Russia: Developed IT Workforce
If you're considering Russia and/or Eastern Europe for outsourcing purposes, keep the maturity of the workforce in mind.
Mar 29, 2006
Russia's ANCOR recruitment agency does biannual salary surveys cutting across the country's industries.
Those surveys include data about the Russian workforce by segment. In investigating ANCOR's website, Line56 found some documents describing characteristics of the Russian IT workforce in 2004.
What jumped out immediately was the experience of Russian IT workers.
Position/Average Tenure/Maximum Tenure
Support (hardware and software)/28 months/79 months
Computer Programmer/29 months/55 months
Systems Analyst/29 months/114 months
Network Specialist/37 months/96 months
Head of IT/48 months/126 months
Keeping in mind that the sample space was small (48 companies) and that the workers were not all involved in IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) delivery to US-based multinationals, the study is still worthwhile for portraying a technical workforce that, even back in 2004, was fairly mature.
This highlights one of the advantages of Russia and Eastern/Central Europe in general. Whether you're talking engineering, IT, or BPO, workers in these regions tend to be older, to have longer tenure in their positions and, if you believe what Line56 heard in Moscow a few years back, more skilled pound-for-pound in terms of hard science backgrounds.
India, meanwhile, has the advantages of sheer numbers, lower wages, and a more developed IT/BPO infrastructure (thanks to over a decade of heavy investment by the Indian government, Indian companies themselves, and multinationals like IBM eager to develop India-based service delivery).
In one sense, it's no wonder that Russian tech workers have spent longer at their jobs, because the average Russian is over 38 years old. The average Indian is, by comparison, 24. Russians, taken as a demographic mass, have had longer to gain education and experience in their fields. This means that, for certain kinds of outsourcing jobs, Russia may bring more to the table than India.
Those surveys include data about the Russian workforce by segment. In investigating ANCOR's website, Line56 found some documents describing characteristics of the Russian IT workforce in 2004.
What jumped out immediately was the experience of Russian IT workers.
Position/Average Tenure/Maximum Tenure
Support (hardware and software)/28 months/79 months
Computer Programmer/29 months/55 months
Systems Analyst/29 months/114 months
Network Specialist/37 months/96 months
Head of IT/48 months/126 months
Keeping in mind that the sample space was small (48 companies) and that the workers were not all involved in IT and business process outsourcing (BPO) delivery to US-based multinationals, the study is still worthwhile for portraying a technical workforce that, even back in 2004, was fairly mature.
This highlights one of the advantages of Russia and Eastern/Central Europe in general. Whether you're talking engineering, IT, or BPO, workers in these regions tend to be older, to have longer tenure in their positions and, if you believe what Line56 heard in Moscow a few years back, more skilled pound-for-pound in terms of hard science backgrounds.
India, meanwhile, has the advantages of sheer numbers, lower wages, and a more developed IT/BPO infrastructure (thanks to over a decade of heavy investment by the Indian government, Indian companies themselves, and multinationals like IBM eager to develop India-based service delivery).
In one sense, it's no wonder that Russian tech workers have spent longer at their jobs, because the average Russian is over 38 years old. The average Indian is, by comparison, 24. Russians, taken as a demographic mass, have had longer to gain education and experience in their fields. This means that, for certain kinds of outsourcing jobs, Russia may bring more to the table than India.