Every modern IT business needs to enlarge R&D at some point of growth. But what if your local market lacks IT experts? One solution is to hire abroad, especially during the Covid era, when people truly appreciate remote opportunities. Over the last 30 years, Russian IT community has gone through great changes via rapid learning, which eventually let them adapt to international realities and western standards. Businesses in Europe advocate flexibility, and Russian IT experts can provide it. Here are 7 reasons to hire Russian IT experts — both for relocation and remote projects.
Russian programmers are smart
This is a bold but quite grounded statement. Russian IT students regularly participate in the International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), getting gold medals almost every year since 2000 and being an underdog only to the US and China. For 8 years in a row, gold medals of ICPC go to the students of TOP 3 Russian universities: Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State University, and ITMO. Programming is not only about academic achievements but also competences such as logic, problem-solving and communications skills, which definitely won’t hurt to master.
Why are Russian programmers considered smart? Because of the local educational standards and regular international activities. Russia is famous for numerous technical universities and an extended network of research institutes. In other words, there is a wide infrastructure of scientific institutions all over the country. Hence, many prominent scientists are seen in physics, math, chemistry, programming, robotics, and other intellectual spheres; most of these scientists are known to the present day.
Being a large country, Russia empowers scientific centers not only in the capital but also in regions. Ever heard of Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk? This is a town that consists of Novosibirsk State University and a bunch of scientific institutions of the Russian Academy of Science. MIPT, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and MSU, Moscow State University, are still in the TOP 100 best Universities worldwide, according to the ARWU 2020 report, Academic Ranking of World Universities.
Russian programmers are keen to travel
Globalism and Zoom brought the whole world together, so people are eager to exchange their experience not only locally, but also internationally. Russia isn’t an exception. Those who have aspirations to grow and develop — move abroad to share knowledge with co-experts. According to our internal database, 600 out of 3000 job offers since 2014 were made by EU-based companies to the CIS-based residents, which makes 20% in total. Some move for personal reasons, others seek international projects and cultural exchange, still others have little space for growth or limited market opportunities.
Take biotech, for instance. During the Covid outbreak, biotech IPOs already surpassed all records: US biotech companies attracted $9.4 billion in 2020 according to Dealogic (the absolute record was $6.5 bn). In contrast, Russian biotech startups were among the most unpopular for investments in 2019. Despite an impressive number of academics, the scientific community is less maneuverable and solvent in Russia than, say, in the States. So if you’re interested in top-notch biotech, there’s more to catch in San Diego than in Moscow.
Moving to the EU/US or working remotely in western companies is a quite reasonable direction for the best Russian experts who have outgrown the limits in their own country and seek more. Be it as it may, it’s cool to work abroad, exchange experience with international colleagues, explore other mentality, and simply be a man of the world. Russian programmers are not afraid to pursue a career abroad, and your company gains a powerful expert on its side.
Russian programmers are super-qualified
How come? See point 1 — they are smart. But not only in terms of academic achievements and gold medals, they are programming smart. 2 out of 10 Middle developers are offered Senior positions when applying for tech jobs in Europe, which is true for our major partners like EPAM, SAP, Deutsche Bank, Yandex, and Philips. In other words, some middle developers from Russia can apply for Senior roles in Europe without compromising the quality and engineering skills.
This is valid due to the genuine interest in learning tech. Russian programmers love technical guts; they often drill real deep into the topic and understand both the general framework and the basic working principles. Therefore, the majority of Russian conferences like JUG (Java User Group) are real hardcore-type meetings that are second to none.
From the point of basic programming, the majority of Russian experts are well-versed and always strive for development — not only in their narrow field, but also in adjacent areas.
Russian programmers are fair-minded
What’s Senior in Europe can easily be Middle in Russia, remember? A valuable point for some companies when it comes to salary expectations. Russian programmers don’t tend to overestimate their skills on the market and have adequate salary expectations.
On average, a Senior iOS Developer in Russia earns $30–40k annually, $40–50k in Moscow, net salary. Of course, they expect to earn more in Europe due to higher income taxes (let’s say $65k Net minimum). However, a good half of them would still prefer a career in a prosperous Berlin company to a higher salary in Moscow, seeking personal and professional development.
Truth to be told, Senior Russian developers living in Moscow are offered almost the same amount as in major European companies, if not higher. But Russia is big, and it isn’t limited by Moscow. There are plenty of Russian developers on the periphery that will prefer an interesting IT project in Europe or the US to a bit higher salary in a hometown.
Russian programmers work. A lot
Despite common stereotype, Russians have the mentality of getting things done. They are not used to closing their laptops at 5 pm and calling it a day. If they have to finish something, they definitely will, and it can be good for productivity if applied with a proper work-life balance approach.
To prove the point, let’s have a look at some Russian-owned companies on the market and their quite rapid growth. A good example is Revolut Ltd, a company based in London with Russian programmers at its core. Founded by Nikolay Storonsky (Russian MIPT graduate), it’s well known worldwide, with banking products commonly used around the EU. The company’s growth is impressive: from 2015 to 2020 they actually created a working financial technology and attracted over 12 million users, becoming the most hyped fintech in Europe.
There are many other examples of Russian-owned companies having great success on the international market: Veeam Software by Ratmir Timashev, Tinkoff Bank by Oleg Tinkoff, ABBYY by David Yang, and many others. It’s clear that software engineers, their skills, and their mentality played a big role in the success of those companies.
Russian programmers are geeks
For most Russian programmers, coding and programming isn’t just work — it’s also a hobby. If you go to Stack Overflow, you will inevitably see many Russian names in the comments’ section answering complicated questions and thus contributing to the worldwide community. It’s a culture of constant development in terms of knowledge and skills.
A good Russian programmer is someone who constantly follows up on meetups and conferences, learns new frameworks, reads updates, acquires new stacks, and learns new technologies. Russian IT community is very strong, very friendly, and very helpful. To maintain their status quo as skillful programmers, they are driven to level up constantly — isn’t it a trait that any company is looking for in their employees?
Russian programmers are trusted by international business
The International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) recently announced The Global Outsourcing 100 list of 2020, which ranks 5 leading outsourcing companies from Russia known worldwide. Russian development teams are trusted by companies like AstraZeneca, EPAM, Atos, and other large international businesses.
Many western companies open Russian units and work with Russian developers remotely due to the lower market entry threshold and preferential terms. For instance, compliance regulations are not so tough here in Russia compared to the European ones. Plus, there are many tax treatments and corporate benefits for international and IT companies particularly. Those who work with a European company but are based in Russia move to Europe later as a part of a promotion. Companies like EPAM, Huawei, Atos, and Veeam, have a well-formed attitude towards Russian candidates. As a saying goes, once you pop, the fun doesn’t stop!
It’s also worth mentioning Kotlin, a very popular programming language well known all over the world. It was invented by Andrey Breslav and a team of guys from JetBrains. A language created in Russia in the 2010s is now very common worldwide, which is a big contribution to the worldwide community.
Over the past few years, Russian IT market has made a quantum leap forward. Russian programmers appeared to be a good fit for the international community and are ready to contribute and compete on equal footing with their colleagues from other countries.
— by Bogdan Kalinin
