Professionals in the area of information technology have long been in great demand on the job market, and that need continues to rise.
 |
| [Russian IT Industry ] |
Professionals in the area of information technology have long been in great demand on the job market, and that need continues to rise. Employers and states alike are competing to retain and recruit highly trained IT professionals. On social media, people joke that they can dictate regulations to management, demand unique working conditions, and their wages are envied by many other professions. Despite the high salaries and incentives, there is still a lack of such professionals on the market, forcing firms to practically compete for excellent staff.
From 500,000 to one million individuals are lacking in Russia's IT workforce, according to a Ministry of Digital Development, Telecommunications and Mass Media estimate last year. The most prevalent gripe of business leaders is that their organisations are in desperate need of trained professionals. Things went from bad to worse in 2020 with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Organizations of all kinds, including those whose primary focus is not in information technology, have to adapt to the new realities of the digital age. By 2021, the number of openings in this industry has more than doubled, and the number of resumes of workers in this field on job search services has climbed by 42 percent. Market observers remark that this did not alleviate another problem: the percentage of candidates with advanced degrees and skills has been gradually decreasing.
Due to a variety of factors, including a scarcity of budget spaces in higher education institutions, this is the result. Competition between regional, metropolitan, and overseas businesses is also a major factor. "Creating favourable working circumstances is as vital as preventing the exodus of employees to other nations. Sergey Plugotarenko, the head of the Russian Association for Electronic Communications, argues that without the "brains and hands" of experts, it is difficult to sustain and grow our digital economy (RAEC). . ARPP "Domestic Soft" Executive Director Renat Lashin says that the need for IT experts would only grow in the future, given the present conditions of Russia's need to actively create its own software and develop, implement, and maintain existing projects.
HSE Institute for Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge (HSE) found that 756,000 Russian students wanted to work in digital technology in the future, according to their survey. In addition to the 443.8 thousand students that attended higher education institutions, 322.2 thousand attended secondary schools. At 80 thousand persons in 2021, there will be about 20,000 more budget spots available in this region than there were in 2020. As a result, by 2024, more than 400 thousand IT experts are expected to be trained. Nearly half a million skilled professionals will be trained via specialised courses offered by major corporations like VK (previously Mail.Ru Group) and Yandex.
It was pointed out by HeadHunter that just 1.4 resumes were submitted for each job opening. Despite the fact that IT industry salaries in Russia are 2.5 times higher than the national average.
An estimated 1.8 million IT experts will be employed in Russia by 2020, according to the National Research University Higher School of Economics and the Federal Statistics Service. This equates to around 2.5% of Russia's overall workforce. More than 761 thousand of them are software and application developers and analysts. Next are network and database professionals (332,4000), then electronic engineers (332,4000). (159.4 thousand). According to the findings of the research, the market is lacking in qualified specialists, electronics technicians, and instructors of computer literacy. Demand for their services is also strong since digital technologies are employed extensively by more than nine million Russians in their daily job, and the infrastructure they rely on requires regular upkeep.
The proportion of IT experts in the overall working population in most European nations is lower than in Russia. In 2020, there were 8.4 million individuals working in the information technology industry in the EU.. Germany has the most employment in the business (1.9 million), accounting for over a quarter of the total. With 1.2 million workers, France came in second, followed by Italy. 4.3 percent of all Commonwealth workers were IT professionals in Europe as a whole.
However, the Nordic nations had the most outstanding numbers. The number of persons working in information technology in Finland and Sweden was 7.6 percent and 7 percent, respectively (379.7 thousand people). At least one in every twenty working citizens in the nations of Estonia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Ireland, Denmark, and Belgium worked in the IT industry. Greece and Romania have the lowest concentrations of IT professionals in the world (2 and 2.4 percent of the total workforce, respectively). There are several IT marketplaces in these nations that draw professionals from all around.
Director of RAEC Sergey Plugotarenko is aware that nowadays one of the important responsibilities for both industry and the state is to provide such circumstances for experts to keep working in Russia. “We recognise that in order for this to happen, in order to limit the outflow of IT employees, it is vital to improve support for technology enterprises, and notably pay attention to industry specialists. We see that large-scale, and most critically, operational activity is being carried out in this direction,” he added. In conjunction with the quickly changing circumstances in the globe, changing market demands, Plugotarenko also called attention to the significance of ongoing modification and updating of the list of assistance measures. “Today, the conversation between the state and industry is critical,” said the director of the RAEC.
Many new policies have been put in place to help Russia's industry stay afloat and grow. New initiatives aimed at increasing digitization and making business more pleasant were launched last year in the first and second packages. Additional requirements for the industry's growth, totaling more than 60 points, were outlined in a separate roadmap. As Maksut Shadayev reported at the end of last year, the first package of tax incentives for IT companies has already proven its effectiveness, according to Renat Lashin, executive director of ARPP "Domestic Soft." This is because the budget received more than 75 billion rubles in additional income as a result of the incentives.
New measures were put in place in Russia at the beginning of March in order to help the IT sector in the face of international sanctions. Organizations will benefit from the new policies, but industrial workers will also see improvements in wages, the ability to get preferential mortgages, and a reprieve from military conscription.
Government assistance for IT firms and their workers, say experts, will serve as a strong motivator for the industry's growth. The removal of personal income tax for three years and preferential financing are among the most significant. Measures aimed at providing subsidies to firms on advantageous conditions for developing and developing their IT products, and to consumers for the deployment of domestic solutions, may be no less successful, they are confident. On the one hand, this will be supported by large advantages and, on the other hand, by the ever-growing need for this kind of work.
As stated by the Lenta.ru participants, governmental information systems should be less dependent on foreign programmes. The extension of subsidy programmes was also listed as a key step that may encourage IT sector growth.
Employees at Russian IT businesses might greatly benefit from a number of assistance initiatives, according to the RAEC. It was suggested that IT professionals be given a credit deferral, as well as easier access to grants and subsidies, by the organisation. Representatives of the group stressed, however, that assistance should be offered not just to full-time professionals, but also to those who work on GPC and to independent businesses in particular. RAEC also advocated the establishment of integrated mechanisms for indexing and sustaining IT specialist's salary.
This sector's growth is being aimed at by numerous nations with such lofty objectives in mind. As a result, the European Commission projects that the EU's working population will include 20 million IT workers by 2030. This proposal should be embraced by all members of the organisation, authorities say, since emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, robots, and blockchain can only be developed and deployed with sufficient intellectual backing. A few of the strategies to succeed in Europe are via employee training and development, the creation of high-quality educational programmes and internships, and recruitment of new personnel. The EU also makes it clear that, although a growth in the quantity of IT workers is critical for society's progress, it is as important to pay attention to the quality of such workers, i.e. their professional abilities.