Stack Overflow Developer Survey Results 2016 on self-taught developers

Education

40,183 responses from non-student developers reported that 69.1% of software developers appear to be self-taught, being the top education profile. This fact is misleading if one does not read the small print, which states that out of this 69.1%, only 13% report themselves as self taught only. That means that the remaining 56.1% did self-directed learning at some extend complementing their formal education, not by replacing it. 13% is nowhere near 69%, although the reading is positive: almost 1 in every 9 developers are excursively self-taught.

Motivation

Almost the same percentage of developers who self-taught at some extend reported that the motivation to ask or answer questions in Stack Overflow is due they learn because they love it, being just second to getting job-related help. So 61.9% report they use Stack Overflow for their own fun and is not necessarily attached to their jobs, in the sense that they could learn different programming languages or technologies as a hobby.

Salary

All developers with five or more years of experience salary is above average. Self-taught developers have a mean salary of 110.1%, more or less in between the middle of all possible levels of formal education. In USA, all developers with five or more years of experience salary is slightly lower than the global results.

References

Stack overflow 2016 survey.