Benchmark
Stack Overflow's annual survey of developers worldwide, now in its 16th year, covering tools, databases, AI use and sentiment, and working conditions.
Stack Overflow's survey puts PostgreSQL first among developers' preferred databases for a fourth straight year. Databricks says agents spin up 80% of enterprise databases, so the planning number is databases per administrator.
Reality
Stack Overflow's 2026 survey of 30,903 developers found nearly half complacent in their jobs, against a third unhappy and just over 22% happy. Burnout led the reasons the complacent gave, so part of the largest group's problem is workload, which managers have some say over.
Reality
Stack Overflow's 16th developer survey, answered by more than 30,000 people, finds only 18% go into an office every day. For engineering leads, the results bear on attendance rules and on how close to production AI tooling should be allowed to work.
Reality
Stack Overflow's 2025 Developer Survey found 79% of developers using AI tools as positive sentiment fell from 72.0% to 59.7% and negative views tripled. Several comparisons span reworded questions or a smaller pulse sample, so the direction holds better than the size of each move.
Reality
Daily agent use among engineers climbed to roughly 80% in a year while developer trust in the output fell to 29%. The case that the gap is costing delivery time rests on a randomized trial of 16 people.
Reality