Is becoming a developer worth it in 2026? An honest look

Is becoming a developer worth it in 2026? An honest look

Yes, if you enjoy solving problems and accept that breaking into the field takes longer now than it did a few years ago. Experienced developers are well paid and tech employment is growing faster than the wider economy, but junior openings are scarce and AI is taking over some simple tasks. Before you spend money on a course, test cheaply whether you actually like the work.

Every figure below comes with its source, date and scope, and a checklist waits at the end.

The job market in numbers

According to the Just Join IT report, the Polish job board justjoin.it published 175,610 offers in the record year of 2022, 99,363 in 2024 and 110,996 in 2025, up 8.42% year on year. The No Fluff Jobs report "Kariera w IT 2026" (in Polish) shows on average 70% more offers on that board from January to May 2026 than in the same months of 2025. The market has stopped shrinking, but it's still well below the boom years.

What matters more is who those offers are for. On justjoin.it in 2025 only 4.79% of listings targeted juniors, while 51.48% targeted seniors. No Fluff Jobs estimates that in 2025 roughly one offer in twenty was aimed at beginners, compared with 15% of listings in 2022. In the first half of 2026 a junior offer there drew an average of 47 CVs and a mid-level offer 24. The first job is the hardest one to get.

In the European Union the profession is still growing, though more slowly. According to Eurostat, more than 10 million ICT specialists worked in the EU in 2025, 5.0% of all employed people (a wider group than developers alone). Between 2015 and 2025 their number grew by 59.4%, against 9.8% for total employment, but between 2024 and 2025 growth was just 2.6%. In Poland there were 778,800 ICT specialists in 2025, 4.5% of the employed, up from 424,400 in 2015.

In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects that employment of software developers, QA analysts and testers will grow by 10% from 2025 to 2035, against 3.5% for total employment. That's a ten-year projection, though, not a picture of current hiring. The Indeed index of software development job postings stood at 77.3 on 18 September 2026 (1 February 2020 = 100), about 23% below the pre-pandemic level and roughly a third of its February 2022 peak.

Salaries: what developers really earn

Statistics Poland (GUS) publishes data on salaried pay. In its Structure of wages and salaries by occupations for October 2024, a bilingual report published in February 2026, "software and applications developers and analysts" had a median of PLN 13,900 gross a month and an average of PLN 15,629.51. The median for all employees was PLN 7,404.69, so a typical salaried developer earned almost twice as much as a typical employee. The survey only covers employees in entities with at least 10 employed persons, though, so it leaves out B2B contractors, who made up 48.7% of IT specialists surveyed by Just Join IT in autumn 2025.

Job ads are the second source. The authors of the Just Join IT report calculated medians from more than 110,000 offers published in 2025. Employment contract (UoP) amounts are gross, B2B amounts net, excluding VAT.

In the job board's survey (more than 4,400 specialists, 19 October to 7 November 2025), juniors on employment contracts actually earned PLN 8,500 gross, roughly what the ads promised, but expected PLN 10,000. Mid-level specialists earned 19-21% less than the offers suggested, which the authors put down to ads showing the top of the range.

In the US, the BLS puts the median annual wage of software developers at $135,980 in May 2025, but differences in taxes and living costs mean it can't be compared directly with Polish rates.

The takeaway: this is a well-paid profession, but headline figures usually describe seniors on B2B contracts, and reaching that level takes years.

How AI is changing the way in

In "Canaries in the Coal Mine?" (revised 12 August 2026, ADP payroll data on millions of US workers through June 2026), economists at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab find no widespread job losses across the economy. But employment of 22 to 25-year-olds in occupations highly exposed to AI, with software developers among the cases they analyse, is 19% lower than it would be had it kept pace with peers in less exposed jobs. Experienced workers show no such gap. The difference comes mainly from fewer hires, not layoffs. The authors call these early, descriptive signals, not causal proof.

The BLS projects that employment of computer programmers, who turn software developers' designs into code, will fall by 7% from 2025 to 2035. It links this to the automation of repetitive programming tasks, including with AI. For software developers the projection is +10%, so the work most at risk seems to be simply translating finished requirements into code.

Developers use AI heavily, but warily. In the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, 84% of respondents were using or planning to use AI tools, yet 46% distrusted the accuracy of their output, and 66% named solutions that are "almost right, but not quite" as their biggest frustration. Still, 64% did not see AI as a threat to their current job, down from 68% a year earlier. In Poland, a No Fluff Jobs study from March 2026 found that 68% of IT specialists use AI at work every day and one in three fears being replaced by it.

Frontend, beginners' favourite path, feels the shift most. At No Fluff Jobs its share of listings fell from 11.4% in 2022 to 3.4% in the first half of 2026, and a junior frontend offer drew an average of 146 CVs. The company's CEO adds that AI is only part of the story: years of quick courses produced too many frontend developers.

For you, this means a higher bar at the start: some simple tasks juniors used to learn on can now be handed to AI, so you need to review generated code and explain how it works. Get comfortable with GitHub Copilot or Cursor, but no tool will learn the fundamentals for you.

Which specialisations are growing and which are shrinking

On justjoin.it in 2025 the Data category overtook JavaScript for the first time (10.78% against 9.57% of listings), and AI/ML specialists saw a record 15% rise in B2B rates. At No Fluff Jobs in the first half of 2026, backend led (17.5% of offers) ahead of Data & Business Intelligence (12%). Python appeared in 21.6% of offers and SQL in 20.3%. The board also reports more and more hiring in DevOps and business analysis.

BLS projections for the US point in a similar direction. The categories don't match perfectly, so treat the table as a rough map rather than a ranking.

The common thread: demand is rising for data, security and infrastructure specialists, where understanding the whole system and owning the outcome matter. Frontend isn't disappearing, but knowing HTML, CSS and React alone is less often enough to get started, so it pays to combine it with backend, data or testing.

Who this job suits and who it doesn't

Money alone rarely keeps people in this job. Much of the work is reading other people's code, hunting bugs and clarifying requirements, and the learning never stops: in the Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025, 69% of respondents had learned new coding techniques or a new language in the past year.

You'll probably enjoy the work if you:

• like puzzles and the moment something finally works,
• can spend an hour on a single bug without giving up,
• read documentation in English or want to learn to.

You'll probably be disappointed if you:

• are motivated only by headline salaries,
• struggle with vague requirements and constant revisions,
• want to learn something once and be done with it for years.

Job satisfaction is sobering too: in the same survey 24.5% of respondents felt happy in their current role, 47.1% were complacent, meaning content without enthusiasm, and 28.4% were not happy.

A simple test: open your browser's console (usually F12, or Cmd+Option+I on a Mac, then the Console tab) and type the code below by hand rather than pasting it. The function should average weekly study hours, but it prints NaN.

const hoursPerWeek = [5, 7, 4, 6]

function averageHours(weeks) {
  let total = 0
  for (let i = 0; i <= weeks.length; i++) {
    total += weeks[i]
  }
  return total / weeks.length
}

console.log(averageHours(hoursPerWeek))

Fix the bug so that the program prints 5.5. If hunting for the cause drew you in, that's a good sign, and if after fifteen minutes you feel only irritation, try a similar exercise in a week before writing yourself off.

What a career change costs and how long it takes

Count time in hours. CodeWorlds course pages estimate HTML and CSS basics at 40-60 hours and JavaScript at 60-90, so the web path alone takes about 100-150 hours: roughly 10 to more than 20 weeks at 7-10 hours a week. Those are just the fundamentals. Then come projects, a portfolio and a job search that, with 47 CVs per junior offer on average, is rarely short.

The costliest mistake is quitting a stable job before checking whether programming suits you at all. Treat the first month as a cheap experiment. For the next steps, from choosing a path to the interview, see the guide on how to become a developer.

Alternatives: testing, data, low-code and product

Programming isn't the only way into tech. Junior medians in the table come from justjoin.it listings from 2025: the first figure is an employment contract, gross, the second B2B, net.

Testing is often recommended as an easier way in, but in 2025 juniors there had the lowest median among the ten most popular justjoin.it categories. Testing pays off most as a route to automation, which is programming. Data analytics can often be started at your current company. In the PM category juniors had the highest median of all non-technical roles, but the report's authors suggest many of them bring experience from other industries. Low-code lacks reliable salary data.

A checklist before you decide

Answer honestly. The more "yes" answers you give, the lower the risk of changing careers.

1. Have you studied programming regularly, several times a week, for the past four weeks?
2. Can you write a small program alone and find its bug, as in the NaN test?
3. Do you know junior pay rates and accept a first salary below your current one?
4. Can you study without quitting your job, or do you have savings for a longer job search?
5. Do you know which path you're choosing (frontend, backend, data, testing) and why?
6. Have you talked to someone in the industry about what their normal week looks like?
7. Do you have a plan B, such as testing, analytics or automation at your current company?

With 6-7 "yes" answers you have solid grounds for a decision. With 4-5, add a few weeks of study and see which answers change. With fewer, start with cheaper steps or one of the alternatives.

How to test cheaply whether programming is for you

The cheapest test is a month of regular study before any big expense. At CodeWorlds the free plan covers the HTML and CSS course in the app and gives you 10 units of fuel per day, which you spend on exercises solved in the browser, a good fit for short daily sessions. You can read the lessons of the other courses for free on the site, while their exercises in the app need the paid plan. Four beginner courses suit this test:

For the first two weeks, do a few exercises a day from one course, starting for example with introduction to HTML, first steps in the JavaScript console or introduction to Python. The JavaScript course assumes HTML and CSS basics, while the SQL course requires no prior database knowledge. In week three, build something small without step-by-step instructions, and in week four go back to the checklist. You'll find every course on the programming courses page. If you're unsure where to begin, read where to start learning to code and then the guide on how to learn to code.

FAQ

Will AI replace developers?

The 2026 data doesn't show mass replacement. The Stanford researchers see no general job losses in the US, and the BLS projects 10% employment growth for software developers from 2025 to 2035. AI does raise the bar for newcomers, though, because companies are hiring fewer young people in occupations highly exposed to AI.

Can you still find a first junior job in 2026?

Yes, but it's harder than a few years ago. Junior offers made up 4.79% of justjoin.it listings in 2025, and at No Fluff Jobs such an offer drew an average of 47 CVs in the first half of 2026. Polished projects, referrals and less crowded paths than frontend all help.

How much does a junior developer earn in Poland?

The median of 2025 justjoin.it listings is PLN 8,000 gross on an employment contract or PLN 9,020 net on B2B, and juniors in the job board's survey reported real earnings of PLN 8,500 gross on employment contracts. Medians were lower in testing and higher in data and DevOps.

Do you need a degree to work as a developer?

Not always, but it helps. According to Eurostat, in 2025 68.8% of EU ICT specialists who reported their education level had a tertiary degree, and the BLS lists a bachelor's degree as the typical entry-level education for US software developers. Without a degree your portfolio has to convince recruiters, as the guide on how to become a developer explains.