Exploring the Programming Skills, Compensation, Gender, and Experience of Software Engineers

Exploring software engineering in the world view describes it as a relevant profession for the 21st century and jobs for the future where the programming skills are needed to be updated, compensation packages are competitive, gender disparity is not anymore an issue and number of years of experience is considered a factor to master the required skills to become proficient. This article reviewed some relevant websites like payscale, and published research database like Google Scholar to answer the objective on presenting the common programming languages required by most countries, the average world salary for software engineers, gender break down for different countries under study and the years of experience required for various career levels. Results showed that the estimated annual salary of software engineers in the world average based on the 24 countries is US$36,078.68. There is a large disparity between male (85%) software engineers and females (15%) where the Philippines has the highest percentage of females with more than 20 percent while Italy has the lowest percentage of less than 4 percent. Java, Java Script, Structured Query Language (SQL), C#, and C++ are considered the top programming languages as required skills by most countries. Six (6) in every ten (10) software engineers have early careers with 1-4 years of experience. The most common field of specialization of majority of software engineers came from computer science, based on the result of reviewed websites, followed by the graduates of mathematics and information technology. The demand for software engineers and developers grows continuously in every developed and developing country making it one of the priority areas or field of specializations that most countries would like to strengthen in the labor market.

Keywords: C++, C#, computer science, computer engineers, information technology, Java, SQL