Is there a difference between a “software engineer” and a “software developer”? How many years of experience do you need to be “senior,” or a “team lead”? Do people still call themselves “webmasters”? Does anyone actually describe themselves as a “rockstar” or “ninja”?

When I tell someone Stack Overflow is based in New York City, they're often surprised: many people assume it's in San Francisco. (I've even seen job applications with "I'm in New York, but willing to relocate to San Francisco" in the cover letter.) San Francisco is a safe guess of where an American tech company might be located: it's in the heart of Silicon Valley, near the headquarters of tech giants such as Apple, Google, and Facebook. But New York has a rich startup ecosystem as well- and it's a very different world from San Francisco, with developers who use different languages and technologies.

Our data platform, Providence, has evolved over the last two years. We look at how and why it has changed, and the effects on our counts of developers.

We believe (and developers tell us) that job seekers should be empowered with as much information as possible when looking for a job – especially salary. So we ran an experiment on Stack Overflow Jobs to see if the evidence would support it.

At Stack Overflow, we're committed to making the internet a better place, and our products aim to enrich the lives of developers as they grow and mature in their careers. This week we have been given the opportunity to expand our reach beyond developers into another worthy demographic: foster youth.