A little bit about the migration of IT professionals
It's no secret that people are constantly moving from place to place, but it is quite difficult to imagine the scale of these events in full. The reasons for which the moves are carried out, are very different: someone wants to improve their financial situation, someone to continue their studies, and this process is just a pleasure for someone.
In most cases, when moving within the city, people mostly look for either better housing, or a home closer to friends, relatives and friends. However, heading to another area, state, or even a country, opening up opportunities for work become a fundamental factor. This issue is very relevant for IT workers.
According to IDC, in 2014 there were about 18.5 million programmers worldwide. If approximately, then it is 0.3% of the total labor force. But despite this, there is an acute shortage of IT specialists in the world.
It is known that in the US there are 4.5 million professionals in any way related to IT, in China and India there are about 1.8 million IT workers. As for Russia, according to various estimates, this figure varies from 400 to 700 thousand people.
“We have about a fourfold shortage of IT specialists, and in Europe there is a two-fold shortage,” says Alexander Tormasov, rector of Innopolis University.
According to the site HeadHunter, the number of professionals seeking employment in the IT industry is noticeably less than open vacancies - in April of this year, the number of posted ads for hiring IT professionals increased by 72% compared with April last year.
Depending on how much money a company can allocate, the search for an ideal candidate can take a long time — not one or even two months. And this is not always a niche job when specific skills are required for work.
The press service of "Yandex" said that the company is difficult to find professionals in the field of mobile application development, and they had to declare a premium of 100,000 rubles for a successful recommendation for the position.
A similar situation is observed in the West. Internet recruitment company BestJobs.ro reportedthat in the first 10 months of 2014, about 44,000 IT vacancies were posted on the site, the number of which increases every year by about 35%.
According to Alena Vladimirskaya, founder of the Pruffi service, the growth in demand for programmers and developers is associated with the crisis, due to which many companies have directed their activity on the Internet.
“Business understands that there are now many clients on the Internet, companies are opening and completing their services, loyalty programs, stores, transfer advertising budgets to the Internet,” says Alena. “This is also true for Western companies, which have more often hired our IT specialists to work remotely, because now they are much cheaper.”
Working in IT does not tie a specialist to a specific place and he can easily move around the country and the world, continuing to fulfill his duties. However, not all companies are ready to go for it, because an employee working “on the spot” in a team gets the opportunity to exchange experience with colleagues and, as a result, develop.
In this regard, the city hall of Innopolis and the resource HeadHunter conducted a study of the mobility of IT specialists in Russia, interviewing 1,232 IT specialists on the website hh.ru.
It was found that 48% of respondents are thinking and ready to move to another region of the country, and 16% already have this experience. The most attractive regions for relocation were named: Moscow (29.2%), St. Petersburg (27.7%) and Krasnodar Krai (11.3%).
A key factor in the relocation of IT professionals was the possibility of career growth, in particular, wage increases (64%) or a higher position (57%).
In this regard, it is not surprising that Moscow is the most attractive region for relocation. “Moscow is such a Russian New York. Everything that happens is happening here, ” said Paul Alacorn , a Swedish megalopolis researcher. People come to the capital to work from all over the country, since the offices of most large companies are located here, and the economy is closely connected with the state.
The market is constantly changing, therefore it is unprofitable for professionals in their field to be content with little. According to a Brainspotting study, about a third of IT professionals are interested in changing jobs, while only 16% will not agree to this under any circumstances. Typically, IT workers work in one place for about two or three years, but there are those who change jobs once a year if they find a more interesting project and are eager to acquire new knowledge.
“Most of them change jobs because of their salary,” says Maria Gostyuk from IDC in an interview with ZDnet. - Not because they earn little, but because other companies can offer even more. We can talk about a change of employment in the event that the increase in income is at least 20%. ”
Also, the important factors taken into account when moving, people attributed the presence of prospects for family members (38%), developed infrastructure (29%) and health care (20%). “If you live in Novosibirsk, you are moving to Moscow, because all sorts of clubs, restaurants, art galleries are concentrated there. - says Paul. “In a word, everything that you wish and cannot find in your hometown.”
As another reason for the change of housing, IT specialists identified the technical equipment of the region: the presence of innovations (21%) and leading universities (12%). Therefore, quite often the Russians consider the option of moving to Russian technology and IT parks.
More than 60% of respondents expressed a desire to work in a technopark, 10% were already working or working, 20% did not think about such a possibility, and 10% rejected a similar scenario. The main advantage of technology parks is the possibility of sharing experiences. With a high concentration of specialists, you can easily learn something new.
Take, for example, one of the most famous engineering hubs - Silicon Valley. There are 45 engineers for every thousand workers, which is two times more than in other metropolises. Such a concentration of talented people is the main asset of the Valley, which made it known to the whole world.
In Europe, the situation is similar. According to a study Brainspotting, today in Bucharest, capital of Romania, livemore than half of the country's IT workers. The city has offices of companies such as Oracle, Intel, IBM and Adobe. Moreover, the second largest Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca is even compared to Silicon Valley. The demand for IT professionals in Cluj is significantly higher than supply.
The authorities do their best to maintain the status assigned to the city. The Cluj Innovation City project aims to unite the efforts of local governments, universities and business communities and direct them to the development of the IT sphere and the organization of IT companies.
Also during the research site hh.ru were obtained data that determine the attractiveness of moving IT professionals from Russia to other countries. The most popular migration destinations were the USA (13.5%) and Germany (11.4%), followed by Australia (9.2%), Canada (8.1%), Great Britain (7.6%) and Spain ( 5.4%).
The motivation for moving completely coincided with the reasons for moving within the Russian Federation: wages (54%), work by profession (47%), interesting projects and career prospects (43%).
Worth a lookon the numbers and it becomes all clear. For example, the city of Huntsville in Alabama, USA, can offer IT professionals salaries of $ 92,000 per year, not to mention the fact that the Cummings Research Park is located here, which is home to hundreds of technology companies.
Australia is located on the other side of the globe, where such large companies as Brambles, Optus and Accenture work - salaries range from $ 68,400 to $ 110,000 per year, and in 2015, 37,727 IT vacancies were opened. As for Germany, then, according to BITCOM, at the end of October 2013, there were about 40,000 vacancies for the IT sector, three quarters of which are software developer positions.
Historically, in different countries there are different systems of geographical mobility of the population. For example, according tostudy of RE / MAX Europe, the average European moves only 4 times over a lifetime. Moreover, 15% of Europeans moved only once.
Americans, on the contrary, are more “ mobile ”. Statistics show that on average, an American moves once every 5 years. Every year, tens of millions of US residents change their place of residence within a city, state, or country. According to the United States Census Bureau, between 2012 and 2013, 2,315,000 residents moved within the country, and 1,036,000 people left abroad.
“Somewhere people change several cities during their life, while in other places they live in one place all their life. And the matter is not in the mentality, but in the organization of business processes in society: the process of selling and buying housing, socializing the family in a new place, and so on, ”said Yegor Ivanov, Mayor of Innopolis.
To solve all these problems in the Russian Federation, as well as to create a reliable platform for IT specialists (and to keep “bright minds” inside the country), the city of Innopolis was built in Tatarstan. His task is to enable highly qualified specialists to realize themselves in Russia, working on the creation of domestic products, developing domestic technologies.
“There is cheap rental housing here,” continues Yegor Ivanov, “the entire social infrastructure. That is, a specialist just needs to find a job here, and the remaining issues have already been resolved for him.
Thanks to a unique urban ecosystem with a modern residential infrastructure, nature and ecology, a safe environment, ample opportunities for education and professional development in a society of like-minded people and associates, Innopolis should become a point of attraction for professionals working in the field of high technologies.
It remains to be hoped that within such a large project, it will be possible to realize all the conceived ideas, to attract “fresh blood”, which will allow creating many thousands of advanced and innovative products in the field of science and technology. We all saw T-shirts with the words "I Love NY", I really want to believe that Innopolis will be able to achieve the same level of individuality and win the love of not only residents, but also visiting people.