS. SQL, Python, and Java rounded out the top five.

According to a global software developer survey in 2022, the vast majority of developers are males, accounting for 91.88 percent of all respondents. Female developers amounted to only five percent of all respondents, demonstrating the male-dominating reality of software development jobs.

Gender imbalance in the tech industry
The tech industry has an overwhelming gender imbalance, in which women at leading tech companies tend to be the minority. Consider Dell’s workforce and Intel’s workforce as an example. In both leading tech companies, women make up only around 30 percent of the workforce. Computing related positions in the United States vary on gender breakdown, with computer hardware engineers ranking the lowest in terms of gender diversity as of late.

Diversity & inclusion initiatives
When tech industry CEOs and founders were asked whether diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives were effective, half indicated that they were not effective. This comes at an interesting time, especially given the overall gender imbalance in the tech industry. Not to mention, the majority of senior management positions within the IT industry are dominated by men. Diversity and inclusion initiatives could help to resolve workplace harassment and unequal treatment that many female executives experience within the tech industry today.

Graph and download economic data for Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Software developers, applications and systems software occupations: 16 years and over: Men (LEU0254584000A) from 2000 to 2019 about software, occupation, full-time, males, salaries, workers, 16 years +, wages, employment, and USA.

Japan CSPI: IS: Software Development (SD) data was reported at 92.100 2000=100 in Aug 2009. This records a decrease from the previous number of 92.200 2000=100 for Jul 2009. Japan CSPI: IS: Software Development (SD) data is updated monthly, averaging 93.250 2000=100 from Jan 2000 (Median) to Aug 2009, with 116 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 100.700 2000=100 in Feb 2000 and a record low of 90.400 2000=100 in Jun 2006. Japan CSPI: IS: Software Development (SD) data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Bank of Japan. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Japan – Table JP.I044: Corporate Service Price Index: 2000=100.

Graph and download economic data for Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Computer programmers occupations: 16 years and over (LEU0254477100A) from 2000 to 2024 about computers, occupation, full-time, salaries, workers, 16 years +, wages, employment, and USA.

Our data for XP conferences was compiled from Scopus, Springer, conference programs, and conference proceedings. This ensures a comprehensive and reliable collection of information.The dataset includes detailed information about each paper presented at the conference, such as the authors' affiliations, paper titles, and abstracts. It also captures the publication year, country of the authors' institutions, link to the paper, and the category of each paper—whether it be a full paper, short paper, workshop paper, PhD symposium, experience report, and so on.Lastly, we have included data on the publisher, citation counts from Scopus, Google Scholar, and Springer, and the number of accesses or views on Springer.

Korea SAI: Vol: Software Development & Supply data was reported at 220.500 2005=100 in Dec 2012. This records an increase from the previous number of 134.900 2005=100 for Nov 2012. Korea SAI: Vol: Software Development & Supply data is updated monthly, averaging 101.700 2005=100 from Jan 2000 (Median) to Dec 2012, with 156 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 225.000 2005=100 in Dec 2011 and a record low of 61.400 2005=100 in Jan 2000. Korea SAI: Vol: Software Development & Supply data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Statistics Korea. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Korea – Table KR.S020: Service Industry Activity Index: Volume: 2005=100.

Graph and download economic data for Software Development Job Postings on Indeed in the United States (IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE) from 2020-02-01 to 2025-05-30 about software, jobs, and USA.

Korea SAI: Val: Software Development & Supply data was reported at 241.000 2005=100 in Dec 2012. This records an increase from the previous number of 147.400 2005=100 for Nov 2012. Korea SAI: Val: Software Development & Supply data is updated monthly, averaging 105.250 2005=100 from Jan 2000 (Median) to Dec 2012, with 156 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 244.400 2005=100 in Dec 2011 and a record low of 57.900 2005=100 in Jan 2000. Korea SAI: Val: Software Development & Supply data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by Statistics Korea. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Korea – Table KR.S016: Service Industry Activity Index: Value: 2005=100.

In the 2023 financial year, Dell spent just over 2.8 billion U.S. dollars on R&D, which is a substantial increase from the 374 million U.S. dollars in 2000. The company had especially increased its research and development spending between financial years 2018 and 2023, as Dell Technologies is strongly pushing to remake its business model. The company is moving away from primarily being a hardware PC manufacturer to becoming an IT services and solutions provider in the midst of the digital transformation age. Areas of research and development The focus of Dell Technologies’ research and development is artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of things (IoT), and data management. A significant portion of Dell Technologies' strategic change of the company’s business model was software virtualization company VMware, which provided cloud computing and platform virtualization software and services. VMware has the largest market share of hyper-converged systems revenue worldwide. In 2021, Dell spun off VMware into a separate company.

The global artificial intelligence (AI) software market is forecast to grow rapidly in the coming years, reaching around 126 billion U.S. dollars by 2025. The overall AI market includes a wide array of applications such as natural language processing, robotic process automation, and machine learning.

What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence refers to the capability of a machine that is able to replicate or simulate intelligent human behaviours such as analysing and making judgments and decisions. Originated in the computer sciences and a contested area in philosophy, artificial intelligence has evolved and developed rapidly in the past decades and AI use cases can now be found in all corners of our society: the digital voice assistants that reside in our smartphones or smart speakers, customer support chatbots, as well as industrial robots.

Investments in AI

Many of the biggest names in the tech industry have invested heavily into both AI acquisitions and AI related research and development. When it comes to AI patent applications by company, Microsoft, IBM, Google, and Samsung have each submitted thousands of such applications, and funding for AI related start-ups are raking in dozens of billions of dollars each year.

In 2024, Epic Games had an estimated 4,358 employees worldwide, which represents a significant reduction from 2022 after a round of layoffs in September 2023. These layoffs affected 830 employees, which translated to about 16 percent of Epic’s workforce. How many people work on Fortnite? While it is hard to say how many of Epic Games’ employees work on the battle royale hit, it is safe to say that it is a significant number of employees. Most of the video game publisher and software developer's employees were working in the gaming segment, accounting for nearly 900 employees in 2019 when the company last revealed the figures publicly. For scale, these figures pale compared to Ubisoft, the gaming industry leader based on workforce. The French-headquartered company currently employs about 20,000 people. Video game industry layoffs The gaming company has also been affected by the wider tech industry layoffs that started rolling in at the beginning of 2023. Although the exact figures remain unclear, it is estimated that more than 11,000 video game industry workers were laid off in 2023. Additionally, 2024 is not shaping up to be much kinder, as already nearly 6,000 game developers lost their jobs during industry layoffs until the end of January.

Epic Games’ layoff of 830 employees is one of the largest of the 2023-24 industry shakeup , ranking fourth behind Unity Technologies (2,900 employees laid off in 3 rounds so far), Microsoft Gaming (close to 2,000 layoffs), Electronic Arts, and Sony Interactive Entertainment (both other 1,000 game devs laid off).

Debugging is a time-consuming process in software development. Even if a programmer proposes a fix it is not guaranteed that it eliminates the problem completely. Such fixes are called partial fixes. However, in recent years, the popularity of formal verification and automated program repair tools has grown. They assist in locating and eliminating the bug. Automated repair tools additionally propose a bug-fix. In this work, we describe a way to mine a benchmark set for these tools to help them recognize partial fixes and suggesting the full fix instead. Our approach uses the GitHub API to fetch closed issues as candidates for partial fixes. We combine two strategies to filter and score the most interesting issues. The first strategy searches for reopened issues as they indicate that a previous commit has not fixed the program completely. The second strategy considers the CI status. If at least one but the last commit has a failing CI, we consider it as a candidate for a partial fix. Many of the resulting top-rated issues represent actual partial fixes. Although the number of filtered real partial fixes on GitHub is small compared to the number of candidates, we are able to present a growing benchmark set of over 2,000 partial fixes.

The tech industry had a rough start to 2024. Technology companies worldwide saw a significant reduction in their workforce in the first quarter of 2024, with over 57 thousand employees being laid off. By the second quarter, layoffs impacted more than 43 thousand tech employees. In the final quarter of the year around 12 thousand employees were laid off. Layoffs impacting all global tech giants Layoffs in the global market escalated dramatically in the first quarter of 2023, when the sector saw a staggering record high of 167.6 thousand employees losing their jobs. Major tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, and IBM all contributed to this figure during this quarter. Amazon, in particular, conducted the most rounds of layoffs with the highest number of employees laid off among global tech giants. Industries most affected include the consumer, hardware, food, and healthcare sectors. Notable companies that have laid off a significant number of staff include Flink, Booking.com, Uber, PayPal, LinkedIn, and Peloton, among others. Overhiring led the trend, but will AI keep it going? Layoffs in the technology sector started following an overhiring spree during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, companies expanded their workforce to meet increased demand for digital services during lockdowns. However, as lockdowns ended, economic uncertainties persisted and companies reevaluated their strategies, layoffs became inevitable, resulting in a record number of 263 thousand laid off employees in the global tech sector by trhe end of 2022. Moreover, it is still unclear how advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) will impact layoff trends in the tech sector. AI-driven automation can replace manual tasks leading to workforce redundancies. Whether through chatbots handling customer inquiries or predictive algorithms optimizing supply chains, the pursuit of efficiency and cost savings may result in more tech industry layoffs in the future.

How many employees does Microsoft have? The American technology company Microsoft employs approximately 228,000 people in full-time positions worldwide. Around 60 percent of Microsoft’s employees are located in the company’s home country the United States. The employees are spread out over four business units: operations (manufacturing, distribution, product support, and consulting services), research and development, sales and marketing, and general and administration. Product portfolio and business segmentsMicrosoft sells a wide range of consumer and enterprise software, hardware, and services. The technology company had a revenue standing at around 245 billion U.S. dollars in fiscal year 2024, most of which came from the commercial licensing of its software and operating systems. For example, Microsoft Windows is a dominating presence in the desktop operating systems market, with a market share of around 73 percent. Microsoft U.S. tech giant Microsoft is one of the biggest technology companies in the United States next to Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and IBM. Microsoft’s market capitalization has consistently grown to over three trillion U.S. dollars over the period from 2014 to 2024. Today Microsoft is one of the most valuable brands worldwide with a brand value close to 3.4 trillion U.S. dollars, with only Apple having a higher brand value. The fiscal year end of the company is June, 30th.

South Korea PPI: Services: ITB: SSI: Software Development & Supply data was reported at 103.570 2015=100 in Apr 2019. This stayed constant from the previous number of 103.570 2015=100 for Mar 2019. South Korea PPI: Services: ITB: SSI: Software Development & Supply data is updated monthly, averaging 92.200 2015=100 from Jan 2000 (Median) to Apr 2019, with 232 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 103.570 2015=100 in Apr 2019 and a record low of 81.090 2015=100 in Jan 2001. South Korea PPI: Services: ITB: SSI: Software Development & Supply data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by The Bank of Korea. The data is categorized under Global Database’s South Korea – Table KR.I040: Producer Price Index: Services: 2015=100.

Meta Platforms had 74,067 full-time employees as of December 2024, down from 67317 people in 2023. As of December 2023, more than 262,000 employees at tech companies worldwide were laid off throughout the year across more than one thousand companies. Facebook: how it all beganIn 2003, a sophomore at named Mark Zuckerberg hacked into protected areas of the university's computer network in order to find photos of other students. He then would pair two of them next to each other on a program called “Facemash” and ask users to choose the more attractive person. At the beginning of 2004, Zuckerberg launched “The Facebook,” a social network dedicated to Harvard students, which later grew to encompass Columbia, Yale and Stanford. The popularity of this new service sky-rocketed and in mid-2004, Zuckerberg interrupted his studies and moved his operation to Palo Alto, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. By 2006, Facebook was open to the general public. In 2020, the company reported almost 86 billion U.S. dollars in revenue and a net income of 29.15 billion US dollars. It is also the most popular social network in the world, with 2.7 billion monthly active users as of December 2020. Facebook employee diversity criticismLike many other tech companies, Facebook has been criticized for having a diversity problem. As of June 2020, tech positions, as well as management roles in U.S. offices were overwhelmingly occupied by men. Furthermore, almost 41 percent of Facebook employees in the U.S. are White and only 3.9 percent are African-American, which has sparked concern regarding representation and equal opportunities. Around 63.2 percent of senior level positions are occupied by White employees and only 4.3 percent by Hispanic-Americans.

As of June 2024, the most popular database management system (DBMS) worldwide was Oracle, with a ranking score of 1244.08; MySQL and Microsoft SQL server rounded out the top three. Although the database management industry contains some of the largest companies in the tech industry, such as Microsoft, Oracle and IBM, a number of free and open-source DBMSs such as PostgreSQL and MariaDB remain competitive. Database Management Systems As the name implies, DBMSs provide a platform through which developers can organize, update, and control large databases. Given the business world’s growing focus on big data and data analytics, knowledge of SQL programming languages has become an important asset for software developers around the world, and database management skills are seen as highly desirable. In addition to providing developers with the tools needed to operate databases, DBMS are also integral to the way that consumers access information through applications, which further illustrates the importance of the software.

In 2021, around two thousand businesses were operating in the game software industry in South Korea.

 Game development 

The overall production value of the South Korean gaming industry in 2021 was at around 18 trillion South Korean won. Around 51 percent of businesses in the gaming industry were focusing on mobile game software. South Korea’s biggest game developing companies include NCSoft, PUBG, NHN Entertainment, and Netmarble.

Netmarble

One of South Korea’s top gaming companies is Netmarble, which was founded in 2000. Netmarble is the company behind popular mobile games like Lineage 2 Revolution and Marvel: Future Fight. In Q4 2022, around 27 percent of Netmarble's revenue was made with RPG games. That quarter, around 85 percent of Netmarble's revenue was made overseas. Marvel Contest of Champions was their strongest game in that period, accounting for around 13 percent of their revenue.

Microsoft’s research and development expenditure amounted to around 29 billion U.S. dollars in its 2024 fiscal year, a record high. Microsoft ranks second among software and computer service companies worldwide in terms of R&D spend, behind only Google’s parent company Alphabet. Microsoft Corporation One of the most successful tech companies worldwide, Microsoft, together with its most famous product, the Windows operating system, has long been a household name. The company’s fiscal year 2021 not only witnessed a record spending for R&D, but also a record high in terms of annual sales – Microsoft brought in 168.08 billion U.S. dollars in net sales that year, proving that their businesses are stronger than ever, after years of continued success. Microsoft's Diverse businesses Some of Microsoft’s major business ventures include the above-mentioned Windows operating system, software packages such as Microsoft Office, various lines of consumer electronics, as well as cloud computing offerings. Microsoft’s productivity and business processes segment, which include products such as Office 365 and LinkedIn, brought in around 53.9 billion U.S. dollars in the 2021 fiscal year.