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ethics & technology trends

The issue of ethics is close to the hearts of many: more than 63 percent (2019: 63 percent) of participants would refuse morally questionable work. 34 percent (2019: 33 percent) make their decision based on the nature of the job, and just over 1 percent (2019: 2 percent) do any job.

Raising their concerns would be done by about 51 percent (2019: 50 percent) of participants within the company and about 12 percent (2019: 10 percent) in public.

82 percent (2019: 80 percent) of participants also believe that they are obliged to think about the ethical implications of their code. Only about 5 percent (2019: 6 percent) see no reason to do so. Another 12 percent are not sure.

Tech Trends

We also asked developers about the relevance of various hype topics today and five years from now. The following topics were added to the list in 2019: 

  • Edge computing
  • IoT

This year, we introduced average numbers for this to show how important developers consider a technology - from 1 (unimportant) to 5 (very important). In general, all values below 3 are "less important":

2020 now   2019 now  
Big data: right now  : 3.25 Big data: right now  : 3.36
Machine learning / AI: right now  : 3.23 Machine learning / AI: right now  : 3.24
IoT: right now  : 2.85   : 2.72
Serverless computing: right now  : 2.74 Serverless computing: right now   
Edge Computing: right now  : 2.52    
Blockchain: right now  : 2.21 Blockchain: right now  : 2.32
2020 in 5 years   2019 in 5 years  
Machine learning / AI: in 5 years  : 4.08 Machine learning / AI: in 5 years  : 4.22
Big data: in 5 years  : 3.81 Big data: in 5 years  : 3.97
IoT: in 5 years  : 3.59    
Serverless computing: in 5 years  : 3.37 Serverless computing: in 5 years  : 3.39
Edge Computing: in 5 years  : 2.96    
Blockchain: in five years  : 2.75 Blockchain: in five years  : 3.04
  • Blockchain technology continues to bring up the rear and has lost further importance since last year from the perspective of software developers - both in terms of today and in five years' time. 
  • In general, the values for the importance of the technologies in 5 years have decreased slightly. At the same time, Machine Learning and Big Data remain clearly ahead.
  • Of the newcomers, only IoT makes it over the relevance threshold for in 5 years. Edge computing does not seem to have a high priority here.
  • Our recommendation to management: listen to your developers, or even better, include as many developers as possible in the management team! Many of the most successful companies have a top management that at least used to be active developers.

We also wanted to know whether the developers attach any relevance to the place of manufacture of the software. The assessment was made on a scale from 1 (unimportant) to 5 (very important). 50 percent (2019: 53 percent) believe it is either important or very important that an IT product is developed in Switzerland. A further 23 percent are neutral.

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