Information Density: Jamstack – Signal Evidence & AI Readability

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[H1] What is Jamstack?

Jamstack is an architectural approach that decouples the web experience layer from data and business logic, improving flexibility, scalability, performance, and maintainability.

Jamstack removes the need for business logic to dictate the web experience.

It enables a composable architecture for the web where custom logic and 3rd party services are consumed through APIs.

[H2] The Roots of Jamstack

Matt Biilmann took the concept of Jamstack mainstream with his presentation at Smashing Conf 2016. Watch the quintessential introduction to the Jamstack.

Watch Mathias Biilmann Smashing Conf 2016 talk video: The New Front-End Stack on Vimeo

See more videos and resources

Let’s talk about the Future of Jamstack — Join us

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[H1] Jamstack gives developers full-stack powers

[H2] Findings from the Jamstack Community Survey 2022

The third year of the Jamstack Community Survey found a mix of things we
expected – indeed, things we predicted last year – as well as some big
surprises about the many diverse members of our community. Some key
takeaways include:

Four out of five developers are now working remotely most of the time,
and more than half say they would quit their jobs rather than go back to
an office.

The number of people who have used serverless technology jumped to 70%,
taking it fully into the mainstream.

React continued to grow to an almost unprecedented 71% share of
developers, and Next.js rode that wave and is now used by 1 in every 2
developers.

Netlify sits at the
center of the Jamstack community, and we conduct our annual survey so we
can understand our community of developers. This helps us tailor our
products and services to our community. In sharing our survey results, we
also want to help developers better understand themselves and one another.
Working as a developer often means working in a vacuum, without a sense of
what’s happening in the broader community. Our survey data can help
provide a sense of best practices as well as an idea of what else is
happening in the community.

In addition to our usual framework census and our questions about content
management systems, this year we asked about some emerging technologies
that have received a lot of attention. The fuzzy group of technologies
called “Web3” garnered mixed feelings despite a great deal of press in
2021 and 2022. Browser-native web components, on the other hand, seem to
have finally reached mainstream adoption.

As usual, our survey covers everyone we can reach: every kind of developer
responded to our survey from every region of the world, whether or not
they were Netlify users, and whether or not they considered themselves
Jamstack developers. Our survey this year received a little under 7,000
responses. If you’re interested in the specifics of our methodology, we
have a
detailed writeup
of the demographics and margins of error in our survey.

As usual, we want to thank the developers who took the time to contribute
to the survey. We have done our best to take the data you’ve given us and
turn it into useful, actionable insights for everyone in our community,
and we hope it helps you.
This year, our results are split into four sections:

[H2]
Who’s doing the building?
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As usual, we kick off by looking at the demographics of our community. Who
are we, exactly?

[H3]
Job titles
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There was not much change in the breakdown of reported job titles in our
survey this year: as usual, nearly everyone (84%) who responded considers
themselves to be an engineer of some kind. There was one curious change,
however: the number of people calling themselves “full stack” versus “front
end” has almost exactly flipped, from 32% full stack and 45% front end last
year to 44% full stack and 33% front end in the 2022 survey. None of the
other demographic markers we tracked changed very much, so we believe this
is a real shift in how the community thinks of itself. We have two theories
about why this might be the case, and we’ll discuss them in the sections on
job changes and serverless.

[H4]
Job titles, 2021 vs. 2022
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Percentage of respondents

Source: Jamstack Community Survey 2022

Show Chart Data

Job Title
2021
2022

Developer (full-stack)
32%
44%

Developer (front-end)
45%
33%

Developer (back-end)
5%
5%

Designer
4%
4%

Manager
6%
4%

Executive/Business owner
4%

Content producer
2%
3%

DevOps
2%
2%

[H3]
Employment status
Permalink

This year when asking about employment status we added a new category,
“self-employed”, which meant that the results are not totally comparable to
last year. A bunch of people who last year described themselves as
“full-time” switched to the “self-employed” category, which probably doesn’t
describe an actual change in status but more accurately describes what they
already were. Students continue to be the second-biggest group in the
community, at 21% of all respondents. As we said last year, this is a
solidly positive sign for a community: the Jamstack remains a popular way to
on-board students at bootcamps into deploying websites for the first time,
and becoming the “default” way to build a website means the Jamstack can
expect to enjoy growth for years to come.

[H4]
What's your employment status?
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Percentage of respondents

Source: Jamstack Community Survey 2022

Show Chart Data

Employment Status
Percentage of Survey Participants

Full-time
50%

Student
21%

Self-employed
13%

Contractor
6%

Part-time
5%

Between jobs
5%

Retired
1%

[H3]
Working experience
Permalink

When asking about our community’s level of working experience, we saw a
continuing trend from 2020 and 2021: the community is slowly increasing in
experience. 2021 was our biggest year for new community members, and you can
see that cohort moving up by 1 year of experience in this chart. In 2022,
nearly 1 in 5 developers say they have been working in their current career
for 15 or more years.

[H4]
Experience increasing over time
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Years of experience relevant to current job, 2020-2022
Percentage of respondents

Source: Jamstack Community Survey 2020—2022

Show Chart Data

Years of experience
2020
2021
2022

< 1
4%
13%
8%

1-2
13%
19%
16%

3-4
20%
18%
16%

5-6
15%
12%
14%

7-8
9%
7%
9%

9-10
12%
8%
9%

11-12
8%
5%
5%

13-14
5%
3%
3%

15+
14%
14%
19%

[H4]
Increasing geographical diversity
Permalink

Repeating a phenomenon we first noticed last year, the geographical
diversity of our respondents has a strong correlation to their level of
career experience. In the most experienced group, 84% of respondents come
from either North America or Europe. In our newest group, those with less
than a year of experience, that falls to just 43%. That means in 2022 for
the first time, more than half of people who joined the Jamstack community
came from outside of the two big regions!
An explanation for this correlation that we find persuasive is that access
to technology is continuing to improve worldwide, leading to increased
geographical diversity. We think this is an encouraging trend, and hope that
it will lead to greater diversity in other dimensions as well.

[H5]
Experience by region
Permalink

Percentage of respondents

Source: Jamstack Community Survey 2022

Show Chart Data

Years of experience
Africa
Asia Pacific
Central America
Eastern Asia
Europe
Middle East
North America
South America
Southern Asia
Caribbean

< 1
9.3%
21.1%
0.5%
3.6%
21.7%
2.1%
21.7%
7.2%
12.9%
0.0%

1-2
12.4%
16.4%
1.2%
0.7%
27.9%
0.9%
21.6%
5.9%
12.0%
0.9%

3-4
8.4%
13.1%
1.3%
2.2%
37.4%
2.2%
24.5%
4.5%
5.4%
1.1%

5-6
5.7%
12.9%
2.5%
2.0%
34.5%
2.2%
28.3%
6.2%
3.7%
2.0%

7-8
3.7%
6.7%
0.7%
1.9%
39.6%
0.7%
37.0%
3.0%
5.6%
1.1%

9-10
2.5%
5.8%
1.1%
0.4%
42.4%
0.7%
40.6%
4.7%
1.1%
0.7%

11-12
3.8%
5.0%
0.6%
1.3%
51.9%
1.3%
32.5%
3.1%
0.6%
0.0%

13-14
3.5%
8.1%
0.0%
0.0%
39.1%
5.8%
35.6%
2.3%
5.8%
0.0%

15+
0.7%
8.0%
0.5%
1.1%
40.3%
1.5%
44.1%
2.0%
1.3%
0.5%

Every region outside of Europe and North America grew in share. The
fastest-growing region was Africa, which jumped from 4% of respondents to 8%
from 2021 to 2022. This author is also delighted to note that his home
region, the Caribbean, went from 0.5% to 1% in the same period.

[H5]
Respondents by region
Permalink

Percentage of respondents

Source: Jamstack Community Survey 2021—2022

Show Chart Data

Employment Status
2021
2022

Europe
39%
33%

North America
31%
28%

All Asia
18%
19%

Asia Pacific
11%
12%

Africa
4%
8%

Southern Asia
6%
8%

South America
5%
5%

Eastern Asia
1%
2%

Middle East
1%
2%

Central America
1%
1%

Caribbean
1%
1%

[H3]
The Great Resignation
Permalink

A phenomenon that gained a great deal of attention in 2021 was a spike in
the number of people changing jobs, which has become known as The Great
Resignation. We were interested to get hard numbers on the reality of this
change, and we were not disappointed: fully one-third of our respondents
reported that they changed jobs in the last year, a huge shift. In our job
titles data we saw a big change in job titles, with 11% switching from
front-end to full-stack roles, a change that seems totally plausible in the
context of a community where 33% of people changed jobs.

[H4]
Have you changed jobs in the last 12 months?
Permalink

Percentage of respondents

Source: Jamstack Community Survey 2022

Show Chart Data

Have you changed jobs in the last 12 months?
Count

No
67%

Yes
33%

[H4]
Why people stay
Permalink

We had a second question about the great resignation asking people what
motivated their behavior – either why they stayed, or why they left. The
biggest reason people kept their jobs will be no surprise: people stay if
they like their team. Humans are social animals, and a team you love makes
work more bearable.
A more surprising finding was that the number two reason, as measured by
those who called it “extremely important”, was remote work. People really,
really like working remotely. Money was important, but it was only the
fifth-biggest reason people stayed where they were. Career growth was also a
very important reason to stay.

[H5]
Why did you stay in your job?
Permalink

Percentage of respondents

Source: Jamstack Community Survey 2022

Show Chart Data

Not at all important
Slightly important
Moderately important
Very important
Extremely important

Team
3%
5%
19%
40%
34%

Remote work
5%
9%
22%
32%
32%

Career growth
3%
6%
21%
39%
31%

Company culture
4%
8%
21%
38%
29%

Money
3%
6%
25%
39%
28%

Corporate ethics
6%
9%
24%
37%
25%

My manager
6%
7%
24%
38%
24%

Technology choices
2%
7%
24%
44%
23%

Environmental impact
14%
16%
30%
26%
14%

Involuntary
31%
10%
34%
15%
10%

[H4]
Why people leave
Permalink

Why people left jobs was even heavier on remote work: being able to work
remotely at the new job was the number one reason people left their jobs in
our community, as measured by the number of people saying it was an
“extremely important” reason. Growing in your career came in second when
measured in this way, though if you include people who called things “very”
important in addition to “extremely” important it came first. Company
culture, bad teams, and not enough money came next.

[H5]
Why did you leave your job?
Permalink

Percentage of respondents

Source: Jamstack Community Survey 2022

Show Chart Data

Not at all important
Slightly important
Moderately important
Very important
Extremely important

Remote work
6%
6%
18%
30%
41%

Career growth
3%
5%
18%
35%
39%

Company culture
4%
6%
21%
38%
31%

Team
4%
6%
21%
38%
31%

Money
4%
5%
20%
40%
30%

My manager
6%
9%
24%
34%
26%

Corporate ethics
6%
9%
25%
36%
25%

Technology choices
4%
7%
25%
42%
22%

Environmental impact
15%
16%
30%
25%
14%

Involuntary
36%
10%
28%
15%
11%

[H3]
Remote work
Permalink

Given that one-third of respondents changed jobs in the last year and many
indicated that remote work was their primary reason for either staying or
leaving a company, our next finding makes sense: a startling 83% of our
respondents say they work remotely at least half of the time. Three in five
(62%) work remotely at least 90% of the time, which we’re going to call
“full time remote”. In last year’s survey about a third said their job had
gone full-time remote, and we know from earlier surveys (such as
GitHub’s Octoverse report) that about a third of people were already working remotely before the
pandemic, so this is roughly double the pre-pandemic numbers.

[H4]
What percentage of your time do you work remotely?
Permalink

Percentage of respondents

Source: Jamstack Community Survey 2022

Show Chart Data

Frequency
Percentage of Survey Participants

0%
3%

1-9%
4%

10-24%
5%

25-49%
5%

50-74%
9%

75-89%
12%

90-99%
23%

100%
39%

[H4]
Changes in remote work
Permalink

Since a lot of remote work was driven by the pandemic and offices around the
world are still in the process of reopening, we thought it was fair to ask
whether or not this new state was going to be permanent, or whether people
were returning to offices, but slowly.
The clear response was that remote work is here to stay. A solid majority
(76%) of respondents said their frequency of remote work had either stayed
the same or increased in the last year. Indeed the strongest signal is that
this is the new normal: 52% of people said nothing changed about their
remote working situation, and the ratio of those working remotely more often
versus less often was just 1.04, meaning only a small net change.

[H4]
Has your frequency of remote work changed in the last 12 months?
Permalink

Percentage of respondents

Source: Jamstack Community Survey 2022

Show Chart Data

Frequency
Percentage of Survey Participants

Lots more in office
7%

Slightly more in office
16%

No changes
52%

Slighty more remote
9%

Lots more remote
15%

[H4]
Attitudes to remote work
Permalink

We also asked our community about their attitudes to various aspects of
remote work. 87% of respondents say they enjoy remote work, but only 71% say
their company has remote work “figured out”, which implies there’s 16% of
people enjoying remote work even though they believe their company doesn’t
do it very well.

[H4]
I enjoy remote work
Permalink

Percentage of respondents

Source: Jamstack Community Survey 2022

Show Chart Data

Percentage of Survey Participants

Strongly disagree
3%

Somewhat disagree
4%

Neither agree nor disagree
7%

Somewhat agree
26%

Strongly agree
61%

[H4]
My company has remote work figured out
Permalink

Percentage of respondents

Source: Jamstack Community Survey 2022

Show Chart Data

Percentage of Survey Participants

Strongly disagree
6%

Somewhat disagree
9%

Neither agree nor disagree
14%

Somewhat agree
32%

Strongly agree
39%

As we suspected from the job chan

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[H1] Learning Resources

Learn more about the architecture changing modern web development.

More and more people are talking about the Jamstack. We've curated some of our favorite resources here to help you get started, and to learn more about how people are using the Jamstack.

Here’s a few great starting points:
What is the Jamstack?
Why Jamstack?

[H2] Videos and Presentations

These are great presentations to help understand what the Jamstack is, and how it can be used to great effect.

[IMG: Easy Isomorphic Rendering on the Jamstack]

[H3]
Easy Isomorphic Rendering on the Jamstack →
November 30, 2016
www.youtube.com

[IMG: Contentful, GraphQL, and Paid Content]

[H3]
Contentful, GraphQL, and Paid Content →
August 6, 2020
www.learnwithjason.dev

[H3]
Learn Jamstack with a free 3.5 hour video of demos and examples →
March 12, 2020
www.netlify.com

[IMG: Bringing JAMStack to the Enterprise]

[H3]
Bringing JAMStack to the Enterprise →
August 3, 2019
www.infoq.com

[IMG: Rise of the Jamstack]

[H3]
Rise of the Jamstack →
May 26, 2017
www.youtube.com

[IMG: The New Front-end Stack. Javascript, APIs and Markup]

[H3]
The New Front-end Stack. Javascript, APIs and Markup →
April 20, 2016
vimeo.com

More videos and presentations

[H2] Articles and resources

Selected articles and case studies of Jamstack implementations.

[H4] What is Jamstack and How Does it Work?
June 12, 2019
buttercms.com

[H4] What is Jamstack and why you should try it
April 15, 2018
www.giftegwuenu.com

[H4] What is the Jamstack and how do I get started?
February 19, 2020
www.freecodecamp.org

[H4] JAMStack: Modern Web Architecture in Digestible Terms
July 9, 2018
www.gridhaus.com

More articles and resources

Let’s talk about the Future of Jamstack — Join us

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[H1] Glossary
A collection of terms often used when talking about Jamstack and associated web technologies.

API
API Economy
Atomic deploys
CDN (Content Delivery Network)
Client render
Decoupling
DPR (Distributed Persistent Rendering)
Headless technology
Immutable deploys
Jamstack
Microservice
Pre-render / Pre-generate
Server render
Serverless
Static site generator

You can help us to expand and improve this glossary by creating an issue.