Fadi Boulos
In this blog post, Fadi Boulos, founder and CEO of Supportful, a startup dedicated to combating Lebanon's brain drain, shares key insights from a recent survey conducted by his company. This comprehensive analysis explores various aspects of the Lebanese tech scene, from workforce demographics to remote work trends. By shedding light on the current state of Lebanon's tech talent landscape, this article offers readers data crucial for understanding the Lebanese market dynamics.
In July 2024, Supportful conducted a comprehensive survey to understand the dynamics of Lebanon's growing tech talent scene. This blog post delves into some key findings from the report that discussed the survey results, offering a snapshot of the current state of Lebanon's software engineering workforce.
Demographics and Remote Work
Women make up approximately 27% of the survey respondents. If this figure holds as the female percentage of Lebanon's software engineering workforce, it would be significant compared to the global female average of 16% found in a previous LinkedIn study, and the US average of 22% per a study by Zippia.
In Lebanon, 44.8% of software engineers fall within the 21-24 age group, indicating a predominantly young workforce. Globally, data from the 2023 Stack Overflow Developer Survey revealed that around 36% of developers worldwide are aged 20-29, reflecting a comparable yet slightly older trend. When combined with the 36.7%, belonging to the 25-34 age group, the segment aged between 21 and 34 years accounts for almost 82% of the software engineering workforce.
46.1% of Lebanese software engineers work remotely, 28.3% work in a hybrid arrangement, and 25.6% go to the office daily. This is an impressive figure for two main reasons: 1) Despite return-to-office mandates across the world, almost half of the software engineers surveyed are still working remotely and 2) The weakness of public infrastructure in Lebanon did not prevent the vast majority of respondents from working from outside the office, which means that more opportunities are available to software engineers independently of their location.
AI Adoption and Programming Languages
61.6% of software engineers in Lebanon use AI daily, 20.2% use it weekly, 14.3% rarely use it, and only 3.9% never use it. This means that 81.8% use AI regularly. This indicates a massive adoption of AI technologies by Lebanese developers. Software engineers, who work with data science, Kotlin, and PHP technologies rely heavily on AI in their daily tasks, while those utilizing .NET, C++, or working with QA & Testing use AI the least.
Regarding programming languages, React stands out as the most used technology framework among software engineers in Lebanon with 36.7% of respondents stating they currently use it. Python is in the second position with 29.1% of respondents using it followed by Node (26.4%) and Java (23.9%).
Work-Life Balance and Talent Retention
Most Lebanese software engineers positively rate their life-work balance, with 58.6% saying it is either good or excellent and only 12.6% saying it is poor or very poor. In a country in crisis, this figure could reflect the "eternal Lebanese optimism" or it could mean that developers enjoy a steady income in hard currency, well above the average salary of the general population.
68.7% of respondents valued career advancement as their main reason for staying in their current job, followed by flexibility (48.3%), a high salary (44.8%), and a good life-work balance (43.1%). These findings indicate that talent retention is closely related to a clear career path, some sort of flexibility (location, hours, leaves, etc.), and good compensation. The knowledge worker mindset seems to have evolved in Lebanon from the days when pay was the most attractive element when looking for new opportunities.
This article provided an overview of a groundbreaking study conducted by Supportful to explore the local tech talent landscape in Lebanon. For a more in-depth understanding of the current state of the Lebanese tech market, we encourage you to review the full report. Despite the numerous challenges Lebanon faces, the findings offer a promising outlook on the resilience and potential of the country’s tech talent, which continues to be the main source of hope for the future.