Salaries of programmers in Russia
Main article: Salaries of programmers in Russia
Recruitment in IT companies
Main article: Recruitment in IT companies
Outstaffing and smartstaffing
Main article: Outstaffing and smartstaffing
2025
IT professionals in Russia begin to retire - TA opinions
The IT industry in Russia is relatively young, but the specialists at its origins are approaching retirement age. In March 2025, TAdviser spoke to representatives of IT companies to understand how they are doing with age personnel.
 | Traditionally, it is believed that specialists in digital professions are young people. But in this five-year plan, we will already begin to face the fact that IT specialists are also retiring, - said the Minister of Labor and Social Protection Anton Kotyakov in an interview with Kommersant in March 2025. - This is still a young profession, but here, too, a replacement need is slowly being formed |  |
According to the head, in addition to the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection number of those employed in this IT sphere in five years, another 102 thousand programmers and analysts will have to be trained. A third of them are needed just taking into account the retirement of those who work now, he said.
Yulia Melchugova, head of recruitment at SKB Kontur, in a commentary for TAdviser, noted that the company has been working in the IT market for 36 years, and during this time one of the employees retired. As for the IT staff, literally a few units have retired from this category over the past 5 years, she continues.
Yulia Melchugova agreed with the opinion of the head of the Ministry of Labor, but stressed that the IT industry is less susceptible to the aging of personnel: even if experienced specialists approach retirement age, it is far from a fact that while maintaining efficiency, they will strive to retire.
According to the HR director of the Navicon system integrator Ekaterina Khudobko, the company employs several specialists over 60 years old, and they remain in demand. As a rule, such workers received education in the field of computing, and later retrained, for example, as developers, Khudobko said.
The ITG IT team, TAdviser was told there, had not yet had cases of IT retirement in the traditional sense of the process. At the same time, the company recorded the desire of age-old colleagues to switch to projects with a gentle labor regime.
| | Specialists over 60 are trying to find easier and smaller projects. Most often, they choose a remote format of work, quite monotonous work, but their experience and skills in the IT field make it possible to perform such routine tasks quickly and efficiently, which leads to decent wages. Most likely, the pension of an IT specialist implies such a transformation, "says Olga Zvagolskaya, head of ITG's insourcing areas. | |
CEO "Cloud Computing" Maxim Zakharenko, commenting on the words of the head of the Ministry of Labor that the IT market will soon face the retirement of IT specialists, called this forecast natural. The industry is growing up, and if 20 years ago the development seemed to be a "game of the young," now the team has a normal situation when a 25-year-old coder and a 50-year-old architect work nearby, Zakharenko said.
The founder and head of SkillStaff (platform for finding IT specialists) Nikita Shabashkevich is confident that in general, specialists of all ages can find work in the IT sphere, since it depends on the company, the project and the tasks set. On the SkillStaff platform, 6% of active resumes are for outstaffes over 45 years old. Most of them (91%) have a high level of qualifications (Lead, Senior, Middle +) and are mainly engaged in the fields of system analytics and Java development, Shabashkevich said.
Partner and Development Director of HRlinkDmitry Makhlin says that not a few IT companies hire employees aged 60 +, since their vast experience, expertise, as well as psychological stability and stability are appreciated. At the same time, according to Makhlin, the average age of employees in IT startups is 30-35 years, the founders of such high-tech companies are 35-45 years.
Tatiana Belova, HR Director at 1C Pro Consulting, says that in the IT sector there is a small percentage of employees of retirement and pre-retirement age. However, in her opinion, already now companies need to think about how to extend the "working activity" of those who are ready to continue working after reaching retirement age.
Kirill Semion, General Director of the National Competence Center for Holding Information Management Systems (NCC ISU), believes that the need for IT personnel is being formed in Russia in connection with the replacement of age-old IT specialists and it is necessary to prepare new IT personnel.
| | The shortage of qualified personnel has not disappeared. And I am talking here about specialists with great practical experience, because these are the ones who go on vacation. The sooner we prepare for this, the less risks there will be to get a strong subsidence in competencies, - said Semion. | |
Anna Prabarschuk, head of HR at Gazinformservice, says she has not faced the retirement of IT professionals by age, but observes a trend where such workers end their careers much earlier than in other professions. The high tendency to burn out affects, as well as the ability, having accumulated a certain amount, to afford a "pension" significantly earlier than a legally determined age, the interlocutor of TAdviser believes. According to a study by SberNPF 2023, up to 16% of IT specialists plan to complete the work for about 40 years.
Mishustin approved the launch of the National IT Competency Confirmation System
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin approved the launch of the National IT Competency Confirmation System by signing Decree No. 130 of February 11, 2025. The experiment to voluntarily confirm the qualifications of software developers will be held from February 14, 2025 to December 31, 2026. Read more here
Over 5 years, the number of employees of IT companies in Russia has grown by 70% and reached 1 million people
Deputy Prime Minister - Chief of Staff of the Russian Government Dmitry Grigorenko at a meeting with the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Digital Development on January 24, 2025 announced an increase in the number of employees of IT companies by more than 70% over the past five years, reaching an indicator of 1 million people.
According to the press service of the Russian government, during this period the number of budget-funded places in universities in IT specialties doubled, which created a solid foundation for the development of the information technology industry.
Sergei Plugotarenko said that while maintaining current trends, the shortage of specialists can reach 1 million people. A particularly acute shortage is observed among information security professionals, where by 2035 only 45% of the needs will be met.
Member of the State Duma Committee Anton Nemkin pointed out the connection of personnel shortages in the fields of artificial intelligence and information security with the accelerated development of technologies and an increase in the number of cyber attacks.
According to the press service, in the coming years, demand for artificial intelligence specialists is expected to grow to 15.5 thousand per year, which is due to large-scale investments and the active introduction of new technologies in various sectors of the economy.
To solve the personnel issue, the national projects "Data Economics" and "Personnel" are being implemented. Over the past five years, the number of IT professionals has increased 1.5 times due to the development of both traditional and online education.
Within the framework of state support for the industry, special attention is paid to the training of specialists in the field of information security and artificial intelligence as the most demanded areas of the digital economy.[1]
2024
Domestic currency, "buns" for relatives, buying up ready-made teams. How IT Companies Are Dealing With Human Resources Hunger
During the preparation of the article following the results of 2024, TAdviser interviewed IT companies - mainly large and medium-sized, including about the situation with personnel. Almost all respondents state the presence of a personnel deficit, and not only in IT specialties: in some companies they record a shortage of "salesmen" and accountants. About how market players are already responding to these challenges, and what they plan to do in 2025, in a special TAdviser article here.
Minister of Digital Development of Russia Maksut Shadayev: The number of IT specialists in Russia over 4 years increased by 50% to 850 thousand people
The number of employees of IT companies in Russia has increased by 50% over the past four years and reached 850 thousand people, Russian Minister of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev said on December 12, 2024 at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin and members of the government.
According to the head of the Ministry of Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation, the average salary in the IT industry is ₽185 thousand, which significantly exceeds the average for the economy. The growing pay gap indicates a continuing shortage of specialists in this area, he stressed.
In the first eight months of 2024, another 100 thousand people came to the IT industry. The Minister of Digital Development noted that in the first half of 2024, the growth in the implementation of domestic IT solutions and services amounted to 63% compared to the same period in 2023.
The Ministry of Digital Development of Russia plans to attract an additional 700 thousand developers to the industry by 2030. Particular attention is paid to the training of specialists in the field of artificial intelligence and robotics, where there is the greatest shortage of personnel and technological solutions.
Over the past four years, the number of budget places in IT specialties in universities has doubled. In 2024, 125 thousand people entered budget places, another 70 thousand - for paid training. About 600 thousand students are studying in 500 Russian universities in IT areas by the end of 2024.
According to the HSE and Rosstat, about 9 million people were employed in professions in the field of information and communication technologies in Russia in 2023, of which almost 2 million ICT specialists (+ 3.1% by 2022). According to the study, almost every second (47.4%) ICT specialist in Russia is under 35 years old.[2]
8.1% increase in the number of IT professionals
Russia Vladimir Putin At the beginning of December 2024, at a meeting with representatives of business circles, the President announced an increase in the number of specialists in the IT sector by 8.1% compared to September 2023. states The head stressed the significant growth of personnel in high-tech sectors of the economy.
According to "Lenta.ru," in sectors with high added value, requiring qualified specialists, there is a steady increase in employment. At the same time, in the manufacturing industry, the growth rate of the number of specialists was lower - only 3.9%.
According to the Association of Computer and Information Technology Enterprises, which includes the country's largest technology companies - VK, 1C and Softline, by 2024 the number of IT specialists in Russia reached 2.3 million people.
An analytical study of Blank Bank conducted among small and medium-sized businesses revealed a shortage of qualified IT personnel, estimated at 130 thousand specialists. In the demand structure, 42% of employers are looking for middle-level specialists, 39% need senior developers, and 19% are ready to accept novice programmers.
According to the newspaper, the study of the labor market showed a significant differentiation in the remuneration of IT specialists of different levels. The salary of a novice specialist is ₽130 thousand, a middle-level developer - ₽270 thousand, and a top-level professional - from ₽370 thousand.
The increase in the number of IT specialists is taking place against the background of the active development of the digital economy and the implementation of government programs to support the technology sector. The growing demand for qualified personnel in the IT industry reflects the general trend towards digitalization of all sectors of the economy.[3]
Launch an experiment to confirm the IT competencies of software developers
On December 3, 2024, the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation announced the launch of an experiment to confirm the IT competencies of software developers. The initiative involves voluntary participation and the provision of certificates confirming the level of professional skills. The experiment will begin on January 1, 2025 and will last until December 31, 2026.
According to Interfax, the draft government decree on the launch of the experiment is posted on the portal of draft regulatory legal acts. As specified in the Ministry of Ministry of Digital Development, the main goal of the program is to create a free tool for assessing the IT competencies of developers, which will help improve the transparency and efficiency of the labor market in the field of information technology. Participation in the program will be carried out through a specially created online platform.
As part of the experiment, developers will be able to register on the platform, undergo online testing and complete practical tasks. Upon completion of the verification, each participant will be issued an electronic certificate confirming the level of their professional skills. The document will be available in your personal account on the Public services portal.
| | The developer will be able to use the received certificate at his discretion - both to provide potential employers and for personal assessment of his own professional achievements, the press service of the Ministry of Digital Development noted. | |
According to representatives of the department, the initiative appeared at the request of the professional community of software developers. Currently, the market is facing an imbalance between the number of novice professionals (juns) and experienced professionals (seniors). The new tool, according to the organizers, will help employers better navigate the qualifications of candidates and reduce the time spent on finding suitable specialists.[4][5]
The outflow of IT personnel from Russia has halved
94.6% IT specialists gave an optimistic assessment of the prospects for the development of the ICT industry in the next 5-10 years, while the share of those who do not plan to move increased 2 times. This is evidenced by the data of the research block of the personnel agency of the Selecty Group of Companies and the Работа.ру service dedicated to relocation. Experts believe that a high-quality setting for the requests of candidates will help not only retain qualified specialists, but also strengthen many technological projects by successfully attracting professionals from different regions of Russia and the world. Selecty announced this on November 26, 2024.
Data from an annual study conducted in early autumn 2024 showed that the problem of IT outflow has lost its relevance. Compared to 2023, the number of respondents who do not plan to move has increased sharply. As of November 2024, their share is 70%, and a year ago they did not think about moving from Russia, only 43%, and in 2022 - 33%. The number of those considering such a possibility also decreased to 14.8% (from 41.9% in 2022).
| | Russia has every chance of becoming an IT cluster, "said Ksenia Sheremetyeva, operations director of Selecty Group, which specializes in recruiting and outsourcing IT personnel. Two years ago, the market lost a certain part of experts, but strong mids remained, and state support measures ensured the flow of young children into the industry. We see how they are actively developing professionally in different, including strategically important for the country, directions. And at the same time, their confidence in the prospects of the Russian IT industry is growing, which is illustrated by our study. | |
When asked if the future of the IT sector in Russia in the next 5-10 years, 94.6% of respondents answer with one degree or another with confidence (their share increased by 18.8% compared to last year).
One of the reasons for the change in sentiment is the geopolitical situation. The study showed that last year 85% of respondents linked their desire to move to one degree or another, and this year 68%.
Against the background of information about the stagnation of the global IT market, a career in foreign companies has become less attractive. The number of respondents confident that only foreign projects are suitable for development has decreased to 7%.
| | IT professionals see prospects domestically. Consumers are switching to Russian products, and import substitution requires large professional resources. Deeper adoption of digitalization exacerbates the risk of cyber attacks and increases the demand for information security specialists . The excitement around AI increases the need for specialists in the field of artificial intelligence, machine learning, - Alexander Veterkov, deputy general director of the Работа.ру service, listed the key requests of the domestic IT personnel market. | |
Economic indicators of the Russian ICT sector confirm significant potential. According to the HSE digest [6], the increase in goods, works, services in the first half of 2024 exceeded the average for the economy by 1.6 times, wages increased compared to the second quarter of 2023 by 23.9%.
Personnel requests of companies are growing: according to Khabr Career[7], in the third quarter the increase in vacancies was a record over[8] past year (+ 16%). Half of them fell on the "middle," but the share of "seniors" and "leads" is high.
Some companies solve the problem of a shortage of personnel at the Middle + level and above through their internal development. From a strategic point of view, this is a competent approach, but as a rule, it takes a lot of time and resources to implement it. Attracting specialists from the regions can help the situation, but many employers are not yet ready to manage distributed (remote) teams. In this competence, vendors have advanced further than others, who are ready to attract specialists remotely in 95% of projects.
| | For the active development of the industry, it is important to use all resources, and outsourcing provides maximum opportunities. There is no functional difference for an employee: he works with the same teams and projects as in the inhouse. And the conditions of the offer are often much more attractive. For example, the status of an IT company allows outsourcers to receive more benefits - from deferrals from the army and IT mortgages to individual training plans, "Ksenia Sheremetyeva explained the reasons why applicants choose vendor offers. - Freedom in choosing work formats allows vendors to return those who managed to get experience working for foreign employers. By enabling IT professionals to move around the world, we are expanding our ability to recruit qualified IT staff. | |
According to the study, a year ago 30.4% of those living abroad would like to work only in a foreign company, and this year their share has decreased to 4%.
A certain role in attracting and retaining demanded specialists is also helped by a product approach in the principles of human resources management, in which an employee for the company is essentially a valuable asset and an internal client.
1,785 IT specialists took part in the survey of Selecty and Работа.ру Group of Companies, conducted in August-September 2024.
The Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation creates a system for assessing the skills of IT specialists, integrated with "Public services"
On November 7, 2024, it became known that the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation is developing a system for confirming the competencies of IT developers. It is expected that in the future this service will be integrated with "Public services."
The project was told by the newspaper Kommersant with reference to information received from participants in the telecommunications market and an unnamed IT company. It is said that the Ministry of Digital Development is developing a new system together with business. In particular, proposals were received from the recruiting platform. HeadHunter The department emphasizes that they are open to choosing partners and are ready to consider various options for implementing the initiative.
Earlier, Ministry of Digital Development discussed with HeadHunter the creation of a platform for collecting data on the state of the labor market in the IT sector and the implementation of a system for confirming their skills. On the hh.ru platform, it became possible to confirm some of the competencies of specialists indicated in the resume: in various programming languages, specialized software, English, etc.
Innovage product manager Evgeny Surkov believes that the potential integration of hh.ru with Public services may indicate the upcoming emergence of new functions on the service. This may be the offer of more vacancies in government agencies or options for training in state universities with subsequent employment. CorpSoft24 CEO Konstantin Renzyaev notes that the Ministry of Digital Development platform will allow you to form a database of IT specialists with confirmed competencies: applicants in this case will be able to "give a link not just to a resume, but to a verified site." At the same time, the founder of the IT company TiqumYuri Gizatullin believes that the new system should be built "not on the basis of hh.ru, but in the format of a separate platform." HeadHunter, he said, should only be one of the many members of the system.[9]
Big salaries and spoilage. What happens to IB-personnel in Russia - TA opinions
Rostelecom raised the topic of reducing the quality of information security specialists against the background of personnel hunger. TAdviser in October 2024 interviewed market participants to see if there really was such a problem and how to solve it.
Senior Vice President of Rostelecom Igor Lyapunov, in a conversation with TASS, noted that information security specialists are becoming "less high-quality and more spoiled and overpaid." According to him, for almost every profile company, personnel are not a key risk, but a key limitation.
| | We are trying to close it [the deficit] through IT specialists, but not all IT specialists can be "repainted" as security specialists, "Lyapunov admitted. | |
Natalya Pavlova, co-founder of the agency for the selection of top managers of M-Choice Executive Search, agrees with the existence of the problem of "spoiling" of information security specialists and explained it by its high demand and limited supply: companies are forced to overpay for personnel who are not always ready to meet business expectations.
The head of the technological expertise department of Softline Group of Companies Denis Chigin also agreed with the opinion of Igor Lyapunov and compared the current situation with a bubble that will sooner or later face reality - the difference between requests and the real benefits of such specialists. As a result, the business can make a strong-willed decision to reduce the offer for applicants, he added in a conversation with TAdviser.
Anna Prabarshchuk, head of HR at Gazinformservice, says that indeed "we have a" decrease in the quality "of candidates and their high expectations - for wages, working conditions, social package.
According to Dmitry Melnikov, project manager for the implementation of Kontur.ID, the problem is that not all university graduates are ready to work in the field of information security, since they can find higher-paying and less responsible positions in other industries. In addition, the demand for middle-level specialists remains high, and graduates without experience are often not appreciated by employers.
In addition, a large number of employers who hire an information security specialist in the state are poorly oriented in the field of information security, which allows specialists to dictate their conditions and overestimate the cost of their services, said Roman Parshin, head of the department for protecting state secrets "Inferit Security."
Zecurion CEO Alexei Rayevsky believes that the quality of training information security specialists has not fallen - it remains the same as 10 years ago, and novice specialists have not been able to do anything before, and now.
| | A specialist who is just leaving the walls of the university knows little. He needs to gain practical experience for several years. Comparing a novice specialist with those who have already worked for 5-7 years is not entirely correct. If we are talking about more mature specialists, then the age and psychological factor affects here (conditional divisions into zoomers, millennials, etc.). Naturally, they need a different approach and motivation, they need to work with them in different ways to get a return, - said Rayevsky. | |
Experts interviewed by TAdviser unanimously pointed out the difficulty of solving the problem of a shortage of highly qualified information security specialists. Anna Prabarshchuk from Gazinformservice recommends that companies maintain a certain level of requirements for the basic competencies of candidates, as well as pay attention to the compliance of the candidates' motivation with the tasks and opportunities provided by the employer.
Vladislav Viryasov, director of Avantelecom, believes that in the coming years the situation will stabilize when the market is saturated with specialists of the appropriate qualifications, but the problem must already be solved by counting the constant advanced training of employees, including through industry courses from the business community.
The first step to resolve the current situation may be the popularization of the profession, says Irina Boriskina, recruitment director of Selecty Group. The organization of conferences, seminars, master classes and other events aimed at raising awareness of the importance of information security will help attract the attention of potential candidates. However, it is worth starting this process from school, Boriskina added.
Natalia Chumachenko, head of human resources at Informzaschita, also recognizes a personnel problem in the industry (according to her, in some cases the shortage reaches 45%) and calls cooperation between information security companies and universities one of the options for solving it. First, specialists working with real cases can share valuable experience with students, tell them about the practical side of project implementation, and so on. Secondly, internship programs are a good way for a senior student or graduate to gain the necessary practical experience, she explained.
Olga Sladkova, Head of Corporate Communications at the Marketing and PR Department, Solar Group of Companies, agrees that it is actually possible to train specialists who can quickly reflect complex cyber threats, warn or develop appropriate information security solutions only in practice.
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin: 900 thousand work in Russia IT professionals, more and more
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said in September 2024 that more than 900 thousand specialists work in the field of information technology in the country, and their number continues to grow steadily. He announced this in his video message, stressing that state support for this industry contributes to the development of innovative solutions that are used in various fields. In recent years, Russia has been actively working on the formation of personnel potential in the IT sector, as evidenced by data for 2024.
According to Kommersant, almost 10% of graduates of Russian universities in 2024 received diplomas in information and technological specialties. Over the past five years, the number of graduates of IT specialties has increased by 18%. This trend, according to Mishustin, shows a high interest among young people in professions in the field of modern technology. There is an increased demand for domestic developments and technologies in the country, which is also reflected in the popularity of IT disciplines among schoolchildren.
According to Ministry of Digital Development, the computer science exam is becoming more and more popular when passing the exam. This subject ranked second most popular among disciplines of choice after social studies. This emphasizes that schoolchildren already at the initial stage of their educational career are increasingly choosing a path related to information technology. The government notes that such steps contribute to the creation of highly qualified specialists necessary for the development of the digital economy.
According to industry analysts, despite positive trends, Russia continues to experience a shortage of IT personnel. In 2024, the shortage of specialists was estimated at 500-700 thousand people, which requires additional measures to increase the number of qualified workers. In 2030, it is planned to increase the personnel of the IT industry by 1.5 million people. Government agencies and leading companies are working to create conditions for training specialists to fill this shortfall.[10]
The Russian public sector is increasing the recruitment of information security specialists
In August 2024, it became known about a significant increase in demand for specialists information security in (information security) in the public sector. Russia Over the past two years, the number of open vacancies in this area has more than doubled - from 563 in the first half of 2022 to 1226 in the same period in 2024.
As Vedomosti reports, referring to a joint study by hh.ru and MTS RED, an increase in demand for information security specialists is observed not only in the public sector, but also in other industries with critical information infrastructure (CII) facilities. The total number of vacancies in this area increased by 48% - from 10,074 in the first half of 2022 to 14,547 in the same period in 2024.
The largest increase in demand for information security specialists was recorded in the transport industry and logistics, where the number of vacancies almost tripled - from 811 to 2190. In the nuclear power, demand doubled, and in the telecommunications sector - by 67%.
The banking sector is still the leader in the number of open positions in the field of information security. In the first half of 2024, the financial sector offered 6,502 vacancies, up 31% from two years earlier (in 2022).
Experts attribute the growth in demand for information security specialists to increased regulatory pressure and increased hacker activity. According to MTS RED, since the beginning of 2024, about 50,000 hacker attacks have been recorded, which is 57% more than in the same period in 2022. At the same time, 69% of highly critical attacks occurred on KII objects.
Igor Bederov, head of the investigation department at T.Hunter, notes that the increase in the number of attacks on KII facilities over the past two years has amounted to about 15%, but their effectiveness has decreased due to increased control and the introduction of Russian protective equipment.
Against the background of growing demand, there is a decrease in competition among applicants. According to the hh.ru, the ratio of active resumes per vacancy decreased from 6.2 in the first half of 2023 to 5.7 in the same period in 2024. Experts predict a further increase in demand for information security specialists.
The average level of wages in the field of information security in the 11 months of 2023 amounted to ₽70 000, which is ₽6782 more than the level of 2022. This figure is expected to continue to grow in 2024.[11]
60% of IT professionals who have gone abroad continue to work for companies associated with Russia
On August 9, 2024, it became known that 60% of IT specialists who left Russia continue to work for companies associated with Russia. This is evidenced by the results of a study conducted by the IT recruiting agency NewHR. According to a survey conducted among 4,952 specialists, many relocants retain professional ties with Russian companies, despite moving abroad.
According to Vedomosti, 25% of respondents continue to work directly for Russian companies, another 36% - for foreign companies with Russian roots. However, a significant part of specialists strives for employment in international companies: 54% of respondents expressed a desire to change their employer to a foreign one.
Interestingly, only 27% of migrants were able to find work in foreign companies, and 23% of them work in international corporations, and 4% - in local companies in the host countries. At the same time, Russian companies remain the preferred choice for only 2% of respondents.
According to a study conducted by the NewHR agency, 16% of IT specialists who left abroad in the period from 2022 to 2024 have already returned to Russia. Of the returned specialists, 68% found work in Russian companies, and 16% - in companies with partial Russian participation. At the same time, 6% continue to work for international corporations, and 2% have found work in local foreign companies.
Among returned migrants, there is a high interest in working in foreign companies with Russian-speaking roots: 33% of respondents would prefer this particular employment option. In addition, 21% of those who return seek to work in international companies, and 13% are ready to return to work in Russian organizations.
The study also indicates that the majority of relocants prefer to stay abroad - 97% of respondents do not plan to return to Russia. Serbia tops the list of countries where the most numerous groups of Russian IT specialists live, 33% of all respondents are concentrated in Europe.[12]
Russoft: The departure of IT specialists abroad almost did not affect IT companies
During 2022 Russia , approximately 17 thousand people left for the purpose of working in foreign companies under a contract or for permanent residence - employees of companies from the field of development. In software 2023, about 3,500 programmers left the Russian Federation. Moreover, the departure of these specialists practically did not affect domestic IT companies engaged in the development of software products. This is stated in the study of the association "," the Russoft results of which were released at the end of July 2024.
It is noted that in 2022, the main reason for the departure of IT specialists from Russia was the organized relocation of the staff of software development centers of large foreign companies, which stopped working in the Russian Federation due to the formed geopolitical situation. For Russian companies that took part in the study, losses in 2022 amounted to approximately 4.26% of the total headcount. In 2023, the indicator decreased to 0.78%. Thus, the intensity of the departure of IT specialists abroad has decreased sharply.
According to the Russoft association, in 2024 there were much fewer respondents who consider the migration of employees abroad a problem for their company. The share of such enterprises amounted to 14%, which is a record low in five years (by 2024). At the same time, only 0.7% of respondents chose the answer option "the problem is quite massive for our company."
At the same time, the influx of personnel from abroad to Russian software companies has significantly decreased. At the end of 2020, the indicator turned out to be about the same as a year earlier (about 3 thousand people), but the share of organizations that hired foreigners decreased. In 2021, the influx of specialists from abroad collapsed about three times. This is primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which provoked the spread of remote operation. The share of companies that hired foreigners decreased to 12.3%. In 2023, the influx of personnel from abroad increased. Software companies hired about 500 foreign specialists and about 1,000 Russians who returned after leaving abroad. Thus, a total of 1.5 thousand people were accepted, which is less than the loss of the industry from personnel leakage abroad (about 3.5 thousand), but more than the influx of software developers to Russia in 2022.
| | Within the framework of our company, losses due to the relocation of employees were initially insignificant and amounted to 3.2% of the total number of employees. The last (2023) year we will observe two main trends - the return of IT specialists who had previously left the Russian Federation and the emergence of more and more young IT specialists on the labor market. The profession in the IT segment continues to be the most popular and [the number] of those wishing to study and develop in this direction is only growing, - said Ksenia Koskova, HR Director of the digital platform for organizing business trips and managing expenses. "Rocket" | |
The situation was commented on by the resource director of Develoniki (software developer, Softline Group of Companies) Oleg Vylegzhanin. According to him, after 2022, Western suppliers and development companies, which for a long time used qualified and relatively cheap labor in Russia, organized a relocation, but "it concerned only a small number of key specialists." At the same time, the number of specialists who left abroad is much less than the number of specialists who remained in Russia and continued to work on the tasks of achieving technological sovereignty.[13]
Russian companies sharply increased the recruitment of IT specialists from India and Pakistan
In mid-July 2024, it became known that Russian companies, against the background of a shortage of IT personnel, sharply increased the recruitment of specialists from India and Pakistan. We are talking primarily about software developers.
The Association of Computer and Information Technology Enterprises (APKIT) points out that the shortage of IT employees is one of the main problems impeding the development of information technology in Russia. SKB Kontur also talks about a serious shortage: for example, in the field of information security, it reaches 70%. According to the Ministry of Ministry of Digital Development, in 2023 Russia lacked from 500 thousand to 700 thousand IT workers. In such a situation, domestic companies are forced to look for specialists abroad.
According to RB.ru, referring to the data of the hh.ru platform, in the first half of 2024 the number of vacancies of Russian companies for IT specialists in India increased by 68% compared to the same period in 2023 - to 764. In the case of Pakistan, an increase of 2.4 times was recorded - up to 80. The number of invitations to Russian vacancies in India rose by 62%, amounting to 862, and in Pakistan - 2.5 times, to 83 people. As of mid-2024, the hiring of IT specialists from these countries by Russian organizations is private, but mutual interest is growing.
Welldone CEO (logistics outsourcing) Artem Kireev says that hiring workers from India in the long term is beneficial even taking into account the costs of their transportation and paperwork. In addition, remote cooperation schemes can be applied. At the same time, Natalya Berdyeva, an evangelist of IT-Innovations in the economy of joint consumption of the B2B-Marketplace of the SkillStaff IT outstaffing, claims that the leadership of a number of Russian companies has already set tasks for their teams to develop models of cooperation with IT specialists from India and Pakistan.[14]
In Russia, the demand for IT specialists has sharply increased without registration in the staff with hourly wages
In Russia, the demand for IT specialists working without registration in the staff and receiving hourly wages has significantly increased. This became known in July 2024. In the first half of 2024, interest in such specialists increased by 30%, according to the SkillStaff B2B-Marketplace.
According to SkillStaff, banks are showing maximum interest in renting IT specialists, which account for 37% of all requests. In second place in terms of hiring activity are IT companies with an indicator of 28%, and in third place - retail with 20%. Telecommunications companies turned to the services of temporary specialists in 7% of cases, the rest of the industries - the public sector, industry, transport, real estate, construction and tourism - total no more than 8%.
Market research has shown that temporary IT specialists are in demand primarily due to the ability to reduce the cost of maintaining full-time employees. As the executive director of SkillStaff Polina Belyatskaya noted, "business gets access to a database of experts, including narrow qualifications, which is especially important given the shortage of personnel."
In June 2024, there was a particularly active increase in demand for programmers, which increased by almost a third. Among the most popular professions were system analysts, auto testers and Java developers. In 2023, in the same period, instead of Java developers, manual testing specialists were in demand.
SkillStaff analysts also note that 68% of customers prefer to hire temporary IT specialists with a high level of qualifications. Requests for entry-level specialists are only 1%, which practically does not differ from the data for 2023. The average rate for IT specialists is ₽3 491 per hour, with a maximum tariff for product managers - ₽5 115 per hour, and a minimum for bitrix developers - ₽2 350 per hour.[15]
Demand for IT specialists from Africa has increased many times in Russia
In the first half of 2024, Russian companies significantly increased their activity in finding employees in the field of information technology from African countries. This became known in July 2024. This trend is observed against the background of the general growth in demand for foreign specialists in various sectors of the economy.
According to a study by the online recruiting platform hh.ru, Kenya has become the leader in terms of job growth for IT professionals from Russian employers. The number of job offers in this country has increased 39 times - from 161 vacancies in the first half of 2023 to 6.4 thousand in the same period in 2024. Significant growth was also recorded in Zimbabwe (15 times, up to 165 vacancies), Cameroon (9 times, up to 130) and Zambia (8 times, up to 224).
According to hh.ru statistics, IT specialists are among the three most popular categories of employees when hiring from foreign countries. In the first half of 2024, information technology accounted for 286.5 thousand invitations to work in Russia for foreign citizens. This is the second indicator after the sales and customer service sector (337.5 thousand invitations).
The chief expert of the hh.ru on the labor market Natalya Danina notes that the search for IT specialists in 2024 was concentrated mainly in the UAE, Serbia, Turkey and Thailand. However, the growing interest in African countries may indicate an increase in the geography of the search for qualified personnel in the field of information technology.
Vsevolod Sviridov, an expert at the Center for the Study of Africa at the Faculty of World Economy and World Policy at the Higher School of Economics, emphasizes that the number of African specialists entering Russia is growing every year. At the same time, they occupy various niches in the labor market - from low-skilled professions to leadership positions in large Russian companies.[16]
The number of vacancies in the field of satellite communications in Russia increased by 1768%
The number of vacancies in the field of satellite communications in Russia in the first five months of 2024 increased by 1768%, which is a significant increase against the background of the general dynamics in telecommunications. This data was provided on June 7, 2024 by analysts at HeadHunter. Read more here.
Boris Nuraliev ordered 1C partners to use the "medieval" method of growing specialists from Junes
Despite the fact that the admission of students to universities for IT specialties has grown in recent years, the shortage of IT professionals in the market remains. At the same time, the number of teachers remains insufficient, and universities are ready to accept them. Against this background, the founder and director of 1C Boris Nuraliev at a conference in Nizhny Novgorod on May 22, 2024 called on IT companies and customers with IT staff to train students themselves.
There are a lot of junies on the market now, and this is a chance, the head of 1C believes. As part of the state program, hundreds of thousands of children were taught to program. 1C itself also teaches children - about 13 thousand a year, and other large IT companies, including Yandex and Sberbank, have similar programs. Children were taught a lot, but still this is a low level, they need to be finished to real specialists, implementers.
For additional education, the "medieval method" is usually used - to take yourself as an apprentice: a specialist can take only one person for training, six months or a year he must be "trained," "transfer a particle of soul to him." Then he may also leave. But there are no other ways, says Boris Nuraliev.
His call to all colleagues in the market - both IT companies and customers who have IT staff - to send their full-time specialists to teach at universities, and maybe even to technical schools. It is not very expensive: to send one specialist who will spend half a day a week, lead a group, select promising students, lure them for a paid internship. Thus, you can get good specialists from some of them.
1C itself has basic departments at Fiztech, HSE and a number of other universities. The company has been following this path for a long time, and now for its partners with the status "1C: ERP Center" and "1C Competence Center: KORP," it has made this a responsibility.
| | If you want you to have this "badge," then you need to train at least 50 students a year, take 5 people for internships, "says the founder of 1C. | |
At the same time, the partner will receive compensation from 1C in the amount of 50% of the trainee's remuneration fund for one year of his work from the moment of admission to an internship, provided that the trainee continued to work with the partner this year. But for this, in addition to teaching a student and accepting him for a paid internship, one more condition must be met: within a year from the beginning of the internship, he must pass the exam for the 1C: Specialist certificate for the 1C: Enterprise platform or the 1C: Specialist Consultant certificate for 1C: ERP.
The need for 1C specialists has recently increased significantly, being spurred by the transition of large and medium-sized Russian companies from imported ERP systems to domestic ones after the departure of Western vendors from Russia.
On average, a person works as a 1C specialist for 10 years. Someone immediately leaves for the chiefs, someone on conscription into the army or somewhere else. It turns out that in order to maintain a pool of 300 thousand 1C specialists on the market, 30 thousand new personnel are needed annually. This is a large figure, states Boris Nuraliev.
In 2022, to increase the number of "1C" personnel on the market, the company also launched a special line of retraining courses for specialists in foreign ERP systems.
There are 2.3 million IT specialists in Russia. The share of self-employed reached 20%
By the beginning of 2024, about 2.3 million IT specialists were employed in Russia. Of these, self-employed account for 20%. This is evidenced by the data of the Association of Computer and Information Technology Enterprises (APKIT), published in mid-May 2024.
As Kommersant writes with reference to the APKIT study, the share of IT specialists among all employed citizens in Russia by the beginning of 2024 is 3.1%. In 2020, there were 1.8 million IT workers in the country, of which 1% are self-employed.
By
According to market participants interviewed by the publication, self-employment became popular even in the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, and after the start of the Russian military special operation in Ukraine, it turned out to be easier and more profitable for Russian companies to hire such employees, especially those living abroad.
APKIT Director Nikolai Komlev associates the increase in the number of self-employed with a lack of qualified personnel: experienced employees work for several companies at once.
| | Now it is difficult to determine from which country a self-employed employee works, but I will assume that the majority conduct their activities from Russia, "Komlev told the newspaper. | |
Ksenia Zamukhoskaya, HR Director of Postgres Professional, believes that the specialists themselves prefer to work as self-employed, since in this case the organization that hired them does not need to submit documents on the military registration of an employee, while when employed in the state, a citizen "falls into the field of view of various regulatory authorities."
According to experts, if the authorities force companies to return the self-employed to hiring, business costs will increase by 20-30%.
The Ministry of Digital Development notes that the number of self-employed is growing almost evenly in all sectors of the economy. In the IT field, specialists choose self-employment, because this is how they can work from home and combine projects.
According to APKIT forecasts, by 2030 the required number of qualified personnel in IT will grow by 56%, to 3.6 million people.[17]
The largest IT companies are beginning to return top specialists to Russia. Emigration comes to naught
Against the background of information that appeared in the media in April about the growing interest of Russian IT specialists in obtaining a residence permit in other countries, TAdviser interviewed representatives of a number of well-known IT companies to find out what dynamics in the field of personnel outflow they see. Most of the surveyed experts, based on their own observations and from communication with market colleagues, say that there is no increase in emigration, and some, on the contrary, note a trend towards the return of IT specialists to Russia. Read more here.
2023
Increase in the number of IT specialists by 12.3% to 245-250 thousand people
At the end of 2023, the total number of technical employees of Russian software companies reached 245-250 thousand people - this is 12.3% more compared to 2022. Of these, almost 240 thousand worked in Russia, and the remaining 8-10 thousand people - in foreign development centers. Such data are reflected in the materials of the Russoft association, published in early October 2024.
The study says that the total number of specialists in the field of software development, including employees of system integrators and IT divisions of enterprises in various sectors of the economy, in 2023 increased by about 8% in the Russian Federation, reaching 830 thousand people. It is emphasized that in Russia competition for personnel has intensified, and the outflow of specialists abroad has decreased. Moreover, there is an increase in the share of specialists who returned to Russia from abroad after the relocation. In 2023, Russian software companies hired about 500 foreigners and about 1,000 Russians who returned after leaving.
The number of Russian IT companies that call the migration of employees abroad a problem is decreasing: their share, according to a 2024 survey, was 14%. This is a record low for the previous five years. Moreover, only 0.7% of respondents chose the answer option "The problem is quite massive for our company."
In 2023, in the labor market of software developers, the influx of personnel from other industries recovered to the level of 2021. The total number of new professionals in the industry has increased significantly; at the same time, the share of graduates of universities and colleges (secondary special educational institutions), as well as students who combine work with study, decreased. Retraining of specialists in 2023 accounted for about 6% of the total personnel replenishment.
The Russoft Association notes that the average salary of specialized technical employees of Russian software companies in 2023 amounted to 176 thousand rubles. This is 14.5% more in relation to 2022, when the indicator was estimated at 154 thousand rubles. At the same time, in dollar terms, a reduction of 8.2% was recorded due to the devaluation of the ruble against the American currency. Labor productivity (average revenue per employee) in 2023 increased by 15.8% to 4.41 million rubles. For comparison, a year earlier, the increase was recorded at around 7.8%.
The study says that in Russia, as well as around the world, the active introduction of artificial intelligence continues. In 2022, about 7.9% of software companies surveyed noted the measured effect of using generative AI tools in software development. In 2023, the value rose to 15.2%, and by the end of 2024 it is expected to increase to 19.8%.
The authors of the report say that interest in foreign markets among the surveyed IT companies remains at a high level, despite the special attractiveness of working in Russia due to the departure of foreign suppliers. In 2023, 39.6% of respondents studied new markets for themselves outside the Russian Federation. Among companies with remote software development centers in other regions of Russia, the largest number of employees outside the subject of the federation in which the head office is located is located in St. Petersburg: in the total population of surveyed organizations, the number of such employees is 3296 people. Moscow in this ranking is in second place with an indicator of 813 people. This is followed by the Krasnodar Territory (590 employees), Samara Region (526), Tatarstan (501), Nizhny Novgorod (464), Ryazan (452), Perm (424), Novosibirsk (281), Udmurtia (281), Oryol (266), Bashkiria (263), Moscow Region (250).[18]
Increase in personnel turnover in Russian IT company to 11.6%
At the end of 2023, the personnel turnover rate in Russian software companies averaged 11.6% against about 11.3% in 2022. At the same time, against the background of active import substitution in the field of software, competition for personnel in the Russian Federation has intensified. This is stated in the study of the Russoft association, the results of which were published on September 3, 2024.
It is noted that until 2015, inclusive, the share of specialized employees who left IT companies during the year in Russia fluctuated mainly in the range of 6-7%. In 2016, the indicator increased to 9.5% and in the next two years stabilized at this level. In 2019, there was a new jump - up to 12.5%, after which staff turnover did not fall below 11.3%, but also did not exceed 13.3%. In general, from 2015 to 2023, the turnover of specialists in Russian IT companies increased 1.7-1.9 times.
In 2023, 69.5% of surveyed IT companies in Russia reported the presence of staff turnover. For comparison, a year earlier, 62% of organizations indicated this, and in 2016 - 59%. Unlike previous years, when there was a transfer of personnel from small companies to large ones, at the end of 2023, large enterprises had more personnel losses. With a turnover of less than 1.5 billion rubles per year, the turnover of personnel does not exceed 10%.
Ksenia Koskova, HR director of the Rocket digital platform for organizing business trips and managing expenses, notes that IT companies are trying to solve the problems of high staff turnover in a comprehensive manner. In particular, various tools are used to retain employees, such as developing an internal culture and improving working conditions. In addition, work on processes helps, bringing them to maximum versatility, for example, prescribed documentation or general principles of writing code. At the same time, measures such as banning work from abroad or compulsory work in the office are often a key factor for people in deciding to change employers.Ошибка цитирования Отсутствует закрывающий тег </ref>}}
The number of employees of IT companies in Russia in 4 years has grown 1.5 times - the head of the Ministry of Ministry of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev
The number of employees of IT companies in Russia over 4 years has grown 1.5 times. The Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev announced this on April 17, 2024 following a meeting with members of the government with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
| | There were many fears that we had exhausted personnel opportunities to build up the potential of the developers of our leading, but in general they increased their number by 1.5 times, - said the head of the Ministry of Ministry of Digital Development (quoted by Interfax). | |
He also noted that the average salary in the Russian IT industry for four years increased 1.7 times and reached 155 thousand rubles in 2023. This shows that there is demand, there is where to grow, Shadayev emphasized.
Apparently, he cited data from the Institute for Statistical Research and Knowledge Economics of the Higher School of Economics, which were released earlier in April 2024. According to this study, the average salary of IT specialists in the Russian Federation at the end of 2023 increased by 13.3% compared to the previous year. According to experts for 2019-2023, the number of IT industry workers is growing at double-digit rates annually. Only in May-July 2022 there was a short-term decline, but by October of the same year the market made up for minor losses. The average salary in the IT industry is twice the average for the Russian economy. The IT market leads among large sectors of the economy in terms of the growth rate of the number of employees and wages for 2019-2023, the report says.
On April 17, 2024, Maksut Shadayev announced that Russian developers of IT solutions could receive new measures of state support, which should contribute to a further increase in the number of information technology specialists in Russia. At the same time, the minister did not specify what new initiatives are being [19]
Growth in the number of IT specialists by 13% to 857,000 people
The number of IT specialists Russia in 2023 increased by 13% compared to 2022 and reached 857 thousand people. This is evidenced by the data Rosstat that the Russian Federation Ministry of Digital Development led in response to the appearance in the media of information about a new wave of mass departure of IT specialists.
The Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation reported that in 2023 the average salary of specialists in the field of information technology in Russia increased by 13% compared to a year ago. The ministry stressed that the IT industry is one of the fastest growing in the country, all its economic indicators demonstrate double-digit growth rates. According to Ministry of Digital Development estimates, the volume of shipment of its own products and services, which is the most significant indicator of the state of the industry, in 2023 increased by more than 30% and reached 3 trillion rubles.
On April 5, 2024, the Kommersant newspaper published an article in which, citing data from the consulting agency Garant In, the demand for Russian IT specialists for programs for obtaining a residence permit in Europe sharply increased in early 2024. So, in the first quarter of 2024, the number of requests increased by 233%. According to Garant In, in 2023, the demand of Russian IT specialists for residence permits in Europe increased by 44%, and about 80% of applications were for documents in France and 10% in Italy.
| | The Ministry of Digital Development does not confirm the data that appeared in the media about the massive departure of IT specialists, the department said on April 5, 2024, adding that in 2023 there is no outflow of IT specialists. | |
The Ministry of Digital Development also added that two-thirds of the IT specialists who left Russia in 2022 returned by April 2024. At the same time, absolute figures in the department did not lead.[20]
Chernyshenko named the number of employees in the IT industry - more than 820 thousand people
On December 4, 2023, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko named the number of employees in the Russian IT industry - there are more than 820 thousand of them. According to forecasts of the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, this number will only grow.
Chernyshenko cited such data speaking at an event of the V.P. Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ISP RAS), dedicated to the 75th anniversary of domestic information technologies. He noted that the government supports the IT sphere comprehensively. According to the Deputy Prime Minister, highly qualified specialists are being trained to implement the tasks.
| | IT specialties this year have become one of the most popular among applicants to Russian universities. Of course, the development of such a knowledge-intensive digital sphere is impossible without fundamental research. In order for Russia to remain a leading IT power, synergy of the efforts of science, business and the state is needed, - said Dmitry Chernyshenko in early December 2023. | |
The fact that more than 800 thousand programmers work in Russia, Dmitry Chernyshenko said in mid-September 2023 in his congratulations on the Day of the Programmer. Then he noted that thanks to IT specialists, Russia entered the top 10 of the World Bank's digitalization rating. By September 2023, Russian universities were trained in 63 specialized IT specialties, the Deputy Prime Minister noted.
Earlier in 2023, the Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev said that the need for specialists still remains, "although the personnel base of the industry is also increasing." Shadayev estimated the shortage of developers of IT solutions at 500-700 thousand people - so much, according to the head of the Ministry of Ministry of Digital Development, is needed "in order to maintain high rates of industry development."[21]
The number of AI vacancies in Russia soared by 80%
The number of vacancies in the field of artificial intelligence in Russia by October 2023 increased by 80% compared to October 2022. Over the same period, the growth of vacancies in the field of machine learning amounted to 21%. The HeadHunter portal cited such data in its market research.
Most AI specialists are in demand in IT companies and system integrators. In addition, telecom giants and financial sector companies (especially banks) need professionals in the field of artificial intelligence. The most popular specialties are machine learning engineer, digital project architect and data markup specialist.
According to experts interviewed by Kommersant, the growth in demand for specialists began in the spring of 2023, and then the trend continued. It is believed that this is due to the launch of a number of large companies products based on generative AI.
According to HH.ru, the median salary offer for an AI specialist amounted to 114.4 thousand rubles per month, and machine learning specialists are offered more on average - about 155 thousand rubles. At the same time, companies note that salary expectations of highly qualified personnel are growing much faster than paid offers. Thus, MTS announced an increase of 20-30%, VK - 10-30%.
The salary fork has also increased, says Tatyana Zobnina, head of the data analysis and machine learning department at NAUMEN:
| | If earlier the scope between the minimum and the maximum in vacancies was about 50-70 thousand rubles, now it can reach 200 thousand rubles. | |
Lack of personnel in the sphere leads to incomplete configuration of project teams. Due to the low supply of good personnel, large companies buy specialists for a salary exceeding the market by 1.7-2 times. In addition, the business is starting to apply new hiring practices, such as further training, said Dmitry Krasovsky, director of the Digital Academy of T1.[22]
Demand for Huawei equipment maintenance specialists has sharply increased in Russia
On November 23, 2023, it became known that Russia due to the current geopolitical situation, a shortage of equipment maintenance specialists was formed. Huawei Domestic companies require employees to work with servers, systems () data storage DSS and telecommunications products of the named Chinese manufacturer. More. here
IT jobs market up 18% in a year
At the beginning of autumn, the job market for IT specialists shows positive dynamics - in September 2022 hh.ru , 64 thousand vacancies were opened on the portal, and in September 2023, companies placed 76 thousand vacancies. About how the demand for IT specialists has changed over the year, they told "" and Technocracy hh.ru according to the results of a joint study, the results of which the companies shared on October 27, 2023.
In the context of the development of digital products, 2022 was remembered for the freezing of hiring, the massive outflow of specialists abroad, as well as the withdrawal of some foreign companies from the market. Over the year, the market was able to get out of the state of "freezing" and began to grow - from September 2022 to September 2023, the number of vacancies for IT specialists increased by 18%.
Igor Kotov, Director of the Production Technocracy, cites seasonality and uncertainty with the renewal of licenses for foreign software as the main reasons for the increase in demand for IT specialists:
| | This growth may be due to two factors: Firstly, this is a traditional growth in demand in the 3rd and 4th quarters, caused by the closure of contracts and the development of budgets before the end of the year. Secondly, the request of big business for domestic solutions. In 2022, the companies waited with the decision to extend the licenses of the software that left the market. A year later, when it became obvious that it was necessary to either remain without support and development, or invest in import substitution, the companies chose the second - said Igor Kotov, production director, Technocracy. | |
The market is growing actively due to demand for managers, analysts and backend developers If we consider the market as a whole, then the main growth drivers are personnel who are engaged in analytics and project management. For example, the number of vacancies for system and business analysts increased by 55% and 43%, respectively, and the number of vacancies for project and product managers also increased by 61% and 22%.
| | Analysts and products are the specialists with whom the initiation of many large projects begins. In 2022, the market faced uncertainty, and as a result, the curtailment of funding for many foreign and domestic IT projects. In 2023, the situation no longer looks like force majeure, so competition for personnel returns. | |
Among programmers, backend developers are among the leaders in terms of growth rates - the demand for Python developers has grown by 30%, in Java by 17%, in C++ by 15%. It is worth noting that Java developers as a whole are the most popular developers on the market - in almost every sixth vacancy, companies are looking for Java developers (16% of the total number of vacancies for developers).
Ironically, if we consider the hiring of "IT specialists" in the context of industries, economies then the sphere is leading by a large margin "" Information Technology- on average, more than 8 thousand vacancies were placed in this area every month. But at the same time, according to the results of the first half of 2023, employers entered the top 3 companies, and Sber. Tinkoff InoTech All three brands are associated with the "Financial sector" - companies from this area on average place a little more than 3 thousand vacancies every month.
A strong breakthrough in the first half of 2023 was made by the CRC, Yadro and IBS. In general, the first top 10 companies account for 12% of all demand in the market, the top 50 - 24%, the top 100 - 31%.
When analyzing the data on grades, only those vacancies in which the grade was indicated in the description or in the title of the vacancy were taken into account. The demand for specialists of all grades over the year increased and even overtook the market: juns began to be searched for 101% more often, mids by 73%, and seniors by 30%.
But in numerical terms, the seniors still remain the most desirable specialists. For example, in September 2023, 2.7 thousand vacancies were opened for Senior specialists, and for Junior only 640 vacancies - a ratio of almost one to four.
The highest demand for experienced specialists is observed for Java, Python and QA stacks, and juns are also more actively recruited for testing, project management and Python development.
HR-Director of Technocracy Alina Gabidullina says that such demand dynamics in terms of grads is associated with an increase in planning terms:
{{quote 'Started defrosting budgets in food companies, and there are also dynamics of increasing planning terms. If quite recently it was impossible to say what will happen in a month, now they are trying to plan for a quarter - six months. Middles and seniors - have been and remain tidbits for companies. Since these are specialists with experience and a certain level of competence, - said Alina Gabidullina, HR Director of Technocracy. }}
Despite the fact that the media is beginning to raise the topics of returning employees to offices, the data indicate the opposite - the business is interested in the remote format of work. Over the past three years, the share of vacancies with the option of remote work for IT specialists has grown from 25% in 2021 to 39.9% in 2023. Almost every second vacancy does not imply an office visit format.
At the same time, the share of vacancies with the option of hybrid work has also increased over the past three years: from 2.6% in 2021 to 9.2% in 2023. This trend was picked up by almost the entire Russian bigtech - for example, Yandex in March 2023 announced the transition to a hybrid with a request to visit the office 2-3 times a week. Experts attribute this to the need to maintain work in a general mode, but at the same time meet the needs of employees who want more flexibility in their work.
Knowing about this fact, it is interesting to look at the general top of the regions of employers in IT: Moscow (29 thousand vacancies per month), St. Petersburg (8 thousand vacancies) and the Sverdlovsk region (2 thousand vacancies).
The job market Technocracy and hh.ru were studied using queries to the API hh.ru - the search was carried out according to the keywords indicated in the jobs. For study, a limited list of stacks and production directions in IT was identified. Some of the statistics were provided directly hh.ru[1]
The Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation estimated the shortage of developers in Russia at 500-700 thousand specialists
The Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation estimated the shortage of developers in Russia in the 500 000 - 700 000 of specialists. So much, according to the department, is needed in order to maintain high rates of development of the industry. The deficit will not be eliminated in the near future, but the country is already creating a talent pool of IT specialists - such information was shared on October 26, 2023 by representatives of IVA Technologies.
| | It will not be possible to eliminate the deficit yet, - said Alexander Pavlov, General Director of the Russian Fund for the Development of Information Technologies. - The level of digitalization of Russian companies is growing, the level of tasks that need to be solved is growing. If earlier there was a fashion for IT in companies, now it is a guarantee of competition and survival of enterprises, the creation of technological solutions that are in demand and bought. | |
According to Pavlov, Russian physics and mathematics schools continue to produce the strongest "carriers of digital competencies" - Russian programmers win international competitions and become desirable personnel for both Russian and foreign IT markets. For them to stay in Russia, they need to create additional incentives.
| | IT specialists, developers are the most vulnerable category of highly qualified specialists, the expert is sure. - These are people who can - and are used to it - conduct development from anywhere in the world. Our task is to create additional incentives for them, to involve them in work on large-scale ambitious projects in Russia. | |
IVA Technologies CEO Stanislav Iodkovsky called Russian IT specialists "firefighters" of the domestic economy, which have to be engaged in literally saving society.
| | After February 24, 2022, we save almost all sectors of the economy from the consequences of technological sanctions, - said Stanislav Iodkovsky. - What foreign companies have been doing for decades, we need to do in three years. | |
Like foreign companies, it is time for Russia to pay attention to working with universities and educate its specialists from school and university to create a strong personnel reserve, says another speaker, General Director of Astra Group Ilya Sivtsev. Its own IT specialists, trained not only in basic departments, but also in laboratories in partnership with large companies, will understand the features of technologies and the needs of the Russian industry, Sivtsev said.
{{quote 'Our answer to the question of personnel hunger is to teach and continue to teach, - Ilya Sivtsev comments. - We also have few entry-level specialists, the main shortage is in experienced personnel. But they will not appear from nowhere if we ourselves do not involve, will not teach, will not develop them. }}
The number of vacancies in the IT sector in Russia increased by 10% over the year
The number of vacancies in IT the -sphere for the year increased by 10%. At the same time salary , the proposal in this segment shows the greatest growth rate: for example, over the year it increased by 7.9% in nominal terms excluding, and inflations in relation to January 2023, the remuneration of IT specialists increased by 5.2%, the deputy's press service reported on October 4, 2023 with State Duma of the Russian Federation Anton Nemkin reference to and. RBC data Superjob
At the same time, according to analysts, the highest demand is observed in the following segments: development and; programming implementation and maintenance; software engineering;;. information security analytics
The top 5 areas in terms of salary supply growth compared to January also include construction (by 4.4%), marketing, advertising and PR (by 4.2%), personnel (by 4%) and banking (by 3.8%).
Among IT specialists, the salary offer for system architects increased the most - by 16.7%. They are offered an average of 350 thousand rubles. per month (in hand, after paying taxes, excluding bonuses, additional benefits and compensation), and a maximum of 600 thousand rubles.
In 2022, the top 7 most popular areas among IT specialists included engineering, development, ON system administration, product/project management, software implementation and support, analytics and/. information securityinformation protection
The annual increase in average market salaries in Moscow in industry information technologies by December 2022 amounted to 16.5%. In addition, IT employers are more likely than others to organize employee training, conduct corporate events, and offer voluntary health insurance (VHI) policies.
Anton Nemkin, a member of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy (United Russia faction), noted that companies are trying to retain specialists and attract new ones against the background of a continuing shortage of qualified personnel in the market and an increase in the cost of hiring new employees. {{quote "The growth of salaries in the IT sector speaks of the demand for these professions both in the commercial and public sectors. At the same time, the salaries of IT specialists in capitals and regions almost equaled. The training of IT personnel and advanced training of specialists are marked by a separate line in the national program "Digital Economy" until 2030. So, one of the main tasks of the state is to help Russians get an IT education or retrain. Despite the increase in the personnel base, the need for IT personnel still remains at a high level: as of October 2023, the developer deficit is estimated at about 500 thousand people, against a million IT specialists in 2021, "said Anton Nemkin. }}
The number of programmers in Russia for the year increased by 15%
The number of programmers working in Russia has grown by almost 15% over the past year and exceeded 820 thousand people. This was reported to TAdviser on September 22, 2023 by representatives of the press service of the State Duma deputy RFAnton Nemkin, citing a statement by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.
According to him to the country accredited , in about 22 thousand companies - manufacturers, domestic software 33 industrial centers of competence were launched.
| | Thanks to this system approach, you can find areas where dependence on foreign digital products is especially felt. And to intensify their replacement in order to maintain the stability of production, design, financial, technological and social processes at enterprises, "Mishustin added and emphasized the importance of investing in domestic IT solutions by the year. | |
The state provides significant support measures to IT companies and specialists, and Russian developers have a unique opportunity to enter the market almost without competition from Western companies, said Anton Nemkin, a member of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications.
| | "And they are actively using this opportunity - the pace of import substitution in it is the highest, almost 80% of foreign software already has Russian analogues," the deputy added. | |
The Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation develops new standards of training of IB-specialists
On September 7, 2023, it became known that it Ministry of Digital Development Russia intends to revise the standards for training specialists in the field (information security information security).
According to RIA Novosti, referring to the statements of the head of the department Maksut Shadayev, changes are necessary in light of the increased intensity of cyber attacks. In the current geopolitical situation, Russian companies and state organizations are increasingly subjected to hacker attacks. Positive Technologies experts, in particular, note massive attacks through the exploitation of vulnerabilities and many personal data leaks. In addition, an increase in the number of successful cyber attacks on blockchain projects and a surge in ransomware activity against IT companies were recorded.
| | We generally love cybersecurity and believe that we should pay more attention to the training of specialists in the field of cybersecurity. Now industry standards, professional standards for training specialists in the field of cybersecurity are being revised in order to comply with the current level of technologies and threats, "Shadayev said. | |
According to him, information security is one of the most popular specialties in the IT sector in Russia. As of September 2023, there are many cybersecurity faculties in the country. Improving the standards for training specialists in this area in the future will improve the security of the information infrastructure in the Russian Federation.
At the same time, the number of targeted cyber attacks is growing in Russia: the share of such invasions in the second quarter of 2023 was 78%, which is 10% more than at the beginning of this year. In addition to new vulnerabilities, attackers are actively exploiting old ones. In some cases, according to analysts at Positive Technologies, the holes are being exploited several years after the initial discovery.[2]
In Russia, the demand for programmers who know foreign languages has sharply decreased
In Russia, the demand for programmers who know foreign languages has sharply decreased. This was reported to Russoft at the end of August 2023.
According to the study, specialists capable of reading, writing and speaking English suffered the most - if in 2022 the business needed 3.24% of programmers with good knowledge of English (from the total staff of all companies surveyed by Russoft), then in 2023 this figure decreased by almost a third - to 2.39%.
In the case of the German language, the need for software developers who know it has decreased from more than half - 0.17 to 0.08%, in the case of Arabic - 0.13 to 0.11%, with Spanish - 0.18 to 0.8%. In general, languages "sank" from 4.1 to 2.9%.
37.1% of the companies surveyed need at least one additional technical specialist with knowledge of a foreign language. For software promotion specialists, 37.5% of companies have such a need.
As explained in Russoft, the division of the world into "friendly" and "unfriendly" led to a change in the geography of the needs for knowledge of foreign languages for enterprises in the software development industry in Russia. In addition, knowledge of different foreign languages has become more popular for promoting software solutions and custom development services.
The reorientation of the software development industry to the Russian market, working on which it is possible to increase sales by tens of percent per year, has led to the fact that the need for specialized technical specialists with knowledge of foreign languages in general has slightly decreased. At the same time, the reduction of this need affected all languages. The need for knowledge of the French language has remained at the same level, which is associated with the growing interest of Russian IT companies in promoting the former colonies of France in Africa to the markets.[3]
Programmers for the development of applications for iPhone in Russia are no longer needed
In Russia, the demand for mobile application developers has sharply decreased. Worst of all, programmers writing for iPhones are hired. This was announced in early August 2023 by the Technocracy company, which develops mobile applications and digital services).
According to CNews, citing a study by Technocracy, in Russia the total number of open vacancies in the field of mobile software development in July 2023 decreased by 24% on an annualized basis. The number of vacancies for iOS developers fell by 29.9%, in the Android segment - by 13.5%.
Experts cite two main reasons for what is happening, and both are related to Western sanctions against Russia: flight from the local market of foreign companies that could stop hiring Russian mobile developers, and restrictions from Apple and Google. These companies banned Russians from publishing new paid applications in their stores, as well as updating existing ones. Some of the paid utilities of Google and Apple were completely removed.
According to experts, the Russian market did not really need entry-level mobile developers. Companies are aimed at hiring primarily seniors, but are ready to consider mids. This is explained by the fact that business closes the needs for novice developers through its own internship programs and through cooperation with educational sites, universities and edtech companies. In the IT industry as a whole, only 5% of companies are interested in junies - 56% need seniors, 39% - mids.
It software is easier and fastest for Russian mobile developers to get a job in a large domestic company, moreover, it is not necessary from the IT sphere. So, according to the statistics of Technocracy, in the first half of 2023, in terms of the number of open vacancies, mobile software developers were in the lead (in descending order), Tinkoff",,," "and VK SberbankYandex. In MTS[4]
Demand for computer game developers in Russia decreased by 38%
By the end of June 2023, there were about 4,300 vacancies for game developers in the Russian Federation (this is 38% less than a year earlier), of which 3,100 ads were published by Russian companies and 1,200 by foreign ones. Such data in July 2023 led analysts. HeadHunter
According to them, by mid-July 2023, Russia as a whole had developed the "most tense" situation with the search for work among game designers. There are more than 46 CVs per vacancy posted.
The reduction in the number of vacancies is due to the unstable position in the market of companies that have not yet worked on large projects, said Anna Posazhennikova, HR director of the Lesta Games group of companies (projects "World of Ships," "World of Tanks"). The reduction in the number of vacancies for game developers in Russia is due to a lack of money and content in the industry, added Vyacheslav Makarov, an independent expert in the gaming market. According to him, the vacancies of foreign companies published on hh.ru are posted by developers with "Russian roots," who left the country in 2022 and are now "looking for personnel in the usual market."
The industry is still stabilizing after the departure of many foreign companies from Russia in 2022, said Vasily Ovchinnikov, head of the Video Game Industry Development Organization, in July 2023. According to him, it will take several years to recover, provided that the state provides the industry with the necessary support.
| | We have a strong IT school and game development, and many specialists were involved in outsourcing in international projects, "Ovchinnikov said, adding that Russia has a large audience that needs video game content, so in the future the number of vacancies in the industry" should not be greatly reduced[5] | |
Russian electronics manufacturers lack specialists despite rising salaries
Salaries of middle-level employees in the Russian production of printed circuit boards, computer equipment and electronics during the first half of 2023 rose by about 20-30%. This is evidenced by the statistics of the HeadHunter platform, released at the end of June 2023.
According to the Kommersant newspaper, the salaries of operators of the surface mounting line of printed circuit boards in the period from January to June 2023 increased on an annualized basis by 20% - to 60 thousand rubles a month. At the same time, the salary of production managers rose by only 4%, reaching 130 thousand rubles a month. At the same time, the demand for specialists is also growing. Thus, the total number of vacancies for the position of surface installation lines operator in IT (production of server equipment, computers, data storage systems, etc.) increased by 23% - to 294 vacancies, and in the category "IT Production Manager" - by 89%, to 429 vacancies.
The observed trends are explained by the current geopolitical situation. Against the background of the departure of a number of foreign companies from Russia and the refusal of contract manufacturers from cooperation with Russian customers, the demand for domestic products sharply increased. In particular, printed circuit boards for automotive electronics, medical equipment, computers and servers are in demand. Manufacturers of such products have begun to expand their capacities and are investing tens of millions of dollars in this.
| | Now in the category of manual installers there are not enough about 20% of employees, among the operators of the surface installation line - about 40%, and among production managers - up to 60%, so companies are fighting for each employee, - said Elena Zhidkova, head of Promcontract. | |
Market participants say that the growth of wages is due, on the one hand, to the level of inflation, on the other, to the resulting deficit. All enterprises in Russia that collect electronics faced a shortage of specialists.[6]
One vacancy of a Java developer in Russia began to account for more than three resumes
By the end of May 2023, one vacancy of a Java developer in Russia began to account for more than three resumes against 1.4 a year earlier. This is stated in a study by the recruiting agency GlobalCareer (part of the IBS group of companies).
The developers of the Junior level were in the most difficult position: by May 2023, there are 43 resumes for each entry-level vacancy. The situation in the labor market has also changed critically for middle-level Java developers. If in 2022 there were five vacancies per resume, then this year programmers will have to compete with each other: four candidates apply for one place.
At the same time, senior developers may practically not notice the changes: in 2022, the ratio of vacancies and resumes was about one to one, now there are 2.5 resumes for each vacancy.
| | Compared to May 2022, the demand for Java developers in the Russian IT market has changed insignificantly: vacancies have been opened for developers of different levels, but most employers are configured to hire candidates no lower than middle + and senior, says Vladimir Vereshchagin, director of GlobalCareer. - Many companies had to reduce development from scratch, urgently rebuild to new technologies and maintain the operability of existing systems. Employers need experienced employees who can quickly begin to solve existing problems. And Java is primarily used to create new products and their scalability. | |
By May 2023, Moscow accounts for 47% of the resume of Java developers against 56% a year earlier. The share of resumes of applicants from regional cities with a population of one million increased from 19% to 24%, GlobalCareer analysts calculated.[7]
Russoft: An overabundance of entry-level IT specialists has formed
An overabundance of entry-level IT specialists has formed in Russia. Valentin Makarov, president of the Russoft software developers association, wrote about this in early June 2023 in his Telegram channel.
According to HeadHunter, the number of responses to IT vacancies in the Russian Federation in the first quarter of 2023 increased by 44% compared to the same period in 2022 (to 23.4 million responses). At the same time, the number of vacancies placed increased by 7% over the same period (to 274.9 thousand vacancies).
| | Indeed, companies are now receiving more responses to fill IT vacancies. This is partly due to the exemption from mobilization provided to IT professionals. But not only with this, - said Makarov. | |
According to him, the growth in the popularity of IT specialties, which began during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic and then accelerated after the start of a special military operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, was associated with the entire range of measures to support the IT industry adopted by the state over the past couple of years. To this you need to add the virtual nature of the work of programmers, which allows you to work remotely anywhere in the world where there are means of electronic communications, the head of Russoft emphasized.
The combination of state support measures and the remote nature of work led to the fact that a significant mass of young people rushed to distance training courses in IT specialties. And it is they who, first of all, are applicants for the position of IT specialists, continues Makarov.
| | As a result, we now have an overabundance of candidates for junior positions with inflated salary expectations and low qualifications, which does not allow them to be hired. And now we should rather not talk about how to stop motivating young people to learn programming, but about how to stimulate the training centers of IT companies to bring the level of people who have undergone pseudo-training in distance courses to the level of junior +, "he concluded[8] | |
The Ministry of Industry and Trade asked the Ministry of Education to increase the training period for specialists in radio electronics
On May 15, 2023, it became known that the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, as well as relevant associations, appealed to the Ministry of Education with a request to increase the training period for specialists in radio electronics.
According to the Kommersant newspaper, a shortage of personnel in the electronic industry has formed in Russia, accompanied by a low quality of education for employees of secondary specialties. Moreover, in the future, the situation is expected to worsen due to the lack of university graduates. According to estimates, at the beginning of 2023, the shortage of workers with secondary specialized education in the indicated area in Russia fluctuated at the level of 40-60%.
One of the reasons for the shortage of personnel is that the Ministry of Education in 2022 reduced the training period for radio mechanics (after the ninth grade) from three years and ten months to one year and ten months. In addition, hours of production practice were reduced. If we exclude preparation for exams and holidays, then students have only seven months left to obtain theoretical and practical knowledge: and this, according to market participants, is not enough for high-quality training.
Kommersant notes that on April 12, 2023, the deputy head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Vasily Shpak sent a letter to the Ministry of Education indicating the need to extend the training of specialists in technical schools. This initiative, in particular, is supported by the Computing Technology Consortium (ANO VT), which unites Yadro, Element, Bulat, Aquarius, etc. The training period is proposed to be increased to two years and ten months.
F + tech Chief Executive Officer Mikhail Volkov emphasizes that the Russian radio-electronic industry urgently needs qualified circuit engineers, installers, technologists, installation line fixers and other specialists. However, the shortage of personnel in some areas reaches 80-90[9]
Russian IT companies asked the Ministry of Ministry of Digital Development to simplify the hiring of foreigners
Russian IT companies asked the Ministry of Ministry of Digital Development to simplify the hiring of foreigners. As the president of NP Russoft Valentin Makarov told Kommersant in early May 2023, the association is ready to independently pay for the relocation of the left specialists, and also asks to simplify the process of employment of foreigners.
It is necessary to "reduce the barriers" for hiring foreign specialists for remote work due to the shortage of personnel and the growing interest of friendly countries in Russian IT specialists, Makarov explained. By the beginning of May 2023, according to him, the main obstacle is the procedure for obtaining a work permit in Russia, which "takes a certain time." Companies are already discussing these issues with the Ministry of Digital Development, the newspaper's interlocutor in the industry said.
The company "Hi-Tech," which supplies computer equipment, told the publication that the procedure for obtaining a work permit now takes about two months. It is needed regardless of whether the employee works remotely or not, noted in "Hi-Tech," adding that the permit can be canceled if the employee is absent in the country for more than 180 days.
The Ministry of Digital Development reported to the newspaper that by the beginning of May 2023, there were no appeals "for additional simplification" of hiring foreigners. They noticed that in Russia by the beginning of May 2023, measures are already in force to attract foreign specialists. In particular, a simplified procedure for employment and obtaining a residence permit has been introduced.
It is easier to attract foreign specialists to companies that have representative offices in other countries - in this case, no additional documents are required, said Dmitry Parshin, director of the Artezio development center (part of the Lanit group). However, he emphasizes that the requirements for wages and working conditions for foreign workers are higher than for Russian ones. Therefore, Parshin doubts that the demand for foreigners will be high.[10]
IT specialists who left Russia cannot find work in domestic companies
At the end of March 2023, it became known that specialists in the field of information technology, who left Russia for one reason or another, cannot find a job in domestic companies. The fact is that an increasing number of Russian organizations are limiting the search for employees for remote work outside the country.
According to CNews, the number of vacancies in which remote work for IT specialists is limited to the regions of Russia increased by 115% in March 2023. If earlier the presence of an employee in the country was voiced as a wish, then later for many employers this became a mandatory requirement. This policy is adhered to by Lanit, Softline, 3Logic Group, Okko, Reksoft, Rostelecom, Sberbank, Er-Telecom, Megafon, T1 Group, Innostage and many other companies and organizations from the Russian Federation. Similar restrictions are found in vacancies for developers, technical support specialists, architects, system analysts, etc.
| | Among the organizations that limit the search for IT specialists outside Russia, there are companies with state participation, personal data operators, as well as organizations that service critical information infrastructure. But in addition to these companies, integrators, distributors, software developers and others join them, - notes CNews. | |
One of the reasons for the reluctance to hire employees from abroad is to tighten the law on personal data, according to which companies are obliged to notify Roskomnadzor of their cross-border transfer. In addition, employers are concerned about a possible legislative ban on hiring IT professionals abroad. There is also a risk of double taxation if the employee is abroad for more than 180 days a year.
At the same time, CNews notes that Russian IT specialists located abroad can still find a job in a company without state participation, startups financed by persons independent of state capital, as well as in commercial organizations that are not personal data operators.[11]
In Russia, there was a sharp jump in demand for fiber specialists
In Russia, there was a sharp jump in demand for fiber optic specialists. This became known on March 15, 2023.
As Kommersant writes with reference to HeadHunter data, in February 2023, the number of vacancies for specialists whose work is related to laying the main optical communication increased by 32% compared to the same period in 2022. In the satellite and fixed-line segment, indicators increased by 17% and 11%, respectively. The total number of vacancies in the telecom sector in February 2023 increased by 3% on an annualized basis and by 33% compared to January 2023.
According to HeadHunter, the total number of resumes created or updated in January - March 2023 with experience in telecom companies over the past three years amounted to more than 97 thousand. At the same time, applicants in the telecom industry were 13% more likely to offer salaries from 120 thousand rubles and 11% from 90 thousand rubles. The number of vacancies with income from 65 thousand rubles decreased by 6%.
Dmitry Arkhipov, head of technological consulting at the NTI Competence Center, jumped in demand for fiber optic specialists with an increase in the volume of construction of fiber optic communications by operators as part of the state program to eliminate digital inequality. Also, according to him, the trend can be explained by the growing requirements of customers for the quality of services.
Ksenia Koskova, HR director of the Rocket digital platform for organizing business trips and managing expenses, clarifies that "January is a month of business calm in many areas." Since February, "more active work begins and the emergence of new vacancies looks like a logical consequence," she added.
In mid-March 2023, Rostelecom reported that the company did not increase the number of vacancies for employees whose work is related to fiber optic since the beginning of the year.[12]
Foreign IT specialists have simplified employment and obtaining a residence permit
Russia has simplified the procedure for employment and obtaining a residence permit (residence permit) for foreign specialists in the field of information technology. The press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation announced this on March 15, 2023.
Foreign IT specialists have the right to conclude an employment contract or a civil law contract for the performance of work (provision of services) with organizations operating in the field of information technology and received, in the manner established by the Government of the Russian Federation, a document on state accreditation of an organization operating in the field of information technology (with the exception of organizations having the status of a resident of a technical and innovative special economic zone), without issuing a work permit or patent.
In this case, the organization must have state accreditation. Such companies attract these specialists without obtaining permission to attract and use employees. A foreign IT specialist who works in an accredited IT company, as well as members of his family (including a spouse, children (including adopted ones), spouses of children, parents (including adoptive ones), spouses of parents, grandparents, grandchildren) has been granted the right to obtain a residence permit in the Russian Federation without a simplified validity period.
To obtain a residence permit, an IT specialist, as well as members of his family, must contact the migration department of the territorial body of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia at a selected place of permanent residence. The period of consideration of the application for the issuance of a residence permit is 3 months.
Earlier, in order to obtain a residence permit, a foreign IT specialist was obliged to live for at least one year under a temporary residence permit, which was issued within the quota approved by the Cabinet of Ministers annually. Also, employees of foreign legal entities (manufacturers or suppliers) performing installation work, service and warranty services, post-warranty repairs of technical equipment supplied to the Russian Federation could get a job in the Russian Federation without the appropriate permission (patent[13]
Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation: 80% of state organizations, backbone companies and CII entities lack information security specialists
According to the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation, by March 2023, 80% of state organizations, backbone companies and subjects of critical information infrastructure (CII) lack highly qualified specialists in information security ( IS).
| | According to the aforementioned 250-decree, we carried out certain monitoring, what problems do companies, bodies, organizations that this decree concerns have. And yes, they really noted a large percentage, - said the Deputy Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Alexander Shoitov. | |
According to him, by March 2023, a sufficient number of information security specialists are being prepared in Russia at the request of the state. At the same time, Russia is experiencing a shortage not of specialists in information security themselves, but of highly qualified specialists who will be ready to resist cyber attacks in practice, Shoitov added.
According to the presidential decree in force by March 2023, in government agencies, state-owned companies, strategic and system-forming organizations, as well as the owners of critical information infrastructure, which includes communication networks and InformSystems of energy, financial, telecommunications and a number of other companies, a deputy head responsible for information security should be appointed, and the heads of organizations were assigned personal responsibility for its provision. Also, these organizations must create a special unit to ensure cybersecurity or involve a contractor licensed to technically protect confidential information for this. The government must approve the requirements for deputies and units by June 1. To monitor, prevent and eliminate the consequences of computer attacks, according to the decree, it will be possible to involve only those cybersecurity monitoring centers that have received FSB accreditation.[14]
The demand for ChatGPT specialists for the month increased 13 times
In Russia, the number of vacancies on HeadHunter, where skills with ChatGPT are required, in February 2023 amounted to 38, which is 13 times more than a month earlier. The recruiting service announced this in March 2023. Read more here.
Volodin announced the return of more than 60% of IT specialists who left the country
On February 14, 2023, the Chairman of the State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin, at the entrance of the plenary session, named the share of IT specialists who returned to Russia who had previously left the country. At the same time, he revealed the source of his information.
| | Those who left made their choice. By the way, during the time since our departure, more than 60% [of IT specialists] have returned and are working again at those enterprises where they used to be, "Volodin said. | |
According to him, some citizens Russia work outside the country in connection with the "withdrawal of enterprises" due to sanctions.
| | There they begin to recruit, force, convince them to oppose the country. He will betray - it means he made a choice with which he will have to live, he will return back - there is an opportunity to work here, - said the speaker of the State Duma. | |
In January 2022, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia needs to create conditions for the return to the country of "rare and valuable" specialists, including from the IT industry. Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy Anton Gorelkin (United Russia) proposed extending the preferential mortgage program to IT specialists who were released from the Russian Federation by foreign employers and who then fell under the reduction.
On February 14, 2023, Vyacheslav Volodin called for creating the necessary conditions for the work of IT specialists in the Russian Federation:
| | Let's create conditions for those who will remain in the country. But in this matter we need to start from school, develop IT areas, finance them, do everything so that the guys, having received good knowledge, stay in the country, and not count how much left there | |
On December 20, 2022, the head of the Ministry of Digital Science Maksut Shadayev said that there are about 100 thousand Russian IT specialists abroad (about 10% of the total). At the same time, according to him, 80% of them continue to work for Russian companies and are in friendly countries.[15]
"Junes" poured into the market. Employers note a decrease in the average level of examination of applicants for IT vacancies
Against the background of the outflow of IT personnel from Russia, organizations of various profiles hiring IT personnel note a trend towards a decrease in the general level of expertise of employed IT specialists and a "blur" of expertise. While there are fewer highly qualified personnel, many new, young IT specialists have appeared on the market, as well as those who retrained as IT specialists.
At an event at the DIT of Moscow on January 31, 2023, in particular, this topic was touched upon by representatives of Positive Technologies, Avito, HeadHunter and DIT itself. Thus, the developer of information security solutions Positive Technologies noticed a significant decrease in the level of examination of candidates who come to the company for vacancies. Maria Sigaeva, director of educational programs and projects at Positive Technologies, director of the internal personnel agency PT Career Hub, believes that this is due to the lag of Russian educational programs from realities, and the fact that some of the specialists left in 2022. Now the main competition between employers goes for competencies, for qualifications, she says.
In a conversation with TAdviser, Maria Sigaeva clarified that in terms of quality, the category of specialists of the medium ("middle") level is noticeably "falling" down. There have always been few experts, and last year, in addition, people left, and this gap has not yet been filled by anyone. The specialists who are hired today by customers and many companies, calling them experts, five years ago would not have been considered experts and would not have asked for such money as now. They still do not have enough expertise, they are not supported from below by good, high-quality performers, who also have to work for some time on target tasks in order to create a base under them.
| | All this can fatally affect the processes and projects in which they are involved, - believes Maria Sigaeva. | |
Anna Panova, head of the Product and Tech Avito recruitment department, also points to the existing outflow of experts and a decrease in the level on the market. This is observed in Avito in various areas of their work. At the same time, many companies have appeared that focus on retraining, on the development of young talents, and there are more of them compared to experts.
The representative of Avito also points to the problem in the field of education in this regard. The IT market is rapidly changing in terms of technology, and education behind it does not always have time to rebuild. Anna Panova says that now often companies within their infrastructure spend a lot of time developing and "growing" IT talents. The market does not get better from the point of view of expertise, and it is easier to teach the personnel themselves inside or invest in education in cooperation with universities.
Ivan Buturlin, head of Analytics at DIT Moscow, however, does not quite agree with the wording that expertise is decreasing: "it is simply blurred," he said. There are fewer people who have been educated at a specialized university, worked for some time and have experience. At the same time, there are more those who previously worked somewhere, and then went to IT, because they realized that they pay more and offer more beautiful working conditions.
But the market is stabilizing, Ivan Buturlin is sure: IT personnel with low qualifications will find their niches.
Dmitry Derelyak, deputy head of the Moscow DIT, in a conversation with TAdviser, said that the department, when hiring IT specialists, noticed a new trend when candidates in employment significantly overestimate their level of professionalism. For example, a middle-level specialist makes a beautiful resume and "sells" himself as a senior level, not matching the desired skills.
At the same time, state organizations have to compete for IT personnel with commercial companies, which are often ready to offer higher salaries. The best thing that DIT can do to compete for IT specialists with high expertise is to offer them interesting, large-scale projects, Dmitry Derelyak believes. Now there are about 300 large projects in the department.
| | Every year we see a stream of IT professionals who come to us on large-scale projects. This is our advantage, - said the deputy head of the Moscow DIT in a conversation with TAdviser. - At the same time, of course, we must be in the market, offer basic competitive conditions. Nobody canceled this. | |
TAdviser talked about the situation with the level of expertise with representatives and some other IT companies. So, for example, Luka Safonov, technical director of Sinclit, agrees that in the field of information security, against the background of the departure of specialists from the country, the level of skills of specialists who get a job has really decreased somewhat on average. At the same time, the requirements of information security specialists for salaries have increased significantly.
The situation with a decrease in the average level of expertise is characteristic of the country as a whole, the expert believes. IBshnikov's salaries in the regions, including in small cities, thanks to the trend for remote work, during the coronavirus period, pulled up to Moscow, and the outflow of highly qualified personnel in this area is characteristic not only for Moscow.
Due to the fact that the shortage of information security specialists has worsened, now even newcomers in this area have a chance to settle well in just a couple of years. But for this you need to forget about everything for a two-year period and focus exclusively on teaching and pumping practical skills, including programming, advises Luka Safonov.
Only one of the companies where they spoke on this topic does not note changes. Advisor to the general director of BASEALT Alexei Novodvorsky says that their company hires highly qualified programmers from different regions for remote work, and in the field of open source software development nationwide, he does not see a general decrease in the level of expertise. Alexey Novodvorsky added that when hiring developers in BASEALT, they look, first of all, at what code the specialist already wrote earlier.
If we are talking about hiring developers in Moscow to work in the office, then with this it really became somewhat more difficult. The outflow of programmers from Moscow occurs not only at the expense of Muscovites leaving abroad, but also at the expense of those moving to the province. There are those who want to live in a quieter place, closer to nature, and not in a big city, and remote work allows them to do this, said Alexey Novodvorsky in a conversation with TAdviser.
Against the background of the influx of novice IT specialists into the market, the level of salaries offered to them has decreased, according to HeadHunter[16]. The median salary for a novice programmer ("jun") in January amounted to about 100 thousand rubles, which is 13% less than a year earlier. The proposed salary of an IT specialist of the middle level ("middle") decreased by 11%, to 160 thousand rubles. At the same time, for highly qualified developers, potential employers call the salary up to 250 thousand rubles per month, it did not decrease, but increased by 4%.
Integration into the digital economy and involvement in IT. Mishustin approved the National Strategy for Action for Women
Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a decree approving the national strategy for action in the interests of women for 2023-2030. The press service of the Cabinet of Ministers announced this on January 8, 2023. Read more here.
HeadHunter told what the IT labor market will be like in 2023
In January 2023, the recruiting service HeadHunter published a study on the forecast of the development of the labor market in the IT sector. To do this, analysts conducted a survey in companies operating in this industry. The results of the study were generally optimistic.
According to HeadHunter, more than half of companies (57%) intend to expand their scope of activity in 2023, the same number spoke in favor of an increase in staff, and a third (35%) of companies will increase the budget for recruitment. At the same time, 37% of employers replied that this item of expenses would remain unchanged, added to HeadHunter. 27% of respondents do not expect changes in the number of employees, and 16% of companies assumed that there would be reductions.
There is also a tendency to maintain a competitive level of salaries of IT specialists. In 41% of companies, employees intend to increase their salaries, in 46% - they decided to leave unchanged, and only in 3% - to reduce. Another 10% of employers have not yet decided whether to index salaries.
More than half of the companies, according to the survey, plan to expand their scope in 2023. Of these, 21% are sure that they will definitely do it, 36% - rather yes than no. Another 29% of organizations do not have such plans, and 14% found it difficult to answer.
According to Natalya Danina, the hh.ru 's chief expert on the labor market, head of client efficiency, the volume of vacancies is growing contrary to forecasts with minimal unemployment, and this is typical for both the global labor market and the Russian one. The demand for specialists from different professional fields continues to grow, but applicants are in no hurry to respond to vacancies that do not meet their expectations, she said.
2022
Increase in the number of ICT specialists by 9% to 1.93 million people
At the end of 2022, there are approximately 1.93 million specialists in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) in Russia. This is 9% more compared to the result for 2021, when the number of such employees was estimated at 1.76 million people. The corresponding figures are given in the report of January 30, 2024, published by the Institute for Statistical Research and Knowledge Economics of the Higher School of Economics (ISIEZ HSE).
It is said that in 2022, approximately 35 thousand heads of ICT services and divisions worked in Russia. This is significantly less than in the previous year, when the number of such positions was 58.2 thousand. The number of software and application developers and analysts on an annualized basis decreased from 800.7 thousand to 761.1 thousand, while the number of computer literacy teachers decreased from 10.8 thousand to 10 thousand.
At the same time, growth was recorded in a number of ICT areas. So, in 2022 in the Russian Federation there were 410.2 thousand specialists in databases and networks against 330.2 thousand in 2021. The number of electronic engineers rose from 145.8 thousand to 149.6 thousand, and telecommunications engineers - from 84 thousand to 90.1 thousand. In the segment of ICT sales specialists, an increase was noted from 13.8 thousand to 17.1 thousand, while the number of graphic and multimedia designers rose on an annualized basis from 36.2 thousand to 44.5 thousand.
The number of specialists-technicians for the operation of ICT and for user support also increased: from 72.9 thousand in 2021 to 109.3 thousand in 2022. There are also more technical specialists in telecommunications and broadcasting - 78.4 thousand against 63.5 thousand in 2021. The study notes that the number of electronic technicians jumped about twice - from 33.6 thousand to 68.4 thousand.[17]
Growth in the number of IT specialists by 12% to 761 thousand people
By the end of 2022, the total number of employees employed in the IT industry Russia in amounted to 761 thousand people, which is 12% more than a year earlier. This was announced on April 17, 2023 during the parliamentary hearings "Improving the legal and organizational mechanisms for training IT specialists" by the deputy head. Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation Maxim Parshin According to him, there is "progressive growth" in the Russian IT industry.
As Parshin noted, in 2022 the level of salaries of IT specialists increased by 19%. This is more than the average for the economy, added the Deputy Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation.
| | But at the same time, the shortage of personnel in the IT sphere is colossal. When I communicate with IT specialists, business owners, they often say: thank you for all the benefits and preferences that the government and the State Duma have provided. In general, nothing is needed anymore, the main, and often the only problem that is is personnel. This is the glass ceiling against which the IT-Business rest: give us people, - said Parshin. | |
After the start of the special operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, there were several waves of emigration of IT specialists from Russia. According to the Russian E-Commerce Association (RAEC), up to 70,000 workers left the country immediately after the outbreak of hostilities. At the same time, in May 2022, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said that 85% of the IT specialists who left returned to Russia.
A new wave of emigration happened after the announcement of partial mobilization in the Russian Federation. In this regard, the Ministry of Digital Development hastened to report that IT specialists with higher education, who work full time in accredited IT companies, will receive a deferral from the draft. Later, the department clarified that only those whose specialty was included in the list prepared by the Ministry of Ministry of Digital Development will have such an opportunity.[18]
The number of vacancies for developers for Russian OS is growing
In 2022 Russia , there was an increase in vacancies for the development of applications for domestic operating systems. So, in the case OS "Aurora" of the number of vacancies increased by 53% (to 359 from 235), and in the case of - Kaspersky OS by 9% (to 6.1 thousand). This is evidenced by the data HeadHunter released on February 9, 2023.
At the same time, in 2022, the number of vacancies in the Russian Federation for developers of applications for iOS and Android fell by 20% and 19% (to 15.6 thousand and 17.3 thousand), respectively.
As noted, Kommersant after the start of the military special operation of the Russian Federation on To Ukraine Google Apple and limited the ability for Russian application developers to accept payments in and. Google Play App Store Applications of companies that fell under Western sanctions were removed from marketplaces.
The growth of vacancies for the development of applications for domestic mobile OS is associated with restrictions on the part of Apple and Google, said Oleg Ivanov, head of the mobile development group at Reksoft.
Dmitry Parshin, director of the Artezio mobile application development center, explained to Kommersant that the increase in vacancies is associated with the launch of new projects in the field of Russian mobile OS and the development of existing ones. The expert admits that the growth in demand may also indicate plans to withdraw Russian mobile OS to the consumer segment.
| | Without adaptation ON , the distribution of domestic OS will be difficult, - added Parshin. | |
Pavel Panchenko, head of the IBS mobile development department, doubts that the developed domestic OS will enter the consumer market. The situation may change with the advent of the Russian assembly of Android and analogues of Google mobile services, he believes. According to Panchenko, "decisive in the formation of the Russian mobile landscape."[19]
Approved professional standard for specialists in quantum technologies in Russia
On December 5, 2022, it became known about the approval in Russia of a new professional standard - for specialists in the field of quantum technologies. Read more here.
The demand for IT developers in the Russian Federation of the Middle and Senior levels exceeds the supply
At the end of October 2022, it became known that in Russia the demand for IT developers of the Middle and Senior levels exceeds supply. This is due to the outflow of such specialists from the country, says Diana Dmitriyeva, career consultant at Skypro Online University.
According to her, most companies try to keep staff, giving a chance to work remotely, and such companies are in favor.
Valentin Kaskov, Information Technology Director of the SSTinvest management company, confirmed the high demand for developers of the Middle and Senior levels and suggested that permanent residence in Russia could become an important condition for the employment of such specialists.
| | A large number of IT specialists left Russia, in a few months they will all cease to be tax residents of the Russian Federation. This means that instead of 13% of income, you will have to pay at a rate of 30%. Accordingly, the business will have a serious burden on paying for increased personal income tax. It is logical that managers will want to deal with programmers living in Russia and will be ready to pay them more, "Kaskov explained to Газете.ru. | |
According to his forecasts, vacancies in 2023 will be placed with a tariff 15-20% higher than by the end of October 2022. Specialists who have gone abroad and respond to these vacancies will definitely begin to bargain, he added.
Diana Dmitriyeva believes that the crisis is unlikely to quickly exhaust itself, so companies need to take care of how to attract or retain the most valuable personnel. Among the possible measures, she names:
- Relocation of the entire business;
- Repurposing and attracting specialists after courses;
- Non-traditional hiring methods ("Companies actively attract IT specialists through the" Bring a Friend "referral program)
- Comfortable working conditions (IT specialists try to hold on to a company that provides favorable and comfortable conditions, a social package, an employee's reservation and other factors ").[20]
Salaries in the Russian telecom decreased by 8%
By October 2022, the average salary in the Russian telecommunications sector decreased by 8% compared to the previous year. This is stated in the study of the companies "Telfin" and HeadHunter, which was published on October 7, 2022. Experts analyzed more than 165 thousand vacancies in telecom companies.
As Kommersant writes with reference to this report, the regions where the average salary has decreased included Moscow, St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, Stavropol Territory, Udmurtia, Buryatia, Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk Region, etc. In Moscow, average salaries in telecom decreased by 8.82%, to 62 thousand rubles, and in St. Petersburg - by 9.78%, to 52.6 thousand rubles, while more than 28 regions increased or retained salaries at the level of 2021. The average salary in the country as a whole practically did not change and amounted to 40.3 thousand rubles, a year earlier it was at the level of 40.1 thousand rubles.
Meanwhile, analysts at the Superjob research center did not record a decrease in wages in the field of telecommunications: according to their data, which were released on October 7, 2022, salaries are growing, the industry is increasing the recruitment of linear personnel and engineering and engineering. So, over the year, the salary of design engineers of communication systems in Moscow and St. Petersburg increased in nominal terms by 5%, technical support engineers - by 13 and 8%, respectively, electrical installers - by 13 and 11%.
Most of all in Moscow and St. Petersburg are ready to pay the chief designer. Thus, the market salary of such a specialist in Moscow in 2022 is 230 thousand rubles, and in St. Petersburg - 200 thousand rubles. The maximum salary of such a specialist in Moscow is 550 thousand rubles, and in St. Petersburg - 480 thousand rubles. The annual increase in average market wages in both cities was[21]
Due to mobilization, at least 100 thousand IT specialists may leave Russia
The partial mobilization announced by the president Russia Vladimir Putin on September 21, 2022, led to mass population migration. Among them - not a little. IT specialists The head of the ANO "" Information culture Ivan Begtin believes that 100 thousand potentially departed IT specialists are "the minimum bar from which you need to start now."
According to Begtin, the increase in the number of IT specialists leaving Russia is due to suspicion that a new wave of mobilization is expected in the future, under which IT specialists also fall. The head of the ANO explained that another reason is that not all IT specialists have a higher specialized education to receive a delay.
{{quote 'Significantly more may be those who, without understanding, just hid and/or left. And those who planned to return postponed this decision until better times, "says Nikolai Komlev, executive director of the Association of Computer and Information Technology Enterprises (APKIT). }} According to him, the Ministry of Ministry of Digital Development did a lot, but there were still specialists who did not fall under the reservation, for example, those who do not have a higher education. The outflow of IT specialists may be two to three times more than in the spring of 2022, Komlev suggested.
There are no exact estimates of those who have left and those who can still leave, noted the head of the Russoft association Valentin Makarov at the end of September 2022. But with Komlev's forecast of an increase in the outflow of IT specialists, he agreed.
A survey conducted by HR holding Ventra in September 2022 showed that more than 30% of IT specialists have left Russia or are planning a relocation. The study was conducted from September 5 to 15 - before partial mobilization was announced in Russia. Ventra admitted that after the mobilization began, the percentage of IT specialists who emigrated or planned to emigrate increased.[22]
66% of developers and programmers do not have a specialized higher education
According to the resume database of the Russian online recruiting platform hh.ru for 2022, 66% (or 170 thousand) of developers and programmers among men do not have specialized higher education, the presence of specialized higher education is found only in every third. Such data from TAdviser on September 26, 2022 were shared by HeadHunter based on the results of a study, in which data from the resume of 813 thousand developers and 2.7 million of all those employed in IT were analyzed.
As the study showed, a characteristic feature is the inverse proportion between age and the presence of specialized higher education. So, the older the programmer, the less often he has such an education. Among developers aged 25-34 years, non-core higher is found in 67%, at the age of 35-44 - in 69%, 45 and older - in 78%. Thus, if the criterion of higher education proficiency is taken into account for a delay from partial mobilization, it will affect over 200 thousand of the most experienced and valuable programmers.
As you know, the IT product is one of the most complex and resource-intensive results of intellectual labor in the modern world. Not only developers and programmers themselves participate in its creation, support and development, whole teams are involved in it - from IT managers, product managers, testers, designers to cybersecurity specialists.
As for the entire IT sector, the share of IT specialists without specialized higher education is even higher - 79% (among men - 74%, among women - 87%). At the same time, among experienced IT specialists (from 3 to 9 years of experience), the highest share without specialized higher education was recorded - 80%.
According to hh.ru analysts, the low share of specialized higher education among programmers and developers and all IT specialists in general is explained by the fact that the IT sector annually attracted tens of thousands of talented people who could study IT professions without obtaining specialized higher education. The vast majority of companies in acute shortages do not pay attention to the presence of specialized higher education at all and do not indicate such a requirement in vacancies, the presence of the necessary technological stack, skills and experience in creating and developing successful IT products and solutions has always come to the fore.
The scientist calculated the number of active Open Source developers who left Russia based on their digital footprint in GitHub
Since February 2022, the question remains: how many software developers have left the country amid the Russian-Ukrainian conflict? There is no definite answer, the assessments already voiced by different sources differ significantly. Interest in the problem of "brain drain" from Russia revived, including in the scientific community. At the Vienna University of Economics and Business, for example, they tried to assess the scale of emigration of highly qualified developers from Russia and Belarus in 2022 in an unusual way - using their digital footprint on GitHub. The study was published in early September on the scientific portal ResearchGate (the full text of the study is here).
For the study, the author, Professor Johannes Wachs, used a datacet that is relevant for February 2021 - a year before the start of the SVO of the RF Armed Forces in Ukraine, with a geographical location of developer profiles on GitHub, characterized by activity. And at the end of June 2022, he collected data on the geographical location from the same profiles, covering about 45 thousand developers, focusing on specialists from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, and analyzed how many developers the location has changed.
He compared similar indicators in Russia with other countries in the Eastern European region, which in addition to Ukraine and Belarus includes Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria.
The original datacet was derived from GHArchive, an activity database on GitHub. It contained data on about 1.1 million developers who added code at least 100 times to open GitHub projects in 2019-2020. From the table presented in the work, it follows that there were more than 15.5 thousand such specialists from Russia. The location in this datacet was determined on the basis of several traces, but for comparison, in June 2022, the author focused on developers previously geolocated based on their metadata on GitHub, ignoring other sources. The June datacet includes location information from the corresponding text field in the developer profile on GitHub, which is optionally filled by the developer, as well as the Bing Maps geocode.
For each developer, the following results could be obtained: a specialist could delete his profile from GitHub, his geolocation could remain the same or be changed.
The analysis showed that collectively one of the five developers previously based in Russia (22.9%) and Belarus (23.9%) is no longer geolocated there. This is 3-4 times more than the average for the region under study. Russian developers (8.6%, more than 1.3 thousand people) are 3.5 times inclined to indicate a new country of location in 2022 in their GitHub profile than colleagues from compared countries (2.4%).
In addition, they were more likely to delete their profiles (3.0% versus 2.1% in the countries compared) or hide their location (11.3% versus 1.9% in the countries compared). I.e. one of ten developers previously geolocated in Russia hid their location.
The latter may be explained by the fact that after the February events in Ukraine, information about living in Russia may have social and economic consequences, the author suggests. Another possible explanation is that these developers left Russia, but have not yet settled in the final destination countries or did so, but do not want to signal this on GitHub.
| | Our estimates suggest that from 10 to 20% of active Russian and Belarusian Open Source developers left their countries in the period from February 2021 to June 2022, the study says. | |
The author also points to the correlation between the activity on GitHub of those who changed the geographic location in the profile and those who remained the same: the former were previously much more active and more visible in community collaborations than the latter.
| | It is often difficult, especially in volatile situations, to estimate how many people are leaving the country and where they are leaving. The lack of data on the emigration of highly qualified specialists also makes it difficult to understand who is leaving and who remains. In recent years, digital footprint data has been used to gain insights into different social and economic phenomena, including migration. But less is known about the dynamics of emigration of highly qualified specialists and their mobility during crises. "Brain drain" estimates in such a context can be valuable to policy makers, decision makers, and predictors, "notes Jogannes Wachs. | |
Departing Russian developers are more widely distributed among different countries than their Belarusian colleagues, the author of the study states. The latter are more likely to settle in neighboring countries. And the top 5 countries of the Russian specialists who changed the location are the USA, Georgia, Germany, Armenia and the Netherlands. They are followed by Turkey and Britain.
The work also includes a reference to an earlier study involving Jogannes Wachs, where the authors attempted to identify a link between countries' economic development and the number of highly active developers on GitHub per capita. It showed that Russia, Belarus and Ukraine stand out from the general trend in a positive direction - they have much more Open Source developers than would be expected at the level of economic development of these countries.
Part of the professor's current work is devoted to research indicating the benefits that the influx of highly qualified specialists brings to their host countries, and the negative effects of the loss of such personnel.
In Russia, experts have recorded a shortage of qualified IT personnel for more than one year, and, among other things, measures were taken at the state level to improve this situation. But there is a similar problem in the so-called developed countries. Actually, this gave impetus to the global expansion of IT outsourcing.
| | The pool of available specialists in developed countries is not enough to meet all demand, - quoted the Protocol portal in its recent article by Prasad Vuyyuru, a partner of Infosys, a major Indian software development outsourcer. - This is the reason why outsourcing is growing and will continue to grow: in the USA, or Germany, or Britain, there are not enough people to do all the technological work that should be done[23] | |
The general director of the British-based Global Sourcing Association, Kerry Hallard, in the same article also points to the catch of specialists:
| | I think we have opened about 1.2 million jobs in the UK, of which more than 100 thousand are in the field of technology, software development, in particular. | |
Against this background, the influx of highly qualified "brains" from Russia to Western countries looks especially relevant in terms of benefits for the latter.
Demand for IT specialists in Russia fell by 25%
The number of vacancies in the Russian IT industry decreased from the beginning of 2022 by 25% to 85,200, the maximum number of vacancies was recorded in February 2022 - 126,900. Such data in early September 2022 was provided by HeadHunter.
As RBC writes with reference to the statistics published by the service, the number of IT resumes increased from January to August 2022 by 55%, from 211,100 to 327,000. In 2021, this figure was only 12%.
According to industry experts, the reduction in demand is associated with the departure of foreign IT companies from the Russian market, after which many of their employees switched to work in Russian, and some employees who have lost their jobs remain in the labor market. Also, some specialists return to Russia after a recent departure abroad. The reduction in the export of IT services from the country also had a certain impact, as a result of which a shortage of specialists in the country is no longer observed. However, it is predicted that this situation will not last long - import substitution programs will lead to an increase in demand for programmers, and an increase in IT exports to "friendly countries" will lead to a new round of growth in the number of vacancies and personnel shortages.
According to Natalia Danina, chief expert on the labor market, head of the client efficiency department of HeadHunter, that the sharp increase in the number of resumes is associated with the emergence on the market of a large number of candidates for junior positions who graduated from popular online courses. At the same time, as the executive director of the Association of Software Developers "Domestic Software" Renat Lashin noted, despite the continuing influx of new personnel, the IT sphere still needs qualified specialists.
The dynamics of demand for IT specialists is associated with the reconfiguration of the IT market Russia and is temporary, a spokesman told RBC. Ministry of Digital Development According to him, the demand for IT specialists was and remains high. Educational programs help to increase the number of IT personnel, in particular for high school students and students, the source added[24] for[25]
Thousands of employees of foreign IT companies who left Russia entered the labor market
In late July - early August 2022, thousands of employees of foreign IT companies who announced their departure from the Russian market began looking for a new job, representatives of a number of domestic IT players told TAdviser.
Russian companies see a sharp increase in candidates with experience in Microsoft, SAP, HP, IBM, Siemens and other global players. Moreover, most often marketers, sales managers and other non-technical specialists are looking for work. Russian companies disassemble developers, programmers and engineers first of all.
Answering TAdviser questions, Softline HR Director Natalya Likhodievskaya notes that her company is actively hiring specialists and does not plan to reduce the selection.
| | We consider candidates with various experience, including from companies that have suspended activities in Russia. The business model and methodologies in foreign vendors and Softline are very similar, so basically there are no difficulties with adaptation. We have opened more than 250 vacancies in all regions of Russia: developers, architects, information security engineers, BDM (Business Development Manager) for working with Russian manufacturers of software and equipment, testers, database administrators and others, Key account manager. For each candidate, we form separate conditions, depending on their experience, competencies and desires, says Natalya Likhodievskaya. | |
According to her, the exit of thousands of employees of foreign companies did not relieve the problem of a shortage of IT personnel, so the demand for professionals remains very high, and the level of wages has not decreased.
[1] Irina Gaivoronskaya, director of human resources and organizational development at Sitronics Group, confirmed to TAdviser that former employees of Microsoft, IBM, SAP and other global players are actively looking for work. Sitronics Group most often deals with specialists in business development, client service management, as well as technical experts in the field of information security.
| | At the same time, it cannot be said that the overall level of salaries has decreased. Rather, candidates are now ready to look at the range for the fixed and bonus parts, where the fixed does not prevail. This is partly due to the reformatting of the market landscape, partly due to interest in the topic of import substitution. Money is an important component of the offer, but still not the main one, - explains Irina Gaivoronskaya, answering the question about the level of wages in the IT market. | |
[2] Irina Frolova, director of the BSS human resources department, told TAdviser that there are noticeably more applicants from large foreign companies than six months ago. At the same time, she notes that the release of a large number of specialists as free agents did not affect the level of salaries.
| | Each specialist has their own advantages within the framework of specialization. But if we do not take into account hard skills, then the very experience in large international corporations and a large portfolio of contacts are certainly an advantage. If we are talking about professionals who have high potential, experience and ambitions to achieve their goals in a new place of work, then the amount of remuneration has remained at the same level, says Irina Frolova. | |
| | We are still primarily paying attention to the high technical level of candidates. Experience in these companies does not always mean 100% relevance to our profile. Obviously, there are more candidates from the mentioned companies, however, the departure of corporations did not affect the salary expectations of really strong competencies [3] , "Nune Hovakimyan, head of the staff selection and adaptation department at Tech, shared with TAdviser Kh5. | |
Ksenia Konstantinova, HR manager at C3D Labs, a geometric core developer and subsidiary of ASCON, believes the market is being steadily updated. In the spring of 2022, excited specialists entered the market, who were looking for options in case of an emergency. Today the market is filled with specialists who are really ready to change jobs, by the fall there will be even more such applicants.
| | We see a large influx of candidates from Intel, Siemens, Open Cascade, etc. Many candidates from the field of marketing and sales, from technical areas - developers, analysts. Most specialists leave companies with a significant compensation package, which allows them to relax now and approach the choice of new positions consciously, - explains Ksenia Konstantinova. | |
T1 Integration HR Director Veronika Elikova also said that the company has seen a sharp increase in the number of employees of foreign companies looking for work.
| | T1 Integration considers candidates if their experience and competencies meet our request. Since February, our team has included more than 100 experts from various technical areas. Changes in the level of wages in the IT market have not yet been noted. In highly sought-after specialties, where a rare examination is needed, a decrease in the level of remuneration is not predicted, - answered TAdviser Veronika Elikova. | |
One of the SAP managers, commenting on the TAdviser request, explained that he was ending his collaboration with the company in August. He has several offers from Russian companies in his hands, but they all, to one degree or another, do not meet his expectations, so he intends to take a break and relax. And upon returning from vacation, he will decide to continue looking for a job or accept one of the offers.
An employee of the Russian office of Microsoft shared with TAdviser that he no longer works for the company. While on vacation and did not search for work. According to him, there were several proposals, but he has not yet made a decision.
The Ministry of Digital Development of Russia forms a personnel reserve of IT professionals
On August 10, 2022, the Ministry of Digital Development announced that IT specialists from Moscow and the regions of Russia could enter the personnel reserve of highly qualified managers and digital transformation specialists. The reserve is formed on behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Chernyshenko in order to develop digital transformation teams in the public sector.
| | Digital transformation is one of the five national goals set by the President of Russia. In this regard, the active process of digitalization economies and public administration requires the availability of qualified personnel, and in general, the formation of a model of competencies for employees that would meet modern challenges. The Ministry of Digital Development was instructed to form a personnel reserve of IT professionals who will constantly learn the necessary skills and then receive employment offers. I note that participation in the project is free and every IT specialist has a chance to get there, industries- said Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko. | |
Among the opportunities opening up for members of the talent pool:
- continuous development in digital transformation and IT;
- the ability to communicate with leading Russian experts from different industries;
- assessment of professional and personal competencies;
- obtaining an individual passport of competencies with personal recommendations for their development;
- employment in authorities and budgetary organizations implementing digital transformation projects.
The personnel reserve was created at the site of the Recruiting Center of the Ministry of Digital Development of Russia in the structure of the Center for Training Managers and Teams of Digital Transformation of the Higher School of Economics of the RANEPA.
Selection for and membership in the talent pool is free. To participate, you need to register on a special platform, which is implemented with the support of the Russian Ministry of Digital Development. Over the two years of the platform's operation, more than 11,500 specialists in the field of IT and digital transformation have registered on it.
| | It is important not so much to have the necessary level of competence as to be able to apply them in practice, to use them as tools for solving specific work tasks. This is the most important indicator for reserve participants. It is also worth noting that specialists who have passed the selection are constantly developing competencies, performing interesting tasks and rising in the personal ranking, - said Russian Deputy Head of the Ministry of Digital Development Nikolai Yatselenko. | |
Active hiring of IT specialists resumed in Russia
On August 8, 2022, it became known about the resumption of active hiring of IT specialists in Russia. According to the Зарплата.ру service, in July 2022 the number of corresponding vacancies increased by 31% compared to the previous month after a significant decline in the spring.
The study says that a positive trend in this area will develop. The increase in market share by domestic IT companies requires an influx of new personnel.
Experts note that at the end of February 2022, companies significantly reduced hiring and left only the most critical vacancies. At the same time, employers preferred to hire the most experienced personnel, and the vacancy rate of junior specialists in IT decreased significantly.
| | But by the beginning of the summer of 2022, the situation began to stabilize, and already in July we see an increase both in the industry as a whole and in the resumption of hiring junior specialists, "said Yuri Mikheev, head of the Зарплаты.ру analytics department. | |
According to the study, the largest decrease in the number of new resumes from applicants was due to the youngest Russians. In the heading "Beginning of a career, students" in July 2022, the number of resumes decreased by 27% compared to June.
Even before the start of Russia's special operation in Ukraine, the Russian IT market had been experiencing personnel shortages and an expert crisis for a very long time and steadily, and the current situation was unlikely to dramatically worsen it, founder and CEO of Qrator Labs Alexander Lyamin told TASS. Fyodor Muzalevsky, director of the technical department of RTM Group, agrees with him - he believes that it is very difficult to find suitable personnel, and demand has only increased.
According to Svetlana Gatsakova, Director of the Corporate Information Systems Department of ALP Group, the situation in the market of qualified IT specialists is turbulent, and therefore the company is trying to recruit "only the best personnel" and expects to involve not only individual developers, but also entire teams.[26]
Up to 72% of Russian IT specialists are thinking about changing jobs. Their attitude towards employers has changed
Up to 72% of Russian IT specialists think about changing jobs, 9% of them are in active search of the rest, 19% passively monitor the market, and 44% are not specifically looking for vacancies, but are ready to consider offers from employers. This is reported by a joint study "Source code of ideal work for an IT specialist" of the consulting company "Tecart" and the recruiting group Selecty.
According to Daria Kudryavtseva, HR Director of Selecty Group of Companies, until February 2022, half of IT specialists, according to recruiting terminology, belonged to "cold" candidates and ignored almost any proposals. Now applicants are more willing to contact recruiters, but at the same time they approach the final decision more carefully.
According to researchers, in March 2022, the Russian market has seriously changed, this is due, among other things, to the departure of a number of foreign IT companies from the domestic market. There was an outflow of personnel from the country. At the same time, IT specialists have new requirements for employers: in March, a reassessment of priorities began and this process continues.
For example, for the first time, the company's reliability criterion fell into the TOP-5 of key requirements for the employer. Previously, IT specialists never attached any serious importance to it, believing themselves to be members of project teams and believing that they could change their company at any time. There were new factors that began to determine the choice of IT specialists: the ability to work remotely from abroad was included in the TOP-10 of requirements, and the relocation package in TOP-15.
However, the key factor, as before, remains competitive wages. 84% of respondents called this factor decisive when changing employers. The second most important thing remains the possibility of choosing the format of work, that is, the IT specialist prefers to decide whether to go to his office on his own or not. In third place in importance is the possibility of training and professional development. The most significant is such an opportunity for the junior category, who want to jump into the next stratum as soon as possible. An important factor is experienced colleagues in the team. At the same time, the most insignificant IT specialists considered the presence of a "cool" office and a busy corporate life.
Since today almost any business or field of activity is somehow connected with information technology, IT specialists are by and large indifferent to work in which industry. For 49% of respondents, the direction of the company's activities does not matter, only 47% said that they would like to work in IT companies.
Choosing the industry specifics of projects, 52% of IT specialists would prefer to work on products for the banking sector. The second most priority was called Internet services, the third - startups. Least often, IT specialists expressed a desire to work on projects in the field of agriculture, in the public sector and the auto business. However, according to the researchers, the very fact that these industries are included in the number of selected categories suggests that the priorities of the IT community are changing. The public sector and agriculture are no longer perceived as technologically backward sectors where the programmer has nothing to do.
According to the study, 47% of respondents receive from 100 to 200 thousand rubles per month, 34% - 200-300 thousand rubles, 11% - more than 400 thousand rubles per month. Testers receive the least, the highest salaries from developers.
At the same time, analysts note that after February 24, 2022, many IT specialists have decreased satisfaction with the level of wages. So if until February 24 the average satisfaction index on a scale from 1 to 10 was 7.8, then by July 2022 it fell to 6.7. Only 17.5% of respondents had their salaries indexed over the past 5 months. According to the survey, 75% of IT professionals are confident that it is much easier to get a higher salary when switching to a new job than knocking out a promotion in the current place.
About 43% of respondents are ready to change jobs if they are offered a salary 30-50% higher than the current one. Moreover, IT managers have such high salaries that for them the issue of raising it is not fundamental when choosing a new place of work.
Moreover, the higher the salary, the less role all kinds of "buns" play. The most popular bonus is the VHI policy, the second place is paid for vocational training, the third is language courses. Among the significant bonuses were also compensation for sports, preferential mortgages, a bonus for the purchase of equipment, etc. (more details on the graph).
Despite the fact that the format of work is one of the key criteria for choosing the work of 51% of IT specialists called the hybrid format the most preferable. That is, there was fatigue from remote control, 27% of respondents lack "live" communication, 19% - informal communication with colleagues.
Relocation became one of the significant factors in choosing an employer, but IT specialists began to take a more balanced view of the possibility of moving to another country and working from abroad. There was information about the negative experience of relocation:
- non-compliance of the conditions offered by foreign companies to domestic IT specialists with those in the Russian Federation;
- failure to comply with the terms of preliminary agreements, already signed agreements were broken;
- a sharp increase in prices for real estate and services in the regions of mass relocation.
At the time of the survey, 7% of respondents finally moved, 2% moved, but plan to return to Russia, 8% planned to move in the foreseeable future, 42% considered the possibility of relocation purely theoretically, 34% have no such plans in principle.
77% of IT companies in Russia rated the situation in their business as stable or positive
At the end of July 2022, the Heads Partners team shared with TAdviser the results of a pulse study based on personal interviews and online surveys of representatives of leading IT and digital companies on the Russian market. The study covered 90 companies and was conducted in July 2022 with the support of the Association of Computer and Information Technology Enterprises (APKIT).
The general situation among digital players and IT suppliers at the beginning of the second half of 2022 can be described as stable - this is the opinion of 59% of respondents of different sizes and profiles of companies. Only 3% of companies described the situation as critical; another 18% said the situation at the company had worsened.
| | "It is worth noting that the general state of uncertainty at the beginning of the second half of the year among the companies participating in the study remains. One thing is clear for everyone - as it was before, it will no longer be in the foreseeable future, but how it will be is also not clear, "the study says. | |
Only 13% of the companies under study note a significant reduction in HR budgets, and 31% only partially cut it, while 18% of companies had an increase in the HR budget.
| | "As of mid-2022, despite the general uncertainty, companies are making every effort to stabilize the emotional state of teams through various tools: corporate events, internal training, well-being initiatives. This support affects the change in the HR budget. As you can see from the results, some companies pay special attention to this, "said Yuna Dubova, an invited external expert in the field of HR and organizational development, who conducted personal interviews as part of the study. | |
Just 5 of the 90 companies under investigation reported a hiring halt at the start of the second half of 2022, with 1/3 of the companies saying hiring had not stopped and would not be halted until the end of the year. At the same time, 75% of the same companies indicated an urgent need for developers, engineers (in IT production companies and integrators), testers, and interest in product managers was also especially evident.
At the same time, the demand for specialists remains, information security which, according to researchers, is a consequence of the growing need for the market. Given the ongoing attempts hacker attacks at most large companies, the trend will continue for a long time.
At the beginning of the second half of the year, only 36% of the companies participating in the study shared that they had already revised the income of their employees or would revise it in the near future. On average, the increase in employee income among the companies under study does not exceed 10%. wages Indexation among large players is already noted on the market: 7.5% - Gazprom in January 2022 (according to Sheets""), 9% - in; Severstal at the same time, according to the statements of the company's representative, in 2022 the average salary at Severstal will grow by 15% (according to Vedomosti), in July 1 Sberbank , 2022 - by 8.5% (up to 20% in some departments for IT specialists).
According to Rosstat, the inflation rate as of April 2022 amounted to 17.6% in annual terms, and the projected increase in the average market salaries of developers by the end of 2022, according to Superjob, will be 25%.
The report on the results of the study says that 47% of the companies surveyed have not yet made a final decision on the revision of wages at the beginning of the second half of 2022.
| | "It is likely that point raises to keep individual specialists in the company take place, it is simply not widely advertised. I think that in the struggle for talents, all market participants will have to revise their income, and some players are just waiting for time, trying to navigate the situation on the labor market, "said Alexander Abramkin, Managing Director of Heads Partners. | |
65 of the 90 companies under investigation believe that the biggest priority for them as of the beginning of the second half of 2022 is to retain employees and strengthen their loyalty, as well as train employees according to new market challenges. Less than half of the companies (36%) plan to partially improve the social package.
| | "It is clear that some employers are committed in every way possible to creating the most comfortable conditions for staff, reassuring and demonstrating that life goes on no matter what. However, the other part observes the desire on the part of employees to receive part of compensation (sports, VHI, training) with additional payments to the total salary. Thus, we can conclude that 64% of the companies under study leave corporate social packages unchanged, "added Yuna Dubova, an external expert in the field of HR and organizational development. | |
The head of the Ministry of Digital Development - about which IT specialists are returning to Russia
A large number of IT specialists returning to Russia are those who "left on emotions" and could not quickly find work abroad. This was stated in a conversation with the RBC TV channel by the head of the Ministry of Digital Science Maksut Shadayev (the interview was released on June 20, 2022).
Speaking about the difficulties that representatives of the IT industry faced abroad, the Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation also noted that contracts with Russian developers initially fell into a common "cancel culture."
| | And the second trend, which I now see, that, unfortunately for those who left, there are often problems with employment... Unfortunately, there is a certain level of distrust of Russian developers, they are called spies... A certain spy mania is present, - explained Shadayev. | |
According to him, about 50% of IT specialists who remained to work in Russia continue to work for Russian companies, some of them are being hunted by competing companies. At the same time, many IT specialists who have left also continue to work for Russian companies.
| | Of those who remained, probably half continue to work for Russian companies, because during the pandemic and COVID-19 in the IT industry, the culture of remote work has formed... Of course, when we learned to work outside offices, it is clear that many left for Armenia, Turkey, the Emirates, and continue to work for Russian companies. It's just that it's so psychologically easier for them, "Shadayev explained. | |
He noted that by June 2022, the trend towards the return of IT specialists who left Russia remains. In the first months after the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, a "significant part" of IT specialists returned, added Maksut Shadayev.[27]
Foreign IT companies through HeadHunter call Russian programmers to go abroad
While the state is trying to keep IT specialists in Russia and is taking various measures to do so, foreign companies are using Russian recruiting sites to find and hire IT personnel in Russia, followed by its relocation to their offices and development centers abroad. This practice is especially noticeable on the most popular Russian recruiting portal - HeadHunter (hh.ru, HH).
In June, there, for example, 56 vacancies were placed by the American Synopsys, the world's largest CAD company for the design of electronics[28]. She is looking for programmers, developers, system engineers, testers in Russia. The company offers all of them a relocation to Armenia and support for this process from its side, as part of a social package. Read more here.
Veriest is also hunting for Russian specialists - a designer of integrated circuits with headquarters in Israel and design centers in this country, as well as in Serbia, Hungary and Britain. The company is ready to help with valuable personnel with the relocation to[29]. Veriest jobs were placed in May and June.
IT specialists in Russia on terms of relocation to Dubai or Hamburg are also looking for Mondia, a developer of solutions for mobile commerce and other digital products based in the UAE. As of[30], he has 15[31] jobs on HH[32] in the[33] region].
IT specialists are hired in their foreign offices and companies with Russian roots. Thus, more than 20 vacancies as of June in Russia were opened by Artec 3D Adriatica, a developer and manufacturer of three-dimensional scanners and three-dimensional face recognition systems, whose offices are located in Moscow, Luxembourg and California. Vacancies for Russian specialists indicate that the possibility of relocation is provided.
The Schaffhausen Institute of Technology in Switzerland, created with the participation of Acronis founder Sergei Belousov, does the same (in 2021 it changed its name to Serg Bell). As of June, at HH, he is looking for programmers, developers and teachers of IT disciplines with an offer to relax to Bulgaria or Serbia with the support of the institute.
The company Behavox, founded by former stock analyst Goldman Sachs and hedge fund manager Erkin Adylov, a native of Kyrgyzstan, also hires developers from Russia. She is developing a corporate AI platform. She offers Russian IT specialists to move to Canada or Serbia. After the creation of the company in 2014, the main development was located in Russia - in St. Petersburg and Moscow. But in 2018, Behavox closed all Russian offices and moved the development to Canada due to the growing geopolitical risks[34].
There are other examples on the hh.ru. HH, regarding the use of their site by some companies for hunting employees in Russia, followed by removal, noted that their platform is used to find work and hire personnel. The labor market in IT has always been and remains the most flexible in terms of employment, this is one of the key attractive factors in a situation of acute personnel shortage.
| | In this market, the conditions are dictated by applicants - it is important for them that the format of work is not limited only to the office in a certain location. Employers in competition for IT personnel are developing work formats that are in demand among candidates, be it completely remote, hybrid or with the possibility of relocation. It is also worth noting that hh.ru do not have the opportunity to independently limit and additionally moderate vacancies indicating the relocation option, since this does not contradict the current legislation providing for freedom of movement for citizens, the company told TAdviser. | |
The Ministry of Digital Development previously said that they do not support any legislative restrictions related to the movement of IT personnel and their employment. Such measures can lead to an increase in the outflow of specialists and destructively affect the industry as a whole[35]
Alexander Abramkin, managing director of Heads Partners, a consulting company specializing in executive selection, team formation and organizational consulting for IT and digital companies, notes that HH is a commercial recruiting platform, it has no goal to support any government policy. It simply fulfills its basic function and focuses on the needs of its customers.
| | Such job publications are aimed at an audience that is already looking for opportunities to respond. And this audience will in any case find how to leave Russia. It seems to me that forcing sites to refuse to publish such vacancies is a waste of time and effort. There will be other platforms and ways to reach the audience. By the way, if really the goal was to relegate the best minds, that is, more effective ways. But companies, so to speak, "catch on the live," believing that in the current situation you can catch valuable talents by simply reporting this on the market. Maybe you will be lucky, but I assume that these companies are now simply "drowning" from irrelevant responses, "says Alexander Abramkin. | |
In a conversation with TAdviser, Alexander Abramkin added that ads that involve relocation are not aimed at a wide audience in any case. Leaving to work in another country even with the existing offer of work on hand is, first of all, a huge emotional component for any specialist. Not such a large percentage is ready for this, even if they initially declare uncompromising readiness: "we know this for sure, we checked it."
| | Heads Partners has historically worked with a large number of Western companies, even our company name is pro-Western, although the company is Russian. Our Western colleagues massively interrupted cooperation this year with us against the background of political and economic restrictions, and most of them stopped their activities in Russia. However, we observe that many of them leave the door ajar for the possibility of cooperation with Russian IT specialists, despite geopolitics and Russophobic sentiments, - said the managing director of Heads Partners. - This once again highlights the high level of Russian specialists and the attitude towards them in the Western business community. | |
The Western audience appreciates Russian talents: they are hardworking, sociable, often we are talking about specialists with a high level of intelligence and developed abilities. And, as Heads Partners see from today's communication with Western companies, the business audience is ready to continue to interact with Russian IT specialists. Therefore, it is not surprising that some of them offer Russian professionals relocation packages, Alexander Abramkin believes.
In Russia, adopted a law on simplifying the employment of foreign IT specialists
On June 15, 2022, the State Duma in the third (final) reading adopted a law on simplifying the employment of foreign IT specialists. They and their family members will be able to receive a residence permit (residence permit) in Russia in a simplified manner.
We are talking about specialists who work in Russian IT companies with state accreditation - it is issued by the Ministry of Ministry of Digital Development. To obtain a residence permit in the Russian Federation, such employees, as well as members of their families, will not need to have a temporary residence permit.
Also, the law gives employers the right to attract foreign IT specialists to work without permission to use foreign workers. The specialists themselves are invited to give the opportunity to work in Russia without the appropriate permission or patent.
At the same time, the new procedure will not affect certain categories of citizens - employees of foreign legal entities "performing installation (supervision) work, service and warranty services, as well as post-warranty repairs" of technical equipment supplied to Russia.
The innovation will create additional favorable conditions for attracting foreign IT specialists to work in accredited organizations, providing them with the possibility of permanent residence on Russian territory, the State Duma added.
According to the norms of the residence permit in force by June 15, 2022, according to a simplified scheme, foreigners can receive highly qualified specialists and members of their families, as well as representatives of the approved list of demanded professions. Everyone else needs at least a year to live in Russia on the basis of a temporary residence permit to obtain a residence permit. Amendments to the law "On the legal status of foreign citizens in Russia" were developed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Labor.[36]
The Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation threatened to deprive IT companies of benefits for the forced dismissal of Ukrainians
At the end of May 2022, Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation threatened to deprive IT companies of benefits for the forced dismissal of Ukrainians. This was reported in the Telegram channel of the department.
| | The Ministry of Digital Development warns IT companies that it will deprive them of accreditation if it receives confirmation of the facts of forced dismissal of Ukrainian citizens. Thus, these companies will not be able to receive benefits, the ministry said. | |
The fact that in the Russian Federation companies began to dismiss or transfer to lower positions IT specialists of Ukrainian origin, May 24, 2022 reported to RBC with reference to two participants in the IT market. This information was confirmed to the publication by the head of the ANO "Information Culture" Ivan Begtin. According to him, such an unspoken requirement may come from state customers of companies. At the same time, the interlocutors of the publication did not specify which companies are in question.
The same issue was discussed by the participants of the Russian Internet Forum on the sidelines, it was a question of the fact that such decisions are made in order to avoid sabotage. The security services also "closely" monitor employees from Ukraine and those who have relatives there - they do not recommend working with such specialists, especially if they have access to business-critical data and infrastructure.
Begtin noted that Russia lacks IT specialists, but there are risks in the form of sabotage: according to the expert, they are already taking place in Russian companies.
On May 24, 2022, the Ministry of Digital Development announced that it did not have data "even on isolated cases" of the dismissal of Ukrainian programmers. But just in case, the business warned about the inadmissibility of such discrimination. The agency added that it is in favor of simplifying the procedure for obtaining a residence permit for foreign IT specialists and their families.[37]
Russoft: the number of IT specialists who left and returned to Russia has equaled
According to Russoft, the number of IT specialists who left and returned to Russia in May 2022 equaled. As the president of the association, Valentin Makarov, wrote in his Telegram channel, by the end of April 2022, about 25-30 thousand IT specialists left the Russian Federation, the next month the pace of departure decreased significantly, and the process of returning began.
According to Makarov, IT specialists are returning due to the fact that there is no mass mobilization in Russia (which, in fact, many were afraid of), and the living conditions in the countries of mass relocation were worse than it seemed from Russia.
In addition, in European countries, IT specialists met the hostile attitude of the local population and sometimes the aggressive attitude of migrants from Ukraine, Makarov said.
He noted that those IT specialists who speak foreign languages and represent one of the following categories mainly leave Russia:
- employees of offices of foreign IT companies in Russia who decided to close their offices in Russia (30% of the number of office employees, 70% are understood by large Russian IT companies);
- employees of exporting companies who have problems with customer refusals from working with Russia due to "secondary sanctions" and with the transfer of work fees from banks of unfriendly countries to Russian banks (6-7%);
- freelancers.
According to the results of the annual survey conducted by Russoft, by the end of May 2022, the departure of employees of Russian IT companies operating in the Russian market does not exceed 1-1.5%.
According to HeadHunter, which were released at the end of May 2022, 12% of employers in Russia increased salaries for IT specialists. 56% of companies reported that since the end of February 2022, not a single IT specialist of their company has gone abroad. 14% of companies left units, another 14% said that less than 5% of the IT staff left the country. [38]
Shadayev: 80% of citizens who left Russia after the start of the special operation returned home, most of them are IT specialists
80% of Russian citizens who left the country after the start of a special operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 returned to the Russian Federation. Most of them are IT professionals. This was announced on May 17, 2022 by the Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev.
According to him, the analysis of how many people left after the start of the special operation, and how many of them returned, was carried out using SIM-cards. The head of the Ministry of Digital Development called the figures announced by him "encouraging." Shadayev added that he sees from large companies that "the entire personnel backbone remains in Russia."
The director RAEC Sergey Plugotarenko is confident that one of the fundamental tasks for both business and business states is to create such conditions so that specialists remain working in Russia.
| | We understand that in order for this to happen, in order to stop the outflow of IT personnel, it is necessary to strengthen support for a technological business, and especially pay attention to industry professionals. We see that large-scale, and most importantly, operational work is being carried out in this direction, "he said. | |
The British newspaper The Guardian in April 2022 released material that spoke about the mass return to Russia of Russians who left after the start of the special operation. Journalists talked with such citizens of the Russian Federation and concluded that the hasty decision to flee Russia came across the harsh reality of emigration, especially given the closure of borders and sanctions against banks. Although many Russians left their homeland forever, others still had to return to take care of elderly sick parents in order to run a business in order to save their family or simply earn a living, the publication said.
According to experts interviewed by the publication, the wave of emigration from Russia, provoked by the special operation, is an unusual phenomenon. It was spurred by rumors of forced mobilization, which from time to time spread in the information space, and highly educated people began to leave Russia, who most often left for small countries.[39]
FSIN wants to allow convicted IT specialists to work remotely for business
On April 27, 2022, it became known about the plans of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) to allow convicted IT specialists to work remotely for business. According to the deputy head of the department , Alexander Khabarov, several regions have made such a proposal. Read more here.
Authorities want to revive the post-graduation student distribution system. Start with IT shniki
On April 26, 2022, it became known that the Development Council digital economy Federation Council made a proposal to return the student distribution system after their graduation from educational institutions. This idea was voiced as part of a package of other proposals for the development of personnel potential in the the Russian IT industry.
The distribution system existed in the Soviet Union and obliged all students of budget departments who graduated from universities, colleges and technical schools to work where the system would distribute them. In the USSR, the mandatory distribution was three years - at the end of this period, specialists could change their place of work, and sometimes their place of residence.
The idea of the Council for the Development of the Digital Economy under the Federation Council is the mandatory distribution of state students not for three years, but for five years. It is proposed to distribute the newly made IT specialists exclusively to enterprises of the military-industrial complex (defense industry complex).
It is not yet clear how society will respond to this idea of the Federation Council. The consequences can be very different - for example, students of budget departments in IT specialties can begin to be transferred to paid places in order to decide for themselves where they will work after receiving a diploma.
It should be noted that this is the second proposal that significantly limits IT specialists in terms of choosing not only the place of work, but also the place of residence over the past month. At the end of March 2022, a bill appeared in Russia, greatly complicating IT specialists from Russia.
The author of the document is Concord, the company of businessman-restaurateur Yevgeny Prigozhin. The Russian Ministry of Digital Development was among the first to respond to the appearance of the bill, saying that it was resolutely against such restrictions.
According to the source, after the appearance of this document, the authorities had to take emergency measures to extinguish the "extremely nervous reaction" of the IT industry to the Concorde ideas. The Ministry of Digital Development and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko held several meetings with representatives of the IT sphere, the result of which was additional indulgences for her. In particular, the authorities promised to increase grant funding for the industry three times or by 14 billion rubles. They were also forced to agree to many of the demands of IT companies.
The proposal of the Council for the Development of the Digital Economy under the Federation Council to return and tighten the student distribution system is a consequence of the current situation with personnel in the IT industry. Specialists leave the country - their massive outflow began in late February 2022 and continued throughout March 2022. Speaking at a meeting of the Council, First Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council Andrei Turchak said that a shortage of about 1 million programmers was recorded in Russia for April 2022. According to him, at the end of 2021, there were 1.7 million IT specialists in Russia[40] the[41].
National project: an increase in the annual influx of personnel in radio electronics by 9 times by 2030
On April 19, 2022, it became known about a new national project for the development of the electronic industry in Russia. The project assumes that by 2030 the annual influx of personnel in this market will increase from 1 thousand to 9 thousand specialists involved in the production and design of radio electronics.
Details are provided by Kommersant with reference to the presentation that the Ministry of Industry and Trade sent to key players in the industry. According to the document, annually Russian universities graduate 20 thousand specialized specialists a year, but only 5% remain in the profession. In total, about 300 thousand people work in the electronic industry, the average age of half of which is 45-50 years. Young personnel (20-29 years old) account for only 2%. According to the authors of the project, the implementation of the set goals will allow by 2030 to additionally prepare and retain about 60 thousand specialists in the industry, fully providing Russian enterprises with personnel.
Director of the Institute of Radio Engineering Systems and Management of SFU Anton Boldyrev believes that closer integration of universities with industrial enterprises will help increase the number of students ready to work in the specialty at specialized enterprises.
{{quote 'Need to put more emphasis on industry. If there are orders for our design bureaus, we will be able not only to carry out these research and development work RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT (), but also to train students on them, "he says. }} Arseny Brykin, director of the Basis consortium, noted that salaries in the industry are growing slowly, university graduates would like to have a high salary at the start, but in fact they receive 40-60 thousand rubles at specialized enterprises. In addition, not everywhere they strive to involve a talented graduate in a large-scale and interesting project. As a result, someone changes the scope of activity, and someone goes to more attractive companies for payment, including foreign ones. The situation is aggravated by the fact that after the start of events in Ukraine, foreign companies with development centers in the Russian Federation offer Russian employees to move to other countries.[42]
Russian artificial intelligence remains without specialists
The incessant outflow of IT personnel abroad hit artificial intelligence and neural networks the hardest. In this segment, competition among specialists has almost completely disappeared - at best, there are two candidates for one open vacancy. This became known on April 11, 2022.
The shortage of specialists was formed in the first quarter of 2022, about half of which fell on the special operation and the subsequent anti-Russian sanctions. The problem is fixed in the segments of artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks and programming languages in the field of artificial intelligence.
Less than two applicants for one vacancy is an extremely low figure for the IT industry. For comparison, on average, for this area, there are three specialists per open vacancy who want to get this job.
In the same first quarter of 2022, the minimum number of newly created or updated resumes of specialists in the field of artificial intelligence was also noticeable. Such turned out to be within 16 thousand, while in the industry as a whole, more than 12.5 times more resumes were placed - over 200 thousand.
Anti-Russian sanctions certainly influenced the rate of outflow of neural network specialists abroad, but did not become their root cause. According to experts interviewed by the publication, this problem lasts for years, but the events of February and March 2022 aggravated the situation.
| | Companies cannot hire specialists in this field from Russian universities for the past three years due to low competencies, "said an unnamed source in the industry, commenting on the situation with a shortage of personnel in the field of programming languages for AI. | |
Representatives of the Russian IT industry directly say that domestic universities pay almost no attention to training personnel in the direction of artificial intelligence. This opinion was expressed, in particular, by the head of the director of the company's development center Artezio (part of the LANIT"" group Dmitry Parshin,), saying that "for academic education, focus on this direction is not a priority."
| | "Graduates need to be additionally trained in the conditions of modern software development, so private companies are engaged in the internal education of specialists in their own laboratories, invest in training," said Dmitry Parshin. | |
| | It is necessary to bring the education system and curricula to real market demands, - said Dmitry Parshin, noting that without this the shortage of AI specialists in Russia will only grow. | |
Domestic universities, although not all, have already taken a course on the training of AI personnel. Thus, at the Moscow State Technical University named after N. E. Bauman, a specialized department "Artificial Intelligence Technologies" is being created, at which "it is planned to develop AI as a critical infrastructure technology for the state," representatives of the university said.
| | In addition to the knowledge about the use of AI, which our graduates already own, it is necessary to be able to create and customize the "tool" for applied tasks, they added. | |
Meanwhile, at the time of publication of the material, it was not known at what stage of its formation this department is located.
MIPT believes that in order to obtain a sufficient amount of necessary knowledge in the field of artificial intelligence technologies, it is not at all necessary to study for four to six years. This opinion is shared by Alexey Maleev, Director of the MIPT IT Education Development Center.
| | Not every employer can clearly put a request, which affects the search for specialists, - said Alexey Maleev[43]. | |
The developers named the most "influential" IT specialties
The top 3 IT specialties that have the greatest impact on business results include backend developers (33.7%), system analysts (29.9%) and data specialists (27.2%). Such data were obtained from a survey of 1509 developers conducted in March 2021 by analysts of the All Cups platform from VK, the Skolkovo Foundation and IT One. The All Cups platform announced this on March 24, 2022.
Respondents also named testers (21.5%), architects of high-load services (14.5%), frontend developers (9.2%) and SRE engineers (7.6%) as important for business. More than a third of respondents (35.8%) believe that without their participation the company will not be able to achieve long-term goals. Every tenth developer is confident that it is his work in the company that ensures the achievement of long-term goals and support for operating activities.
According to the survey, the work of IT specialists has the most impact on the banking and financial sector (40.3%), public service (25.6%) and retail (14.3%). The developers also highly appreciate their role in the fields of marketing and advertising (10%), education and medicine (8% each), space and insurance technologies (6.9% and 5.8%, respectively). At the same time, according to 22.7% of respondents, agriculture is the only business area that is least influenced by IT specialists.
More than half of the study participants (65%) believe that the pandemic has become a catalyst for strengthening their influence on internal corporate processes.
| | The active development of online in recent years has pushed many companies to digital and technological transformation. The demand for developers is growing in proportion to their level of influence on the business of companies. One of the key objectives of All cups activities is to create an effective platform for assessing the skills of IT specialists, said Anna Stepanova, director of educational projects at VK, head of the online platform All Cups.
| |
Russoft: more than 8 thousand software developers left Russia after the start of the Ukrainian operation
According to the estimates of the Association of Russian Software Manufacturers "Russoft," against the background of events in Ukraine, a little more than 8 thousand software developers left Russia. This was announced on March 24 by the president of the association Valentin Makarov. He considers the figures of more than 50 thousand IT specialists who left the market previously announced on the market to be significantly overestimated.
| | About 8 thousand people and an indefinite number of freelancers could leave real business, "Makarov said. - But this, of course, is not 50 thousand, which was previously mentioned on the market. The blow is quite strong - a lot of young smart people are leaving who could work for Russia, but not catastrophic. | |
In the same week, the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC) cited estimates that in February-March 2022, about 50-70 thousand people working in the IT sector left the country, and in the future this number will only grow. In RAEK, the departure of IT specialists from Russia in February and March is called the "first wave." According to their forecasts, in April another 70-100 thousand of their colleagues will leave the country, which will be considered the "second wave."
Makarov noted that there are companies that are development centers of foreign organizations, and which have instructions from abroad to close the office in Russia. Some of the people from these offices will be leaving. Usually the strongest are taken abroad. Russoft and companies that are not part of the association are now doing a lot of work to absorb the released mass of people and employ them in Russia.
Another category is companies that operate for export. They refuse part of the contracts, bans on the transfer of money from abroad. This, of course, is a blow that also caused some outflow of specialists, but these companies work on the Russian market, says the president of Russoft. There is also a segment of freelance coders that has suffered, and from where there is also an outflow.
At the same time, Makarov believes, some people are leaving now not because of an objective need, but because they are influenced by the information war waged by unfriendly countries against Russia, spreading a flurry of negativity on social networks.
Valentin Makarov is confident that due to the Western sanctions imposed on Russia, there will be no deterioration in living conditions in the country to such an extent as to further cause an increased outflow of IT specialists.
| | Russian business is so used to various crises that it is very quickly oriented in the world and quickly finds the optimal alternative ways, channels, etc. While companies, for example, are offered options for working with the state, they already have time to find a way out themselves, - said the president of Russoft in a conversation with TAdviser. | |
Pressure on Russia encourages local companies to act more actively, while without pressure the business can be said to be resting, added Valentin Makarov.
IT professionals in the tens of thousands are leaving Russia
Russia was covered by a large outflow of IT specialists abroad. According to the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC), in February-March 2022, about 50-70 thousand people working in the field of information technology left the country, and in the future this number will only grow.
In RAEK, the departure of IT specialists from Russia in February and March 2022 is called the "first wave." According to their forecasts, in April 2022, another 70-100 thousand of their colleagues will leave the country, which will be considered the "second wave."
| | The first wave - 50-70 thousand people have already left. The second wave is restrained only by the fact that there are expensive tickets, housing has grown, no one is waiting for Russians, and there is no financial connectivity, it is impossible to carry out transactions. But the second wave will definitely be, according to our forecast, from 70 thousand to 100 thousand people will leave in April. These are just IT specialists, - said the head of RAEK Sergey Plugotarenko. | |
Plugotarenko said this at the meeting "Development of the IT industry in the context of sanctions" in the State Duma.
Natalya Kasperskaya, President of InfoWatch Group of Companies, also spoke about the mass move of Russian IT specialists to other countries. She also drew attention to the fact that their outflow intensified in February-March 2022, when the ruble collapsed in the country, and dozens of foreign IT companies left the Russian market.
How many IT personnel have already left Russia, and how many more are "sitting on suitcases," Kasperskaya did not specify. She only drew attention to the fact that many of those who had moved had not yet quit. In her opinion, they will "sit, sit and return."
Natalya Kasperskaya believes that in order to return IT specialists to the country, the Russian authorities should take "propaganda measures, reassurance and other PR events." What exactly she means by this remains unknown.
Natalya Kasperskaya warned back in June 2020 that Russia was on the verge of a mass flight of IT personnel abroad. She stated that the mass outflow would continue for two years due to the deteriorating economic situation in the country. But at that time, the problem was hiding only in the coronavirus pandemic, due to which Russia went into self-isolation, and many Russians lost their jobs. According to Kasperskaya, in 2020-2021, it was planned to leave Russia from 10 thousand to 15 thousand specialists in the field of information technology.
Now the situation is different - Russia is under the oppression of international sanctions, and the ruble has fallen to historically low values against the vast majority of the world's main currencies. All this caused a sharp jump in prices and a shortage of some goods.
Back in early 2021, an acute shortage of IT personnel was recorded in the country. The Ministry of Digital Development calculated that in February 2021, Russia lacked from 500 thousand to 1 million specialists in various fields of information technology. Plus, analysts from the ministry stressed that there are not enough budget places for IT specialties in Russian universities - there are only 80 thousand of them.
IT specialists from various fields, including "security guards," are leaving the country. In mid-March CNews , he wrote that not only individual personnel, but also entire firms were leaving. Almost a third INFORMATION SECURITY of companies operating in Russia are going to leave the country in the near future and take staff with them. Signs of an acute shortage of "security workers" in the country appeared back in December 2021. The deputy chairman of the board Sberbank Stanislav Kuznetsov said then that the country lacks 20 thousand such personnel.
Already in November 2021, long before the special operation and the subsequent sanctions, it was clear that a crisis with IT personnel was brewing in the country. Even then, most of the specialists were ready to leave the country or work for a foreign company, and the main reason was money. Workers did not want to put up with the economic situation in the country and, on the contrary, wanted to earn more in order to increase their standard of living, not depending on the Russian[44] Russia in[45].
The number of IT vacancies in the public sector has doubled in Russia
From February 24, 2022, when Russia it launched a special operation on, to To Ukraine mid-March 2022, the number of IT vacancies in the public sector sharply increased. This is evidenced by the data. HeadHunter
According to Kommersant, citing statistics from the recruiting service, the position of the system administrator of vacancies has increased by 111%, the position of a technical support specialist - by 101%, and the web engineer - by 120%. The demand for technical specialists is growing both in the capital's departments and in regional ones.
The Ministry of Digital Development linked this situation with an increase in the volume of grants and loans for the development and implementation of domestic software platforms, which should replace foreign solutions. In March 2022, the department itself had vacancies for a specialist in the department for the development of cloud services and data management with a salary of 40-50 thousand rubles, the newspaper said.
Sergey Matusevich, Director of Web Technology Development at Artezio (part of the Lanit group), explained that the increase in the number of IT vacancies in the public sector is associated with a decrease in support from service companies that used to be engaged in maintenance and site development. Yulia Zarya, head of marketing at CrossTech Solutions Group, added that the number of DDoS attacks on the public sector has grown, which requires increased attention and more workers.
In connection with the sanctions and events that provoked them, the number of people wishing to leave for another jurisdiction has increased in the IT environment, confirms Nikolai Komlev, chairman of the Council of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation for the Development of the Digital Economy. Therefore, according to him, the Ministry of Ministry of Digital Development, other departments and state corporations are actively deploying import substitution projects that are able to attract and employ additional personnel.
| | Russian IT-Business and the state understand that the brain drain is disastrous for the industry and the country's economy as a whole, Komlev added.[46] | |
ISShnik from STP. Can secondary vocational education meet the staff shortage in information security?
Information security is one of the areas in IT where the shortage of personnel is most acute. Which year it is stated by both employers and regulators in Russia. And in 2020-2021. amid the growth of cyber attacks and increased control of regulators over compliance with legislation on the protection of critical information infrastructure, the need for information security has grown even more. At Sberbank, the current shortage of specialists at the end of 2021 was called a "personnel disaster," and the FSTEC recorded that due to the shortage of information security, it happens that people from accounting are involved in information security.
Employers mainly want to hire IB-personnel with higher education. But how much training programs for the level of secondary vocational education could help relieve tension in the personnel issue?
In 2021 , the Ministry of Labor provided TAdviser with data that 29% of organizations in Russia plan to increase the number of specialists in the field of information security. These are the results of a study commissioned by the department and covering 18 thousand organizations from all regions of the country. In 2020, according to the Ministry of Labor, the need for IB-personnel with higher education in organizations totaled about 13.3 thousand people, while with secondary education and professionally retrained personnel on the basis of higher and secondary vocational education there were a total of about 5.1 thousand people.
Back in 2009 , the Ministry of Education and Science, by its order (order 335), approved a list of specialties in secondary vocational education, which included 5 specialties in the field of information security. As of the beginning of 2022, one of the largest sites for applicants - Postupi.online - has 89 secondary special educational institutions in 41 cities offering certain training programs for middle-level specialists in the field of information security. There are also 94 universities preparing specialties in the field of information security, 102 universities offering training in the field of information security at the bachelor's level, and 19 universities with a master's degree.
According to the HSE, in 2019, about 5.4 thousand students were accepted for training in secondary vocational education programs in information security[47]
At the same time, the level of satisfaction with the training of graduates with secondary vocational education is quite low - only 40%, according to a 2020 study commissioned by the Ministry of Labor. For comparison, about 70% of organizations are satisfied with the training of graduates with higher education and professional retraining.
The vice president Rostelecom of "" for information security Igor Lyapunov noted in a conversation with TAdviser that now the training period for information security specialists with higher education is 6 years, and this is a very long time. At the same time, he believes, higher education is not needed to solve about 80% of cybersecurity problems. If you take part of the specialties of information security to the level of secondary special education, then the training time for specialists can be reduced to 2 years.
Most functions in information security are applied disciplines. And, according to the observations of Igor Lyapunov, the largest recruitment is now going on in specialties related to the first monitoring line, the first response line. Such specialists do not need, for example, knowledge of higher mathematics and the extensive theory that higher education in the field of information security usually gives. They need practical skills in the first place. Such skills can be trained in a few months, which Rostelecom does as part of its trainee programs.
| | And then it is enough to load up on a certain amount of knowledge, and you get a good initial specialist, - believes the top manager of Rostelecom. | |
Based on this idea, Rostelecom and the educational center "Sirius" are discussing the joint launch of educational programs that allow them to obtain specialties related to cybersecurity within the framework of secondary special education.
With the right approach, training information security specialists based on secondary professional educational institutions can help unload universities in this part, shared his opinion with TAdviser and well-known information security expert, business security consultant Cisco SystemsAleksey Lukatsky. But there is a lack of awareness of the existence of such programs nationwide. Many simply do not know that after school you can go to study not at a university, but at a college or technical school, get a decent education there and get a good salary at the exit.
| | People don't go there because they basically want to have a college degree. But, receiving secondary education in the field of information security, you can also have a good salary, and if you wish, you can continue your education later at the university, the expert notes. | |
According to Alexei Lukatsky, efforts are needed from relevant departments to popularize the opportunity to receive information security education within the framework of secondary vocational education programs and redirect the flow of graduates from schools to such institutions.
Kh5 Group Information Security Director Alexander Markov expressed to TAdviser the point of view that cybersecurity specialists value primarily real human experience, and not education or the availability of specialized certificates. The company often sees that IT specialists who have already worked as a network administrator, developer or architect come to a position in cybersecurity. Most of them have higher technical education without specialization in cybersecurity.
In addition, there are specialists in the field of cybersecurity with humanitarian education. In other words, education is not the most important factor when choosing a person in a team.
| | At the same time, cybersecurity specialists in their work often face complex tasks unique to a specific environment. How effective the solution will be depends on how good the employee has a theoretical base and whether he can apply it. Can a person look for optimal solutions, not just guided by the requirements of legislation or regulations, but to a certain extent understanding what protection methods exist, what are their pros and cons, what underlies them, how this or that means of protecting information works and not only this, but also how the technologies work and work. In this sense, I see the difference between people with and without higher technical education, "says Alexander Markov. | |
The training of a specialist does not end only with a university or college. It is the experience of applying knowledge in practice that is important. It is probably worth remembering that students of senior courses of universities for the most part are already beginning to receive this experience, including working part-time. In addition to this, large companies oversee technological departments in some universities.
All this, notes Alexander Markov, allows companies that are ready to invest in students first of all, to get a cybersecurity specialist with a strong theoretical base, a wide outlook, experience behind their backs and a company already adapted into culture.
| | In my understanding, with a meticulously drawn up intensive program of secondary special education, you can train specialists in a number of areas. SOC This will to a certain extent help relieve tension in the current situation with personnel in cybersecurity, and this is certainly worth developing. However, I would not talk about "solving the problem" in this way alone. Higher technical education, regardless of specialization, remains preferable for most cybersecurity employees, - believes the director of information security of the Kh5 Group. | |
2021
The Ministry of Labor assessed the need of Russian organizations for information security specialists. Details of the Big Study
29% of Russian organizations plan to increase the number of specialists in the field of information security, according to a study conducted in 2021, the results of which were shared with TAdviser in the Ministry of Labor. A study commissioned by the ministry was carried out by its subordinate All-Russian Research Institute of Labor in order to determine the need of organizations for personnel and identify prospects for the development of professional qualifications in the field of information security.
The study involved about 18 thousand organizations from all regions of Russia. The highest demand among participants is noted for mid-level positions (64% of vacancies). The vacancy rate of leading specialists (chief, leading specialists) amounted to 26%, and initial levels (trainees, assistants) - 2%.
The top 3 most popular areas of training included "Information Security of Automated Systems" (specialty), "Computer Security" (specialty) and "Information Security" (bachelor's and master's degree).
If we talk about the compliance of the level of training of graduates with the requirements of employers, then the respondents rated specialists with higher education to the greatest extent. Thus, 87% of respondents gave high marks for the training of graduates of the specialty and magistracy.
Those organizations in which work is underway to ensure information security and have appropriate services predict the emergence of new specialties. These are "a specialist in the security of critical infrastructure facilities (by area and industry)," "an expert in computer incidents," "an analyst in identifying cyber attacks of increased complexity," "an analyst in the security of big data technologies" and "an analyst in system security." These specialties, according to respondents, will mainly require higher education (89% of answers).
The structure of demand for the competencies of specialists in the field of information security is dominated by technical skills - knowledge and ability to use special programs and systems (for example, Linux, SIEM, TCP/IP, etc.). General professional competencies are also in demand:
- knowledge in the field of labor legislation, GOST in the field of information technology. In some cases, the need for knowledge of federal laws dated July 18, 2011 No. 223-FZ "On the procurement of goods, works, services by certain types of legal entities" and dated April 5, 2013 No. 44-FZ "On the contract system in the field of procurement of goods, works, services to meet state and municipal needs" is indicated;
- ability to develop design documentation, negotiate, prepare and conduct presentations, develop draft regulatory documents, keep documentation, design, test and others.
The listed knowledge and skills are quite stable in vacancies placed by employers: both in 2020 and in 2021 they occupy leading positions, the Ministry of Labor notes.
Federal project "Development of IT industry human resources" launched in Russia
In December 2021, it became known about the new federal project "Development of the personnel potential of the IT industry." More than 27 billion rubles are allocated for its implementation, Interfax reports with reference to the appendix to the law on the federal budget for 2022 and the planning period of 2023 and 2024, which is published in the electronic database of the State Duma. Read more here.
Accountant instead of information security. FSTEC checks revealed a critical shortage of information security specialists
FSTEC, based on the results of inspections of organizations' compliance with legislation on the protection of critical information infrastructure (CII) in 2021, revealed an acute shortage of specialists in the field of information security. Elena Torbenko, deputy head of the FSTEC department, told about this in December[48]
Elena Torbenko recalled that the security system is people, documents and technical security measures that are considered during state control.
| | As for the first component - people - for some reason there are not enough specialists who are responsible for ensuring safety at enterprises. As I have repeatedly said, one person cannot run through a thousand objects located on 3-4 hectares of the area, and effectively and adequately ensure safety. It's not physically possible. According to the documents, a staff of 10 people was created, and in fact it is 1-2 people, - the representative of the FSTEC outlined the problem. | |
In addition, they can be unprepared people. Those organizations in which the inspectors from the FSTEC were in 2021 fulfilled all the necessary requirements, but, communicating with the subjects, it can be seen that the organizations have not yet been concerned about working with trained people, Torbenko added.
| | Unfortunately, there are still moments when security officers are assigned some incomprehensible duties, or when people, for example, from accounting, are appointed responsible for information systems. This is a violation of the law, - said the deputy head of the FSTEC department. | |
KII subjects, who, on the one hand, must comply with the requirements of regulators, and on the other, are in a situation of IB-personnel shortage, cannot do anything, believes the well-known information security expert, business security consultant Cisco SystemsAleksey Lukatsky. The regulators themselves "tightened the screws," setting rather strict requirements for qualified personnel for the subjects of the CII: it should be either a specialist with a specialized higher education, or a retraining in the field of cybersecurity. And, given that there are several tens of thousands of KII subjects in Russia, and there are no specialists in such numbers, especially in the regions, it is clear that there are not enough personnel on the ground, Lukatsky said in a conversation with TAdviser.
| | This problem, probably, cannot be solved in the current paradigm, because it can be solved either by reducing the requirements for both KII subjects and the level of education or its confirmation. But neither regulators nor the Ministry of Education and Science are ready to reduce the requirements. And no one will let universities change professional standards just like that. Regulators believe that business should invest in education and train information security specialists or order such education. And the business is not ready to invest in what results will appear at best in 3-4 years, the expert argues. | |
As a result, we are in a kind of impasse, from which it is not clear how to get out, summed up Alexey Lukatsky.
Igor Lyapunov, vice president for information security at Rostelecom, believes that the current situation should be considered from two sides. On the one hand, if there were no IB-personnel on the market at all, then we could talk about hopelessness. There is a shortage in the market, and it is large, but, nevertheless, there are specialists, he says. And the second - the way out can be found in the training and retraining of specialists. There are ways and tools for this, including various retraining courses.
| | At the same time, the problem of a shortage of personnel is not only in the presence of people as such, but also in a more, in my opinion, serious plane - in the lack of preparedness of existing personnel. Digitalization, cyber threats, technologies - changes are taking place here at great speed. New types of attacks appear every week, so a quick drink with information is very important. And when we talk about countering cyber attacks and responding to them, it requires a lot of practical skills to repel attacks, the theory is not enough here. Therefore, there is a separate challenge - to prepare existing specialists precisely for practice, - said Lyapunov in a conversation with TAdviser. " | |
The state, of course, has appropriate areas, for example, cyber polygons, where you can acquire practical-oriented training, but this still remains a challenge, said Rostelecom vice president of information security.
In 2020-2021. the priority of information security increased against the background of accelerated digitalization, the transfer of employees to remote control and in the light of numerous cyber attacks. Ancor Fintech, the structure of the recruiting company Ancor, cited data in mid-2021 that employers are forced to revise their salary policy because companies have entered the market that seek to increase internal expertise and lure away specialists, especially fintech companies and large ecosystems. Beginners with specialized education in the field of information security, but without experience, are offered from 70 thousand rubles, and experts' salaries reach 400 thousand rubles or more, according to Ancor Fintech[49] The trend when the supply of specialties related to information security in the labor market does not keep up with demand will continue in the next few years, according to Ancor Fintech.
"Sberbank": Russia lacks 20 thousand. IB-specialists
According to Sberbank estimates, by the beginning of December 2021, Russia lacks about 20 thousand information security specialists, and one of the reasons for this problem is the shortage of teachers.
| | We must boldly admit that we have a personnel disaster in the country in the direction of information security. According to our estimate, at least 20 thousand today cybersecurity employees are a shortage of personnel. But an even greater personnel disaster in the teaching staff, "said Stanislav Kuznetsov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank, on December 7, 2021. | |
According to him, to solve such a big problem, it is necessary to focus on training a large number of teachers.
PwC confirms the acute lack of information security specialists. At the same time, Russian companies are trying to increase the staff of such workers. According to a PwC survey, 42% of companies from the Russian Federation planned to increase the number of cybersecurity specialists in 2021. Approximately 18% of organizations were going to increase their cybersecurity workforce by 5% or more.
| | Hiring managers face stiff competition in the labor market when looking for cybersecurity specialists. Based on recent studies, only in the United States candidates for positions in the field of cybersecurity are 50% less than vacancies, the study notes. | |
It also states that 58% of managers from all over the world and 56% from Russia are not sure that cybersecurity budgets provide adequate control over new technologies. Almost half of respondents from Russia (47%) fully agree that organizations can strengthen their cybersecurity systems not by increasing costs, but by automating and rationalizing technologies.[50]
IT specialists from the CIS began to move to Russia more often
On November 8, 2021, it became known about a sharp increase in CIS the number of IT specialists from who want to get a job in. Russia So, according to Khabr Career, the number of relevant requests from applicants from Belarus January-September 2021 doubled compared to the same period in 2020. Of the Kazakhstan Uzbekistan Ukraine requests, there were 36%, 62% and 22% more, respectively.
The influx from Belarus may be associated with the political situation in the country, Sergei Shilov, president of the Digital Economy League, told Kommersant. He notes that until the beginning of 2020, Belarusian specialists were more often hired by companies that work with customers in Western Europe and North America.
By November 2021, the situation has changed, and Western companies believe that Belarus is not a stable country, and it is risky to send orders there, Shilov suggested.
According to Artem Zyza, product manager of Khabr Career, only half of local IT specialists work for the company from Belarus, and the rest - for other countries. In the first place is Russia, in the second - the United States, in the third - Germany, said Zyza.
According to Solvery mentor Viktor Pavlov, the increase in the number of applicants from the CIS for work in the IT sphere in Russia may be due to the lack of highly paid internal offers.
At the same time, the HR director of the international IT company Softeq Sergey Mustafayev is convinced that a huge number of programmers are still looking for an opportunity to move to the West, and not to the Russian Federation. The conditions provided by large IT companies in Europe and the United States are much more interesting than those given by domestic organizations, agrees Ekaterina Dementieva, HR Director of MyOffice: salaries abroad are at least twice higher than Russian ones, and sometimes the social package is much more attractive.[51]
Demand for software developers grew by 64%
One of the key trends in the Russian labor market in the field of information technology is the growing demand for IT specialists amid an acute shortage of professional personnel in the industry. In addition, the level of competition between the capital and the regions is growing - more and more IT industry employees prefer to work remotely in Moscow companies, living in their hometown. This conclusion was reached by specialists from the HR Department of the VSK Insurance House and reported this on October 25, 2021.
According to the VSK Insurance House, the number of open vacancies in the IT sector has grown recently by 64%, with software developers becoming the most popular specialists in this area. At the same time, the search for applicants in the IT field is becoming more difficult and more expensive. This is due, firstly, to an increase in salary expectations of potential employees, and secondly, to an acute shortage of professional personnel - analysts, developers and testers, and this trend will continue in the next 2 years
At the same time, the specialists themselves began to more carefully approach the choice of a potential employer. Thus, for 54% of IT specialists, the key factor in choosing a place of work is the competitive level of wages, and 40% consider the friendly atmosphere in the team to be an important criterion, for 39% - the stability and reliability of the company. Least of all IT applicants are concerned about the social responsibility of the company in which they plan to find a job, as well as the prestige and level of expertise of the employer in their field.
In addition, according to VSK, more and more IT specialists prefer to work in the staff of the capital's companies, receive the appropriate wages, and work remotely from their hometown. This trend contributed to a more even distribution of specialists in the field of information technology between the capital and the regions.
| | Remote rewrote HR processes in most companies. New approaches to attracting, organizing employees, adaptation. And in the first place when managing distributed teams in remote regions, the tasks of adapting and developing employees came out. This is especially true for digital talent. To do this, within the company, we develop communities and various platforms for the exchange of experience and communication. Hackathons, guilds, TechDay, Demo days are the foundation of our community of digital talent and the implementation of the company's digital transformation. As of October 2021, 44% of applicants agree to work only in projects that are interesting for them, so we try to meet expectations as much as possible, - said Olga Sorokina, member of the board of directors, deputy general director for business development of the VSK Insurance House. | |
Salary €20 thousand per month and welcome bonus of $500 thousand. How Cisco Hants Russian Developers
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