Golang is the highest-paying skill in the US, report shows

It is always interesting to dig around tech salary reports to find out which is the programming skill that can get you a high-paying job! *cough* Golang *cough*

This time around we are taking a closer look at the 2019 Dice Tech Salary Report but we don’t focus only on the top-paying skills – we are having a look at developers’ job satisfaction level, what causes burn-out among tech professionals, and more.

Before we move on to the results, please keep in mind that this report is solely based on the US market.

Now, let’s dig in!

Money, money, money

In general, salaries did not see any significant increase during 2018, compared to 2017 which can be related to the constantly decreasing salary satisfaction levels. More precisely, since 2012, job satisfaction has decreased by almost 10% with less than half of the participants stating that they are no longer satisfied with their salary.

What’s also extremely interesting is that 70% of the respondents would take the same position in a different company for just a 15% increased salary.

But let’s see which are the highest paying technologies.

As seen in the figure below, Golang has sky-rocketed being the highest paying job in the US market, while Cassandra and Elasticsearch go toe to toe for the 5th place.

Job satisfaction

When asked about job benefits, what they find important in contrast to what they already get, the participants’ responses showed the largest gap being on training and education.

An equally interesting highlight is that a significant percentage of the respondents indicate that they would want to be able to work remotely more often. Specifically, 21% of the respondents indicate what they would like to work remotely always while 48% agree that a pay cut for working remotely is not acceptable!

Last but not least, the report explores the level of burnout tech professionals are experience and the main reasons behind it.

Sadly, a significant percentage of 35% reported feeling burnt out with the lack of recognition as well as the amount of workload being the main drivers behind it.