1.Overview

The annual survey on Software Developers in Morocco provides invaluable data on a community and their professional paths. Being the second year is even more interesting as we can draw trends from last year results. Following are a few selected takeaways:

• Developer landscape is constantly in motion, and pandemic or not, coders are a restless crowd. They want to learn next-gen languages: Kotlin, Rust and Typescript
• Popular languages and platforms still hold steady: Javascript, Java, Python and PHP.
• Dedication and passion is strong, to a point that many confess to weekly overtime, maybe at the expense of mental health.
• New data on employability reveals job are easier to find in 2021 than 2020
• New data on location shows Morocco is a coder nation, with half in the two biggest cities and another half in the rest of the Kingdom

Sidenotes

Finally, we noticed this year a dip in contributions, and we learned that launching during a virtual conf like BlaBlaConf is definitely an audience boost. We hope it was only a road bump and next year will thrive even more.

⚠️ Since all data is open, we encourage everyone to dive into the interactive playground. We would be glad to hear about some new findings!

A word about methodology

As part of our core principles, all collected data is anonymized. Raw results are also available under the BY-NC-SA 2.0 license. Same thing for the website code, we put everything on GeeksBlaBla GitHub organization.

It’s important to note that not all fields were mandatory, so the results and graphics may not reflect the respondents’ total number for every question.

We want to thank all our amazing contributors and everyone who helped share the survey to get more submissions. We’re looking forward to your feedback and for you to share the results with your network.

2.Profile

The objective of this first section is to get insights about the profile and the skills of the people working in Software Engineering in Morocco. The majority of the people that answered the survey are men. Also, the majority of the respondents are junior developers with less than 3 years of experience and most of them are living in Morocco with plans to work abroad in the next 2 years.

Gender

As can be seen, the results are very similar to last year's, more than 80% of the people that filled this survey are men.

Age

Respondents between 20 and 24, representing fresh graduates and junior developers are still the majority. The second category of respondents is still people between 25 and 34. Only 4 people were older than 45 yo.

Location

Half of the people that filled the survey are located in Casablanca-Settat or Rabat-Salé-Kénitra. Only 9% of respondents live abroad in Europe, the US, or other countries.

Roles

More than 43% of all respondents qualify themselves full-stack developers.

Highest degree

The results are very similar to last year's results, The majority of the respondents have an equivalent of a Master's degree. Followed by people who took 2/3-year training after their high school degree (BAC). Also, this year we have more self-taught respondents. Finally the percentage of respondents with a Ph.D. is still 1%.

Years coding professionally

Unlike the previous year, There are more people that have been coding for 1 to 2 years, followed by people who have been coding for less than a year. What is new this year is that more than 16% have no professional coding experience.

Coding as a hobby

Coding is a hobby for the majority of the developers that participate in the survey.

Plans to work abroad

42.6% of the people that answered this question have plans to work outside Morocco in the next 2 years (16.1% in the next year). Almost a third of the participants are still hesitating.

Plans to come back to Morocco

47.8% of the people that are working abroad have plans to come back to Morocco, and 11.1% are still hesitating

Favorite drink

Coffee is the still favorite drink of developers, followed by water.

2.Education and Learning

There is a lot to be said when talking about the educational system in Morocco. We asked the community about their thoughts, opinions, source of learning, and potential solutions. Additionally, more than 50% of respondents consider themselves self-taught and more than 70% of all respondents confirm that English is not an obstacle to learning new things anymore.

Studies

More than 60% of respondents studied in public university but surprisingly 50% of them consider themselves self-taught.

Educational system

A complete spit in this question. 49.5% of participants think that the schools do not give them enough concepts to start their professional career.

Regarding the main contributors of education system problems, more than 75% agree that Academic defined subjects is the major issue.

Read/Written languages

Arabic, English and French are the top 3 languages that the majority of respondents can read/write.

Around 70% confirm that English isn't an obstacle for them to learn new technologies.

Content and learning platforms

More than 70% of all respondents identify the need for more Darija content in some form or another.

YouTube's educational resources are the preferred learning platform for the majority of the Moroccan community.

4.Work

Around 80% of Moroccan developers prefer working remotely after the COVID-19, either full-time, part-time and companies start providing more options to work remotely for their employees. About 28% of all participants say they're students. Around 80% of respondents reported they're somehow happy with their current job.

Employment status

More than 64% of all respondents are employed, either full-time, part-time, or as freelancers. Almost 7% of respondents are looking for a job opportunity.

Working overtime

More than 30% of participants claim that they work 1-2 days per week overtime. Why is that? Is it by passion, dedication to results or under estimated scheduling?

Job satisfaction

Same as last year, Around 80% of respondents reported they're somehow happy with their current job. This is consistent with Stackoverflow's own data on developers, feeling happy with their jobs.

Side projects

Almost 75% of respondents work on side projects to improve their skills, strengthen their knowledge,Make money and invest in themselves.

Unemployment after graduation

Almost 60% of all respondents reported that they found a job straight after their graduation 😎

Salaries

We asked full-time contractors in Morocco(CDI) about their NET salary range per month in MAD is and here are the results by years of experience.

We asked freelancer in Morocco about their salary range per day in MAD(TJM) is and here are the results by years of experience.

We asked full-time contractor outside Morocco, Your gross salary range per year in USD is and here are the results by years of experience.

We asked freelancer outside Morocco, Your daily gross wage in USD is and here are the results by years of experience.

Choosing a job offer

Same as last year, Technical stack, Salary, and culture are the top three motivators for Moroccan developers to consider a job offer. Data shows industry and work impact have the least weight in career decisions.

Preferred Company size

Almost a split between medium and big companies, only 12% prefer companies with less then 10 employees.

Agile software development methodology

More than 80% of respondents are using an agile software methodology and more than 63% of them are using scrum.

Remote work

After the COVID-19, more companies are adopting remote work as almost 20% provide a full remote option and more than 50% of them provide a hybrid option to their employees.

More than 80% of respondents prefer remote work either part time or full time

5.Technology

Same as Last Year JavaScript stay the most popular language and Loved one by the Moroccan Community, in front of Java, Python, and PHP .

Python takes the top spot for programming languages that developers want to learn next similar to last year. Going further down the list, we also see Typescript, Golang as the most wanted programming languages.

Front-end frameworks/libraries

As always the Famous library for front-end development is React.js, stay the most loved and wanted by the Community, in front of the jQuery and Angular.js.

NextJS with new Features and Versions become the second most wanted framework in the list in front of ReactJS and passing both VueJs & AngularJs.

Backend frameworks/libraries

The Java-based framework used to create a micro Service or what we called Spring Eco-System is the most popular backend framework used by the Moroccan Community, in front of Express.js, Laravel, and .NET framework.

The Fast growth of the Python Community in Morocco, helped Django become one of the most wanted backend frameworks That developers want to learn next, besides ExpressJs and Laravel.

Platforms and tools

Cross-platform, back-end JavaScript runtime environment we talk about NodeJS that become the most used platform and tool in the list, passing React Native. In front of Docker and JVM, that become in the top 3.

Deployment, scaling, and management become one of the skills that developers want to learn next, and this is represented by Kubernetes, the most wanted platform and tool, in front of Docker and Flutter.

Primary operating systems

As always Windows is Still the most Primary Os that most Moroccan developers use, but we see that Linux and macOS Grow fast, while Linux grows with 2.6% and MacOS with 3.1%.

IDE & Code Editors

Unsurprisingly, VSCode is the most used code editor same as last year, 80% of respondents use it to write their code. Jetbrains IDEs are second by 36% and only 13% are Vim users.

Learning New Technologies

Different languages solve the same problems in different ways. By learning several different approaches, you can help broaden your thinking and avoid getter struck in a rut.

That's what we see here, people learn new languages and Technologies every few months, and 31% of respondents are learning new Technologies once a year.

How do you solve problems?

If you're unsure what the best way forward is it can be incredibly helpful to get a second pair of eyes on it, that's why people prefer using Google to search for answers, and solve the problems, in front of Stack Overflow and other community forums.

Deployment environment

In software deployment, an environment, or tier is a computer system or set of systems in which a computer program or software component is deployed and executed. That's why most of the developers use public cloud providers, like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform to deploy their applications, and other ones use on-premise servers.

Cloud Providers

A cloud platform refers to the operating system and hardware of a server in an Internet-based data center. It allows software and hardware products to co-exist remotely and at scale.

Moroccan techs use mostly AWS as the first choice beside Azure and other Cloud providers.

Database

A production database contains the data you are using for production tasks such as creating and updating features. As we see in the survey MySQL/MariaDB is the most used database in the list, and PostgreSQL is the second most used database in the list, MongoDB is the third most used database in the list.

6.Community

Moroccan Developers are involved more and more on open source. More than 80% of respondents have at least contributed to an open-source project

Local Developer Communities

More than 50% of respondents are following local communities, but only 7% are active members

Open source contribution

Moroccan developers contribute more and more to open source, with more than 50% have at least contributed to an open-source project

Blogging

More than 60% of respondents consider writing blog posts in the future, only 17% of them have the chance to make it real.

Social Media

More than 30% of respondents consider twitter as their primary social media network when it comes to IT

Tech events attended in 2020/2021

Almost 60% of the respondents attended at least one tech event in the past year!

Talks given in 2020/2021

15% of respondents have already spoken at some IT event!

Online vs in-person events

Same as last year, The Moroccan community is eager to learn and discover new things. Almost 70% said that the event format doesn't make a difference ("Li ja" for the non-dialect speaking meaning "whatever").

Moroccan Tech Community

More than 94% of all respondents think that the Moroccan community is quite good!

7. More Insights

• رأيي الشخصي فاستبيان التطوير المعلومياتي بالمغرب by Diaa Alhak EL FALLOUS

👋 Add your Insights