If there’s one good thing that has come from the global economic recession, it’s the fact that things will never be the same again in the land of IT. At long last, people are being given a push to re-evaluate the way IT businesses or branches operate, and adjust the rules of the game in order to make more business sense. So, while I sit around waiting for a decent job to come by, here are some observations about how things are changing on the Russian IT market.
Telecommuting is starting to make sense
Now that cost cutting is all the rage, employers are realizing that having people work in offices full-time is not such a good idea: it’s a lot of extra costs that could be negated if you let people work from home. These costs can then be taken as savings or used to increase employee motivation in other, creative ways. Taking myself as an example, my productivity when working from home is several times greater because:
I don’t spend extra 2 hours a day going to and from work
My computers are vastly superior to anything any office can provide
I have a library greater than any a Russian firm can possibly have. (then again, some don’t even have books at all)
My working conditions are ideal. Space, adequate lighting, furniture, cooked food, everything is better
It’s always funny when, oftentimes, I hear from some employer or other that ‘work from home is not real work’ or that ‘it doesn’t count’. I hope such employers change their minds because, with the changing climate, they might be rejected more and more.
The myth of cheap programmers is disappearing
I guess there was a time ‘before my time’ when lost of western businessmen went east with hopes of finding ‘great programmers, cheaply’. However, one thing that Russian companies realized is that competing on price is pointless, because countries like India will always win, especially if you compare hourly rates – if you compare eventual project costs, my guess is things would be different. But that’s now really what I want to talk about.
What I’m talking about is using this ‘economic crisis’ as a pretext to hire good programmers cheaply. It doesn’t work. People just stay at home, work freelance, sit on their savings. People who came to the larger cities from smaller ones simply go back to cut living costs and wait things out. That’s not to say that employers do not try – they do. I personally have been to interviews where the offered rate was 1/2 or 1/3rd of the ‘expected market rate’ (I’m saying ‘expected’ because market rates have, in fact, gone down). Admittedly, I did enjoy the interviews, but summarily rejected the offers – something I’m hearing from other people looking for lead positions.
Sure, people get hired into PM/Lead roles for measly money. I mean, someone has to take the job, right? And I’m guessing that anyone looking for a very fast ‘career’ climb (notice I’m using quotes here) will get exactly that – a difficult position with inadequate compensation. Hey, so long as everyone is happy, I won’t really complain.
Employers are more picky
There is two observations I have with regard to employment nowadays. The first is, the relationship between emloyers and employees in a hiring situation have deteriorated greatly. I used to see a situation where companies would express concrete desire to hire a particular person, entice them, etc. Not anymore! In 2009, the hiring process is strict, methodical and ruthless. And this is great!
Why is it great! Because, previously, many firms had such a bad process filtering out the losers. Ask a few general questions, get a few sensible answers, hey, you’re hired! But now, nobody is spending a dollar until they are sure that that dollar is an investment, and not a ballast expense. Consequently, if you’re smart, it’s becoming easier to outgun people who, despite having more experience than you, don’t know jack about technology.
There is, of course, lots of stuff missing. For example, employers still do not care about community involvement. They care about projects done, but they don’t ask about talks given or papers written. This differentiating factor is taken out of the equation. Another factor is that nobody bothers to check for references. I mean, seriously, it’s just a phone call to find out whether the person quit or whether they were fired for being grossly incompetent. It seems that Russian HR simply cannot be bothered. Maybe the situation will change some day, who knows?
Also, though social skills are often listed as a desire for a project management position, nobody actually asks to demonstrate in any fashion the fact that those skills are there. In fact, this is another requirement that is completely missing from the job description of most development positions, often to the subsequent detriment of collective work. Still, we aren’t at the point yet where everyone realizes it’s important.
People are more mindful of quality
It’s the same old thing reiterated: if you don’t care about quality, you may as well choose the cheapest outsourcing provider you can find. If you do, it’s a lot more difficult to find the right one. In these challenging times, I find that people are becoming more concerned with the way quality is controlled during software production. TDD, continuous integration, coverage, mocking, dependency analysis – these used to be words of myth that people used to shrug off just ‘so long as it works’. Well, now they are coming to the fore, since there’s a growing realization that a developer that isn’t constantly mindful of the testability of their software is not such a great developer after all.
It has become very hard to measure quality, though, primarily because institutions like the CMM got discredited somewhat, leaving companies with few means beyond the good old chat with the customer to demonstrate that they take quality control seriously. For example, if the only code checking you do on a .NET project is with FxCop, I’m sure you’ll get laughed out of most meetings simply because nowadays, everyone realizes how awfully inadequate any single tool is. Once again, I’m loving this, because the time invested into learning about the different test/mock frameworks is going to start to pay off – hopefully for me and not just for whatever company I choose to work for.
A post-crisis reshuffle is almost guaranteed
If I was desperate to find a job now, my guess is that I would accept any paycheck that would feed me and my family. Many people have done precisely that, which is why the elusive market rate has slipped (it has also slipped because of a strong dollar, but anyone smart enough would have hedged against this anyway). However, if we assume that the recession is about to end at some point (say, within a year), my guess is there would be a reckoning where companies would, once again, be able to pay top dollar (rouble, in some cases) for lead positions. And this would most likely cause the ‘middle management’ layer of IT companies to get reshuffled once again, as large companies with renewed economic strength will headhunt the top talent and get it. That is, if things ever get back to normal.