Demographics
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A high proportion of freelance and self-employed programmers in a country or region can potentially indicate the local economy’s focus on the export of software development services. This is because many programmers from developing countries can earn more when working remotely for overseas companies compared to being employed in their domestic markets. An interesting observation is the relatively low level of freelancing in India and Brazil (each at 10%). Presumably, people there often work through large outsourcing firms or directly in international companies’ development centers situated in these countries.
The proportion of young developers, on the one hand, depends on the overall demographic makeup of the particular country or region. On the other hand, it depends on how long ago software development began there. Outside the US and Japan, you can find individuals over 60 in programming teams, but this is rare. However, in many American offices, you can gather an entire team of people who remember the smell of punched cards and the clatter of dot matrix printers.
Please note that the data in the table above represents weighted shares, not the raw responses we received. We have undertaken extensive efforts and statistical work to minimize bias in our data. For example, we received far more responses from Türkiye than from Japan. However, we know that there are significantly more developers in Japan, so we applied weighting to correct for that fact. You can find more information about our weighting process in the Methodology section of the report.
Gender
In the charts with gender distribution below, the “Other” option includes “non-binary, genderqueer, or gender non-conforming”, as well as the “Other, please specify” and “Prefer not to say” options. The sample size of this group is too small, however, for reliable conclusions to be drawn from it.
The data shows that the proportion of female programmers under the age of 30 in South Korea has reached 14%. Why has this occurred? It can be assumed that this outcome was not accidental but the result of strategic, long-term policies that the South Korean government has been implementing since the mid-1990s.
These policies centered on promoting gender equality in the workplace, with gender mainstreaming a crucial part of the national agenda. For instance, the Act on Fostering and Supporting Women Scientists and Technicians in 2002 was a significant step toward promoting gender inclusivity in science and technology.
An example of such initiatives is the provisional exclusive R&D budget for women scientists launched in 2000. Beginning at USD 2.5M, this budget was progressively increased to promote women’s contributions to science and technology.
Moreover, the exceedingly low participation rate of women over the age of 30 in economic activities was highlighted in the 2008 Report on Economic Activity Status and Participation Rate by Statistics Korea. As a response, the Act on the Promotion of the Economic Activities of Career-Break Women was enacted.
In conclusion, the South Korean government’s careful and continuous policy decisions have contributed to increased representation of women in programming roles, especially among those under 30. South Korea’s successful steps toward gender parity in STEM fields could provide an effective guide to inspire change in countries where the proportion of women in software development roles is less than 4%, even among younger workers.
Here, gender differences between languages are most likely related to experience. As the charts above indicate, a significant proportion of women have only entered the profession in recent years and are currently in the early stages of their careers. Therefore, many women currently code in languages used to teach programming in schools and universities, but very few women use languages like Go, Rust, Kotlin, and Scala, which are rarely the first to be mastered.
Migration
Only 11% of survey participants work in a country other than the one they were born in. As a result, we don’t have enough data to reliably establish the main migration routes, but we can show for specific regions the proportion of people that are leaving and arriving there.
As the data shows, 2022 saw a marked increase in the migration of programmers. This is largely linked to the war in Ukraine, considering that nearly 40% of all programmers migrating that year hailed from Russia, Ukraine, or Belarus. While many Ukrainians moved to EU nations, a considerable number of Russian programmers also migrated to visa-free countries. These primarily include nations in Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Balkans, as well as Israel and Türkiye.
By immigration, we mean the proportion of respondents who reported living in a specific country but were born elsewhere.
By emigration, we mean the proportion of respondents who reported being born in a specific country but live elsewhere. These figures are calculated based on a combination of the questions “What is your country or region?”, “Were you born in the country / region where you currently live?”, and “In which country / region were you born?”
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