State of Devs 2026: half of devs let AI write 75%+ of code

Devographics, which runs surveys on the IT field, opened its State of Devs 2026 questionnaire on July 5 and closed it on September 5, 2026, gathering 5,463 responses. The respondent pool skews toward large employers — a median organization size of 550 people, with 24% at organizations of 100 to 1,000 people and another 24% at organizations of 1,000 or more — and toward experienced hands, with a median of 12 years as a software developer and a median age of 36.

The salary data the survey collected lines up with the geographic spread of its respondents. The United States, which supplied the most answers at 1,051, also showed the highest pay, with a median of $175K, matched by Israel. Ireland, Denmark, Switzerland, Canada and Australia clustered at a median of $125K, against a global average of $90K. Japan, which contributed 50 responses — the 21st-largest national group — reported the most common salary band as $40K to $60K, with a median of $50K. The report notes that this is above the roughly 4 million yen often cited as the average for Japanese salaried workers, but low against global figures, though it does not attribute the gap solely to the weak yen.

The code-generation findings are the ones likely to draw the most attention from teams deciding how to structure engineering work. Whether the pattern holds as AI tools change is still open — the figures describe what respondents reported in mid-2026, not a measured output — and the survey leaves unresolved how organizations will divide review, architecture and oversight work if the AI-written share keeps climbing. The health and hobby answers, from the 41% reporting sleep shortage to the 63% who play video games, round out a portrait of a workforce whose daily habits are already shifting.