Work as an IT specialist in the Far East - Sakhalin Region

TLDR.
After reading the article “ Is it worth it to go to an expert in the Far East, ” I had a desire to tell about my native region - the Sakhalin region, which I mentioned in the comments to the above article.

About me - I'm 25, a developer, semi-admin, unde-DevOps, work experience in IT for 8 years, I live in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, moved to it from a small town called Okha.

What are we doing here?

If someone says that Sakhalin is not for IT specialists, he will be right, but in part. The region lives at the expense of oil, gas, coal and fish (well, where far without it in the Far East), agriculture has recently begun to develop intensively thanks to local government and external companies like GreenAgro. We are engaged in oil and gas as our companies - Rosneft, Sakhalin Energy, and foreign - Exxon Mobil, Shell and many others.

Yes, we have in the region for the first time in Russia, a plant for the production of liquefied natural gas.

But in the summer and in the dark it is much more beautiful:

Climate

The climate in the region is moderately monsoonal, in the north of the island there is a very long winter - the snow begins to fall in early October and already melts in late May-early June. In the south of the island, the situation is better, snow falls in November and disappears in April-May. Summer is usually warm throughout Sakhalin. It is warm, 20-25 ° C, in some areas in summer there may be 35 ° C, but this is the exception rather than the norm.

The average temperature is -15 ° C in winter and + 18 ° C in summer.

The whole area is equated to the territory of the far north, and this has its advantages - additional wage increases, pensions, additional vacation days, various benefits.

What is there to do?

Because of the relief here in winter you can practice ski sports, we have a mountain resort “Mountain Air”, which meets the requirements of the FIS, has 25 kilometers of trails, the number of which increases every year. In the summer you can do downhill on the same complex.

If you are interested in tourism - there are a lot of interesting things, for example, the inherited Japanese railway Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk-Kholmsk. The canvas itself has long been taken apart, but a large number of tunnels and galleries remain, which have been perfectly preserved for half a century, despite the lack of maintenance. There is also a huge number of capes, cliffs, lighthouses, many other interesting places, beautiful nature, and, of course, the sea!

How much is?

Housing is unrealistically expensive. According to current data, housing in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, on average, costs 104.5 thousand rubles. / m², and in the region an average of 85.5 thousand rubles. / m²

To rent a room in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk costs an average of 13 thousand rubles. / month, the cost of a one-room apartment will be an average of 27 thousand rubles. Usually this cost is already included communal.
Fuel is also not cheap pleasures, AI-92 - 45.10, AI-95 - 46.50 rubles, AI-98 - 52.00 rubles, DT - 49.90 rubles.

Travel by public transport is fixed - 20 rubles, regardless of whether it is a bus or a “dzhamshutka”. Intercity buses are more expensive, about 100 rubles. In Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, there are many people who come to work from other cities, for example, Dolinsk and Korsakov, they are about 40 km away, but housing there is cheaper almost two or even three times cheaper, so they live there , but spent on buses or on your car.
Food costs almost as much as the rest of the Far East, potatoes 45-50 rubles, milk 55-60 rubles, bread from 20 rubles.

If you want to eat snacks like rolls, you will have to pay 350-400 rubles for a high-quality portion of rolls, and 300-400 rubles for a quality burger. But you can find rolls for 150 rubles, and a burger for 100 rubles, but the quality, like taste, you can imagine what will be :)

Transport

Photo: sakhalin.info.

In Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk there are more than 30 domestic routes for buses and 10 more inter-city routes, as mentioned above, the price of all domestic buses is fixed - 20 rubles. Buses usually go on schedule, but only after 7 pm, and especially on a day off, catching a bus is not easy - they simply do not exist.

A few km from the city there is an international airport “Khomutovo”, from which there are regular direct flights to Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and, well, charters to China, Thailand and, possibly, somewhere else. In Tokyo, for example, you can fly back and forth for 17 thousand rubles. To Moscow there and back - 25 thousand rubles. But there are benefits, you can fly to Moscow for some categories of citizens back and forth for 15 thousand rubles.

An interesting fact: before the flights in the region were subsidized for all people, and the flight of Yu-Sakh-Okha-Yu-Sakh cost 10 thousand rubles, and now it costs 30 thousand rubles. As a result, it turns out that flying around the region is twice as expensive as out of its limits, incl. and in Tokyo. And in Khabarovsk, so in general for 8 thousand rubles. can.

There is nothing to tell about railway, railway is the same everywhere.

Connection

(So ​​providers come to our building)

In the region, there are trunk providers such as Rostelecom and TTC, there are also local, smaller providers. All prices on the Internet vary, for example:

RT - 100 Mbit / 950 rubles. months
TTK - 50 Mbit / 790 rub. months
SunTelecom - 100Mbps / 950 rubles. months
(promotional rates, but all providers almost always have promotions).

Mobile communication also works well, there are all the main providers, and there is 4G coverage at a reasonable rate (I didn’t measure it myself, but FullHD video is enough to watch).

When will be about IT?

In fact, there is no IT on Sakhalin, you can disperse ...

Just kidding :)

Yes, as was said in previous articles, in the Far East not everything is so rosy in the field of IT. The bulk is 1C, and they get from 100 thousand rubles, according to our data. Next are the rest of the developers, admins, network engineers, testers.

The bulk is PHP, JS, there is also Java, Obj-C, Swift, C / C ++. There are practically no “exotic” things like Erlang, Lisp, Haskell, or none at all. Many programmers work in IA, administration and web studios. There are not many places (well, it will be easier for admins to find a place to work, they are almost always required), but almost everywhere there is a shortage of specialists.

Salaries vary from company to company, on average we can conclude as follows:

Junior - 30-45 thousand rubles.
Middle - 45-65 thousand rubles.
Senior - 65-90 thousand rubles.
Admin / Enikey - 30-70 sput. rub.
Network engineer - 60-90 thousand rubles.
(The average salaries are indicated according to my observations; from company to company, the amounts may vary, both down and up) .

On Sakhalin, there is a problem with the fact that there is a large outflow of literate specialists to the western part of Russia, and, for example, our company is very short of programmers, because of this even the development office had to be opened in Novosibirsk. And surprisingly, juniors from Novosibirsk have lower salary requests than local ones, but at the same time they have much more knowledge than local ones.

Total

Sakhalin region, like all other regions of the Far East, is not very well developed in terms of IT, but this does not mean that there is nothing to do here! If you don’t come to Sakhalin at work, then at least for tourism purposes, admire the beautiful nature, walk around the mountains, and with a special desire you can fly to the Kuril Islands, where the nature is even more beautiful.

We also have a consulate in the Netherlands, well, if you understand what I mean ...

Thank you bIbI4k0 for the photos provided!