this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
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How many new lines of code does an average Linux kernel developer produce per year? (feddit.org)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org to c/programming@programming.dev
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How many lines of code does an average Linux kernel developer produce per year?

Based on estimates of the value of the Linux kernel (around 2200 Million Euros in 2011), the size of the kernel (in 2011, version 2.6 was current, with a bit less than 20 million lines of code), and average salary of kernel developers (for Germany, one could estimate 60,000 - 80,000 EUR/year for a mid to senior embedded developer, you can go to kununu.de and look for salary statistics for larger companies like Siemens as a reference), one can estimate the lines of new code that a full-time kernel developer produces - less than 1000 lines per year:

 value=2200000000
 cost_man_year = 60000
 lines_of_code= 20000000

 person_years = value / cost_man_year
lines_per_person_per_year = lines_of_code / person_years

I get to 545 lines per person-year that way.

The interesting question is: You can obviously type that in in half an hour. What do these software developers actually do all day? ;->

Edit: Some people might get it wrong and overlook the 😉 emoticon: I absolutely don't think you should or can measure the productivity or competence of a software developer by counting the lines he or she produces! Myself, I just fixed a bug after searching one whole week for it by uncommenting a single line ... in a two year old unfinished port of a software written 15 years ago to implement and port a niche industrial protocol created 18 years ago.

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[–] nebeker@programming.dev 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Is that salary estimate also from 2011?

There’s a more robust methodology here, which is to look at commit history, but that will only tell you how many lines were pushed and merged. That will be a greater number, by the way: say the kernel is 100 lines, somebody may have written 50, but they may have all been replaced by future patches, so The number of lines written is greater than the number of existing lines.

Regardless, I’m sure you already know lines of code is a bad metric of output, let alone effort and work.

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Is that salary estimate also from 2011?

I got 60K as a mid-level C++ developer in industry in 2009.

[–] nebeker@programming.dev 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ah, OK. What’s the expectation these days, if you don’t mind me asking?

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

It largely depends on at what price you sell your soul.

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org -2 points 2 days ago

That will be a greater number, by the way: say the kernel is 100 lines, somebody may have written 50, but they may have all been replaced by future patches, so The number of lines written is greater than the number of existing lines.

Some parts are rewritten, but most of the kernel code is actually in device drivers which usually do not need to be re-written.