While everyone agrees that AGI will be built on either Python or Rust, surprisingly, they are not the programming languages that pay the most. It’s the Erlang developers who have clinched the top spot for the highest reported median salary of $100,636 in the latest Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024.
Erlang has continued to stay on the top for the past few years. Even in last year’s Stack Overflow Developer Survey, it reported the highest median salary of $99,492. Despite its relatively low adoption rate, Erlang’s niche, yet powerful capabilities have made it a highly valued skill in the tech industry.
Who Even Uses Erlang?
The survey posed a straightforward question to developers: “What is your current total annual compensation (salary, bonuses, and perks, before taxes and deductions)?” The results revealed that Erlang developers enjoyed the highest median salaries among their peers, a trend that has piqued the curiosity of many in the tech community.
Erlang, developed in Sweden, powers some of the most influential startups from the 2010s and even earlier. Companies such as Goldman Sachs, Ericsson, WhatsApp, Amazon, and PepsiCo have all built a huge base of their technology on Erlang. And since they were built on it, rebuilding the whole stack is highly impossible.
Though new developers are shifting to modern programming languages, such as Python and Rust, an expertise in Erlang is still sought after by companies for maintaining their tech stack.
The high salaries of Erlang developers reflect the language’s importance in specific industries. While it may not be as widespread as JavaScript or Python, Erlang’s efficiency in handling concurrent processes makes it a critical tool for telecommunications, banking, and messaging systems.
Interestingly, Peter Ullrich, a developer with extensive experience in Elixir and Erlang, noted the disparity between the high pay and low adoption rates. “Elixir and Erlang jobs have the highest median salaries, but their adoption is still quite low. There aren’t many Erlang and Elixir developers, but those that exist are paid really handsomely.”
A helplessly curious discussion on Reddit brought forth people’s confusion: “Can someone explain to me why Erlang is the top #1 best paid language of SO survey 2024?”
“It’s probably because it’s a language a lot of senior devs tend to find. So the pay may be more based on the experience in general and not necessarily Erlang itself,” replied a user. Erlang is often used in mission-critical applications requiring high concurrency and maintainability.
Low Profile Ninja
Despite its low profile, the language’s robustness makes it indispensable in certain sectors. Plus, the limited number of Erlang developers creates a high demand for those proficient in the language. Companies committed to a tech stack involving Erlang often find it challenging to switch technologies, leading to higher salaries for maintaining their systems.
“C programmers are common. Erlang and Zig programmers aren’t. Supply and demand,” is the simple reason. The rarity of Erlang’s expertise drives up the compensation for those few who master it.
Erlang’s presence in the programming landscape is steady. It is neither making a significant comeback nor declining. Instead, it maintains its niche, especially in areas where reliability and fault tolerance are critical.
Golang and Kubernetes, while popular, are seen as complementary rather than direct competitors to Erlang’s OTP.
Niche skills with high demand and low supply command premium salaries. As technology evolves, the need for specialised knowledge in robust, scalable languages like Erlang will likely continue to grow, maintaining its status as a top-paying technology. But as of now, it is very hard to find jobs that require Erlang, and the few who have it are paid the highest.
