Work, the ‘Yolo economy’ conquers young Italians

“You only live once”. It is the concept behind the Yolo economy – the ‘You-only-live-once economy’ popularized by the Canadian rapper Drake – which is now conquering positions even among young Italians. So much so that a research the codin factory aulab found that the new lifestyle is also involving millennials (26-41 years) and generation Z (under 25) in our country. Thanks to the pandemic and its fears, the boys are in fact orienting the compass no longer towards “the permanent job” but on “agile work” and the world of digital and ICT. From the data of the research, carried out on a sample of students who took part in the hackademy course to become programmers in 2020, it emerges that the Millennials, youngsters aged 29 on average, are chasing the new trend. Of these, 64% in the 24-36 age group, and 72% with a higher license, 25% of whom are those with a three-year or master’s degree. But above all, many of them do not have previous IT skills, underline the analysts of aulab, active since 2014 in the field of training and software development. In some cases, these are young people who are also willing to leave “a safe job”, despite the current difficult period, “to pursue their dreams and transform the passion for information technology and technology into a new career” underlines the research. A “risky but rewarding” choice according to aulab analysts because the placement rate for these students is 95%, of which 75% within 60 days from the end of the course. The path undertaken allows not only to enter a sector, such as the ICT one, where there is a strong demand for resources – only for Italy there are 100,000 figures in the tech sector – but also to develop, especially in a context of uncertainty like the current one, the agile mindset, in short, a new ‘mentality’. “In the last year there has been a lot of talk about agile working, especially in reference to the law on smart working which allowed companies to manage the work from home of employees during the pandemic. However, agile working is not synonymous with remote work: it is rather a method born in the world of information technology and based on collaboration, focus on objectives, customer satisfaction and continuous experimentation “explains Giancarlo Valente, Cto of aulab. Valente adds that “these characteristics make it a suitable method for working in a context of uncertainty, which is the one in which developers find themselves working every day but which is now necessary for any worker. In our courses we therefore aim to convey the agile mindset and its tools: in this way students acquire useful skills to develop software projects, regardless of the framework and language used, but more generally to work more effectively in any situation, even remotely “. And so there are numerous students who, assures aulab, have witnessed the choice in 2020 of having left their “safe” place to embrace the ‘Yolo economy’ and follow their dreams.