2016 Programmer Salary Survey: Who Earns the Most and Emerging Tech Trends

2016 programmer salary report shows front‑end, back‑end and mobile developers make up the largest share of engineers.

Engineers with five years of experience are most likely to leave Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou.

Average programmer salary in Beijing is ¥12,715, similar in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Nanjing and Xi’an, so moving to Nanjing or Xi’an still offers a good life.

Salary differences between 1‑3 and 3‑5 year engineers are small, but salaries rise sharply after five years, indicating senior engineers are in high demand.

Big‑data engineers are the highest‑paid.

Big‑data, back‑end and mobile developers rank top three in compensation, with big‑data engineers leading.

Which sub‑roles earn the lowest?

Operations engineers earn the least, about two‑thirds of the average salary; test and game engineers also lag behind.

Start‑ups funded to B‑round and D‑round pay the most.

D‑round companies offer the highest salaries, followed by B‑round, reflecting their market position and funding.

Many programmers work in companies without any financing.

Knowing eight programming languages is optimal.

More languages do not guarantee higher pay; for most engineers 4‑5 languages are sufficient.

How should programmers balance salary and passion?

In 2016 the top three learning languages were Java, HTML/CSS and Xcode/Ruby/Go, with Xcode, Ruby and Go offering the highest salaries.

Investors love VR, CTOs love big data.

Engineers most favor big data, AI, mobile development and cloud computing; VR was not among the top future technologies.

In the next six months Swift and WeChat will be the hottest.

Over two‑thirds of mobile developers plan to use Swift; similarly, more than two‑thirds will focus on WeChat web development.

Do Java & C++ developers think Go or Rust will replace them?

Most are undecided, with many taking a fence‑sitting stance.

Programmers love new tech.

Front‑end frameworks remain Angular.js, Bootstrap and React, while Vue.js and React Native are emerging as the next big trends.

Now is the time to learn Python.

Python, driven by big data, AI and VR, is rising in popularity; Django ranks among the top six backend frameworks.

Self‑learning via recorded video courses is most popular.

Engineers with 5‑10 years of experience prefer online training; over 60% favor recorded video, while live streams are still gaining traction.

Source: NetEase Tech