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ethics & technology trends

The issue of ethics is close to the hearts of many: more than 63 percent (2020: 63 percent) of participants would refuse morally questionable work. 32 percent (2020: 34 percent) make their decision based on the nature of the job, and just over 1 percent (2020: 1 percent) do any job.

Raising their concerns would be done by about 53 percent (2020: 51 percent) of participants within the company and about 7 percent (2020: 12 percent) in public.

81 percent (2020: 82 percent) of participants also believe that they are obliged to think about the ethical implications of their code. Only about 5 percent (2020: 5 percent) see no reason for this. A further 12 percent are not sure.

Tech Trends

We also asked developers about the relevance of various hype topics today and in five years. The choices have remained the same from 2020 to 2021. There were no changes in the ranking, only the numbers in detail decreased or increased a little.

As last year, we used average figures for this to show how important developers rate a technology - from 1 (unimportant) to 5 (very important). In general, all values below 3 are "less important":

2020 now   2021 now  
Big data: right now  : 3.25 Big data: right now  : 3.13
Machine learning / AI: right now  : 3.23 Machine learning / AI: right now  : 3.14
IoT: right now  : 2.85 IoT: right now  : 2.91
Serverless computing: right now  : 2.74 Serverless computing: right now  : 2.77
Edge Computing: right now  : 2.52 Edge Computing: right now  : 2.57
Blockchain: right now  : 2.21 Blockchain: right now  : 2.36
2020 in 5 years   2021 in 5 years  
Machine learning / AI: in 5 years  : 4.08 Machine learning / AI: in 5 years  : 3.94
Big data: in 5 years  : 3.81 Big data: in 5 years  : 3.67
IoT: in 5 years  : 3.59 IoT: in 5 years  : 3.6
Serverless computing: in 5 years  : 3.37 Serverless computing: in 5 years  : 3.31
Edge Computing: in 5 years  : 2.96 Edge Computing: in 5 years  : 3.1
Blockchain: in five years  : 2.75 Blockchain: in five years  : 2.96
  • Blockchain technology continues to bring up the rear and has only gained slightly in importance since last year from the software developers' perspective.
  • In general, the values for the importance of the technologies have again decreased slightly in 5 years. At the same time, Machine Learning and Big Data remain clearly ahead.
  • 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 has at least once actively developed.

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). 52 percent (2020: 50 percent) believe it is either important or very important that an IT product is developed in Switzerland. A further 22 percent (2020: 23 percent) are neutral.

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