BitBoss, founded in Turin in 2018, is an innovative startup incubated in I3P that supports startups and traditional businesses in the development of software and digital products that can grow and evolve over time, providing products, technological know-how and technical advice regarding business decisions in the software field.

According to the research The State of Software Development in Italy, conducted by the Turin-based software house at the end of 2022 and aimed at more than 800 developers with the purpose of investigating the ecosystem from the point of view of job satisfaction, the most used technologies and in general the state of health of this sector:

• 3 out of 4 developers would be willing or well-disposed to change their jobs as new opportunities emerge;
• the 31.7 percent of employed developers would like to change jobs, while 42.7 percent say they are open to any opportunity that would bring improvement to their professional lives;
• 8 out of 10 freelance developers say they are not willing to give up their freedom in exchange for a contract as a permanent employee;
• the 78.4% of employee developers say that the application of remote working would positively influence their choice to accept a new job;
• Only 2.5% of professional developers are not currently employed.

In recent years and especially since the pandemic, we have witnessed a fast-increasing phenomenon in Italy as well, which is called "Great Resignation". The term refers to a situation that, according to the Ministry of Labor's findings, has led to more than 2 million resignations as early as 2021 and that affects employees with fixed-term and permanent contracts. Subsequently, the term Job Hopping Job Hopping was also coined to define the increasingly common phenomenon of jumping from one job to another, symbolizing the cultural revolution of our time that contrasts with the now passé idea of devoting one's entire life to one job. As the survey showed, one sector that is not exempt from this phenomenon is technology and, more specifically, software developers.

Particularly if we focus on the so-called Gen Z, i.e., employee developers aged 25 and under, 60.9 percent said they intended to revise their current professional life in some way by reinventing themselves as freelancers, entrepreneurs, or simply changing companies. Only 6.5 percent said they had no intention of moving from their current workplace in the near future.

Davide Leoncino, Co-founder and Head of Marketing at BitBoss, commented, "The data we collected do not show dissatisfaction on the part of developers regarding their workplace or professional life. On the contrary, almost 8 out of 10 developers say they are basically satisfied with their professional situation, however, there is a strong inclination to always look for new opportunities and to look favorably at the idea of changing their professional life if the right conditions arise."

The determining factors: job flexibility and adequate salaries

The 76.7 percent of employed developers would be willing to change jobs in exchange for a higher salary, while for 45 percent greater opportunities for career advancement would be more valuable. Also taking on an important role would be the quality of the work team: for 4 out of 10 developers, working with an inadequate team would be enough to push them to seek new job opportunities. The freedom to be able to independently choose their clients and projects is unavoidable for 1 in 2 developers.

Davide Leoncino added, "This way of living one's professional life is probably also linked to a growing confidence in one's skills and a marked ability to adapt to new situations, which is much more pronounced and socially accepted than in the past. Our research shows that 95.9 percent of developers believe, in the event of leaving their jobs, that they have all the skills needed to readjust and to be able to find a new job in a short time, even taking into account a period of training or updating."

Training in the life of a developer

The ability to stay abreast of new technologies and innovations is a key theme in being able to analyze the great readiness of code professionals to change their professional lives. For 84.3% of the developers who participated in the research find the emergence of new technologies to generate new career opportunities and professional growth.

The The 67 percent of developers try to learn at least one new programming language or technology at least once a year and nearly 90 percent of them consider constant self-study to be essential, even if one is permanently employed and already developing professionally. In the context of training and continuing education important roles are taken byonline resources and communities, which are a key help for 60 percent of developers.

Technologies: the innovations and languages most loved by Italian developers

BitBoss also investigated the scenario related to the most developed types of applications and the most used languages and frameworks. Web development dominates the ranking with 73.8 percent of respondents saying they develop on the back-end side and 65.5 percent developing on the front-end side. Mobile app developers reach 25.1%, while those who develop gaming-related applications reach 5%. Closing the ranking are those working in the world of machine learning with 4.5 and BI with 3.8 percent.

The majority of developers surveyed then claim to work on different types of applications: 21.6 percent develop both web and mobile while, if we take only web developers as reference, 55.3 percent of them claim to work both front-end and back-end.

As for languages,Javascript is confirmed as the most popular by far, used by 68.5% of the developers who participated in the research. This is followed by HTML/CSS, SQL, TypeScript and PHP.

Italian companies' relationship with innovation

According to the research conducted by BitBoss, another factor that should not be underestimated when it comes to job choices concerns the company's degree of innovation and the technologies used: in fact, among developers who are not working and are currently looking for employment, 62.5 percent of them consider the company's adoption of new technologies to be fundamental in their choice.

Regarding the propensity of companies to innovate, more than half of the developers surveyed say that their company has a good propensity to innovate, and this number includes both professionals employed in large companies and those working in small companies. Developers however acknowledge that the main brake on innovation within companies is the lack of time and resources to devote to these activities, a reason given by 58.8 percent of respondents. The second restraining factor, however, seems to be a lack of foresight on the part of companies which do not seem to perceive the need to innovate. Nearly 1 in 2 developers attribute it to the lack of innovation foresight of the company they work for.

(Source: BitBoss Press Release)