Overview
The fourth annual survey on Software Developers in Morocco offers valuable insights into the community and their professional paths. We included a new section on AI to explore its impact on Moroccan software developers and how they are adjusting to this trend.
This year’s results are particularly interesting as we can draw trends from previous years. Here are some selected takeaways:
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90% of survey participants have integrated AI tools into their professional routines
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60% of respondents have already begun learning AI or even started building AI projects.
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JavaScript remains the most popular language, while Rust is the language most people want to learn.
Please take a deeper look at the sections below to discover more insights and share your feedback and suggestions.
A word about methodology
At our core, we value anonymity and as such, all collected data from the survey is anonymized. Raw results and the website code are also available under the BY-NC-SA 2.0 license on the GeeksBlaBla GitHub organization.
Please note that not all fields in the survey were mandatory, which may result in some results and graphics not reflecting the total number of respondents for every question.
We extend our heartfelt thanks to all our contributors and those who helped share the survey, and we eagerly await your feedback and for you to share the results with your network.
Finally, we express our gratitude to all participants who took the time to complete the survey. Your input is invaluable and we hope you find the results as interesting as we do.
Profile
The objective of this first section is to get insights into 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, where the majority of the respondents are men.
Age
The majority of respondents are aged 18-24, mainly fresh graduates, junior developers, and last-year students. The second largest group includes individuals aged 25-34, with around 70 respondents being 35 years old or older.
Location
Half of the people who filled out the survey are located in Casablanca-Settat or Rabat-Salé-Kénitra. Only 10% of respondents live abroad in Europe, the US, or other countries.
Roles
Almost half 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
Like last year, more people have been coding for 1 to 2 years, followed by those with less than a year of coding experience.
Coding as a hobby
Coding is a hobby for the majority of the developers who participate in the survey.
Plans to work abroad
40% of the people who answered this question have plans to work outside Morocco in the next two years (16% in the next year). a decrease from last year’s by 6% from last year’s results and 8% from 2021.
Plans to come back to Morocco
Only 27% of people working abroad are not willing to come back to Morocco; other respondents either have plans or are still hesitating to return.
Favorite drink
Coffee is the still favorite drink of developers, followed by water.
Education and Learning
When discussing the educational system in Morocco, there are many aspects to consider. We gathered input from the community on their thoughts, opinions, learning sources, and possible solutions.
Additionally, the majority are studied in public universities and more than 61% of them consider themselves self-taught.
Studies
More than 62% of respondents studied at public universities, while we are starting to see an increase in the number of self-taught developers.
Educational system
Even though we hear a lot of criticism about the educational system in Morocco, almost 60% of respondents agree that the educational system gives them the necessary skills to start their careers.
Read/Written languages
Arabic, English and French are the top 3 languages that the majority of respondents can read/write.
Approximately 70% confirm that English is not a barrier for them to learn new technologies.
Content and learning platforms
More than 80% 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. This year, we also see a significant increase in the number of people starting to use AI tools for learning.
Work
Even though we hear about layoffs in the IT industry worldwide, the Moroccan IT industry is still growing. The demand for developers is increasing, and most developers have the chance to find a job right after their graduation.
Around 80% of Moroccan developers prefer working remotely, either full-time or part-time, and companies are starting to provide more options for remote work to their employees. Approximately 21% of all participants say they are students. Around 80% of respondents reported that they are somewhat happy with their current job.
Employment status
More than 60% of all respondents are employed, either full-time, part-time, or as freelancers. Almost 8% of respondents are looking for a job opportunity.
Working overtime
Over 24% of participants work 1-2 days of overtime per week. Is this driven by passion, dedication, or underestimated schedules?
Job satisfaction
Almost the same as last year with a 3% increase. Around 80% of respondents reported they are somehow happy with their current job. This is consistent with Stack Overflow’s own data on developers feeling happy with their jobs.
Side projects
Nearly 70% of respondents engage in side projects to enhance their skills, knowledge, earn money, and invest in themselves.
Unemployment after graduation
Over 60% of respondents found a job immediately after graduating, indicating that the IT sector in Morocco remains unaffected by global layoffs.
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
Almost similar to last year, salary, technical stack, and remote work options are the top three motivators for Moroccan developers to consider a job offer. Unsurprisingly, remote work options rank third, ahead of company culture. Data shows that industry and work impact have the least weight in career decisions.
Preferred Company size
Almost a split between medium and big companies; only 10% prefer companies with fewer than 10 employees.
Agile software development methodology
More than 84% of respondents are using an agile software methodology and more than 64% of them are using scrum.
Remote work
More companies are adopting remote work as almost 22% provide a full remote option and more than 55% of them provide a hybrid option to their employees.
Similar to last year, more than 90% of respondents prefer remote work, either part-time or full-time.
Technology
JavaScript remains the most popular language and is loved by the Moroccan community, ahead of Java, Python, and PHP.
Rust is at the top spot for programming languages that developers want to learn next. Further down the list, we also see Python and TypeScript as the most wanted programming languages.
Front-end frameworks/libraries
As always, the famous library for front-end development is React.js. It remains the most loved and desired by the community, surpassing VueJs and Angular.
NextJS is the most wanted framework in the list in front of ReactJS and passing both VueJs, Angular and Svelte.
Htmx, Qwik, and Astro are getting more attention from the community this year.
CSS frameworks
More than half of the respondents are using classic CSS frameworks like Bootstrap, Material UI, and Tailwind CSS is gaining more popularity in the community.
Backend frameworks/libraries
The Java-based framework used to create a microservice, or what we call the Spring ecosystem, is the most popular backend framework used by the Moroccan community, ahead of Express.js, Laravel, Django and the .NET framework.
Spring is also the most wanted backend framework in the list, in front of Nest.js and Django.
Platforms and tools
Node.js has taken the lead as the most used platform, surpassing Docker and JVM.
Developers are increasingly interested in learning deployment, scaling, and management skills, with Kubernetes being the most wanted platform and tool, surpassing Docker, Node.js, and React Native.
Primary operating systems
As always Windows is Still the most Primary Os that most Moroccan developers use
IDE & Code Editors
Unsurprisingly, VSCode is the most used code editor same as last year, More than 80% of respondents use it to write their code. Jetbrains IDEs are second by 35% and only 12% are Vim users.
Learning New Technologies
Our industry is always evolving. The Moroccan IT community is aware of this and striving to keep up with the pace.
That’s what we see here, people learn new Technologies every few months, and 31% of respondents are learning new Technologies once a year.
How do you solve problems?
Despite the increasing use of AI in the tech industry, individuals continue to rely on Google as their primary source for problem-solving. This year, there is a noticeable shift toward using AI Assistants over StackOverflow.
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. This year, PostgreSQL surpasses MySQL/MariaDB as the most used database.
AI
AI is a hot topic in all the tech communities around the world. This year, we included a new section on AI to explore its impact on Moroccan software developers and how they are adjusting to this trend.
Moroccan software developers are embracing the AI age. They are learning AI and starting to build AI projects.
Usage and Learning
Over 91% of survey participants have integrated AI tools into their professional routines, with half of them relying on such technologies on a daily basis.
The third of the respondents are not interested in learning AI, while 60% of respondents have already begun learning AI or even started building AI projects.
ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot are highly popular AI tools among Moroccan software developers. Over 90% of respondents use ChatGPT, while 35% use GitHub Copilot.
Most developers are using OpenAI’s models for their AI projects.
Companies are slowly start investing in using AI with more than 13% have several use cases in production.
Productivity and Future of AI
Ninety percent of respondents feel that AI tools have increased their productivity, including six percent who experience a 10x effect when using AI tools.
The majority of respondents believe that AI will have a significant impact on the future of software development. More than half of them believe that AI will somewhat replace developers.
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 51% of respondents are following local communities, but only 5% are active members
Open source contribution
Compared to last year, more people are starting to contribute to open-source projects. 80% of respondents have contributed to an open-source project.
Blogging
Nearly 57% of respondents plan to write blog posts in the future, but only 18% of them have the opportunity to do so.
Social Media
LinkedIn is the most used social media network among Moroccan developers to connect and get the latest Tech news, followed by Twitter and Discord.
Tech events attended in 2023
A bit less than 50% of the respondents attended at least one tech event in the past year!
Talks given in 2023
Almost 24% of respondents have already spoken at some IT event in 2023.
Online vs in-person events
Same as last year, The Moroccan community is eager to learn and discover new things. Almost 68% said that the event format doesn’t make a difference (“Li ja” for the non-dialect speaking meaning “whatever”).
Moroccan Tech Community
More than 93% of all respondents think that the Moroccan community is quite good!
More Insights
If you have more thoughts or interpretations about the survey results, please add them to our GitHub discussions. We would love to hear from you!