some have less and some have more
For several years now, the salaries of representatives of the Russian IT sector have been striking in their contrasts in comparison with other areas. Until now, in a couple of years, yesterday’s student programmer can earn twice as much as an experienced doctor. Many IT gurus earn like corporate tycoons while other professions lag behind. There is an opinion that this economic bubble should burst when the market is saturated with qualified personnel. But this will clearly not be in 2024. We collected on Youtube discussion of experts from Russian companies and Amazon to try to predict whether programmers' salaries will increase in 2024 and which developers should expect an increase in income and which should not.
The full version of the discussion, organized by our company Artezio, can be viewed on the channel Ai4Dev on Youtube. For the best comment under the video, we will give you a free subscription to films and TV series from the KION cinema. And we also have Telegram channel for developersthat use AI. You can exchange opinions and real cases there.
“Wage growth has not stopped…”
The growth of developer salaries in 2023 has slowed, but has not stopped. This is evidenced by experts and industry statistics, which indicate that finding a job in IT is no longer as easy as it used to be. Experienced developers and system analysts are at a premium.
“Wages in general are rising. This is evident from the trends and general interest in the process of increasing salaries. In my opinion, this is normal,” says Roman Martirosyan, CEO and co-founder of Smartex.
“I don’t notice a significant gap in the growth of developers’ salaries compared to other specialists. Previously, there may have been a hunt specifically for developers, especially in Russian Big Tech, which led to a strong increase in wages. But now, it seems to me, this period is ending, and it is growing at about the same rate as the national average,” he notes.
The increase in wages in software development over the past 10 years has never stopped. This is what he says Alexey Kozak, CEO of KODE.
“For 10 years in IT, I have seen annual salary growth. This is due to many factors, including fluctuations in the dollar exchange rate, which allows developers to demand higher salaries based on comparison with the income of colleagues outside of Russia. Also influencing are large technology companies within the country, which are constantly increasing the wages of their employees. Developers exchange information about salaries, which also affects income growth. At the same time, it is curious that developers with three years of experience, having learned about the income level of colleagues with seven years of experience, strive to receive the same amount as more experienced colleagues, but now, and not four years later,” says the expert.
Vladislav Gukasov, Software Development Engineer Amazon, says that wages have increased in 2023. True, not in Russia, but in Canada, where the expert works. But this may be an indicative fact reflecting an international trend.
“The increase was not due to a market bubble, but due to inflation. Companies are trying to catch up with it, but they are unlikely to succeed in doing so completely. We have seen that many companies in the US have carried out massive layoffs. For example, Amazon has laid off tens of thousands of employees as it recruited aggressively in 2021 and made bad bets on products. This involved Alexa speakers, which did not pay off. Nowadays there is a lot of attention paid to generative AI, for example, OpenAI. Some startups offer very high salaries. For example, middle-developers are offered up to 950 thousand dollars a year, which is a lot even for California. This leads to the fact that employees working in large companies like Facebook begin to overestimate their salaries and consider the possibility of moving to such startups,” says Gukasov.
In its turn Anastasia Ellison, head of the IT recruiting team at Outlines Tech, says that salaries in IT are growing, but not quickly.
“There is no big jump in wages. I don’t know if this is due to the fact that the market has stabilized and everyone has already decided on their place of work. Of course, salaries have increased. I can speak for the direction in which I work most often. We develop in various fields, including software. We have projects on 1C, and if previously the developer received 180 thousand rubles, now, due to the fact that except for 1C, no one can offer such software on the Russian market, he can claim 350 thousand. I think it’s a good jump from 180 to 350,” she notes.
“There are a lot of introverts in IT who find it difficult to talk about money”
Salary growth in development is a constant process that depends on many factors. One of them is the value of specific specialists and the presence of an incentive for businesses to retain them.
Some companies motivate employees themselves, others need to be asked in time.
“Big companies tend to have established processes for salary increases and reviews. For example, employees have promotion opportunities every quarter, but that doesn't mean they can actually get promoted every three months. This usually happens every two years and is initiated by the manager who sees the employee's progress. Salaries are also indexed once a year based on a 360-degree review from colleagues. If an employee has shown good results, his salary may be increased above the minimum indexation percentage,” says Software Development Engineer Amazon.
A representative of Russian business has a similar opinion. “You shouldn’t think that if someone doesn’t ask for a salary increase, they’re not interested in the market situation. That doesn't mean his family doesn't think he's underappreciated. It’s just that sometimes it’s easier for a person to look for new opportunities in the market than to discuss salary issues with the employer. This is especially true in the IT sector, where there are many introverts who find it difficult to talk about money. Therefore, it is important to be proactive in these matters,” notes Roman Martirosyan.
Alexey Kozak is confident that it is possible to work ahead of the salary increase schedule.
“We decided to regularly raise employee salaries: developers – every three months, engineers – every four months, administrative staff – once a year, and project managers – two to three times a year. About 40% of increases are from 5 to 10 thousand rubles per iteration, 22% are from 10 to 15 thousand, and the rest are more than 15 thousand. The average increase is approximately 14 thousand rubles. Note that these data include administrative staff, which lowers the average. If we exclude them from the calculation, the average increase step will be larger,” says the expert.
“When creating such a system, we analyzed previous periods and found that if we forgot about a salary increase for a developer or he did not ask for it, then at the end of the year the increase to retain the employee was much larger. Even more if we raised his salary regularly. When an employee enters the market, he may receive an offer with a higher salary, even if he already has a high salary. Therefore, any developer, regardless of level, can receive a 10% salary increase simply when entering the labor market,” said Alexey Kozak.
Estimates of the shortage of IT specialists in Russia have recently varied greatly. But Alexey Kozak believes that there is a shortage of employees in the domestic IT industry, including not only developers, but also engineers, analysts, and project managers. According to specialists, the deficit is about half a million people.
“It happens that we don’t have time to keep track, and he already comes to us with an offer”
In companies that do not use proactive methods of increasing wages, employees raise their own prices through invitations to work for another company. Experts say some people find it easier to take a job elsewhere than to talk about a pay rise with their current employer.
“There is a tendency in the market to look for an offer with a higher salary and come to management with it. Of course, our company has a care service. Cool girls work there who love, cherish and cherish our developers so that this does not happen. But it happens that we don’t have time to keep track, and he already comes to us with an offer. This is a very painful problem for us. I head the selection department, and this is a difficult task for me. After all, I need to find a specialist for the position from which he is leaving. That's why we love our developers and do everything for them to work with us. A salary increase is one of the incentives for them to stay. It is clear that corporate events and other benefits are additional perks. But the market is growing, and I don't just mean salaries. Everything is becoming more expensive, people need to live. We have a clear understanding that if we don’t raise the developer’s salary, we will save money today, but lose 50 developers tomorrow. This is a big loss for the company. Therefore, it’s easier to keep him now, raise his salary so that he feels comfortable,” notes Anastasia Ellison.
But there is a limit to any increase, says an expert from Canada. “While working for an outsourcing company in Russia four years ago, I noticed a rapid increase in my salary because I took the initiative to discuss my requests for salary increases. As a result, I was informed about the limit for my position in a particular company, after which I had no problems finding a job with a salary 50% higher in another. Such frameworks exist not only in Russia, but also in the USA. Any large company has clear limits for total compensation for each role, and to go beyond these limits, you need to be an exceptional employee working on a critical project,” says Vladislav Gukasov.
Anastasia Ellison believes that it is better to come to the manager and ask what needs to be done to get more.
“A person wants a big salary, is ready to consider other tasks or something else. He may be a functional tester now, but he can be given automation tasks that he has long wanted to do. And we have such a need. That is, everything can be resolved by ordinary conversation. And if you come with an offer, then it already looks like blackmail,” she notes.
Roman Martirosyan also agrees with this opinion. “It’s always bad to come with an offer and ask for a counter-offer. It is better to ask a question about how to become more useful. This is often overlooked by experts. They think only in a technical context, forgetting about the lack of soft skills, management. Every company is full of initiatives. If you outsource, you have a lot of different projects that require different skills. If you are in a large company, there are always a lot of internal projects. What is important here is the desire of the person who came for a promotion to personal growth. There are times when an employee wants more money, but is not ready to change his role, which is the problem. When there is dialogue, a solution can always be found,” he says.
“The choice of specialization does not affect earnings…”
There is an opinion that there are golden specializations in the industry that allow you to see the financial future always in a rosy light. According to Vladislav Gukasov, there are no such specializations.
“At Amazon, where I work as a software engineer, my responsibilities include frontend, backend, and DevOps. Sometimes I act as a Scrum Master and conduct testing myself. Unlike my experience in Russia, where in a team of eight people each had their own narrow specialization, here the team consists of one manager, a data engineer and seven general-purpose developers who perform a variety of tasks. Salary ranges for system analysts and developers, including DevOps, are the same for similar grades, so the choice of specialization does not affect earnings,” says the expert.
But there are also reasonable paths to more or less certain financial stability.
“In terms of technology, we use what the company requires. I moved from Go and PHP to Python, Node.js and Java after joining Amazon. In the West, it is often practiced that during interviews they do not ask about specific programming languages that you have used previously, but are asked to solve an algorithmic problem in any familiar language in order to evaluate your thinking. Thus, choosing the most common technology, such as Node.js or JavaScript for developers or Python for analysts, is smart,” says Gukasov.
Alexey Kozak believes that the issue of salary assessment of specialization lies in the plane of the market.
“Regardless of an employee’s skill level, there is always an opportunity for a salary increase. Of course, there are exceptions, for example, with newcomers to the profession. But in most cases, if a person is actively interviewing, then it is likely that an investment company seeking to increase its workforce will offer him a salary increase. It could be a 10% increase or sometimes a 20-30% increase,” he says.
At the same time, the expert believes that it would be ideal if employees not only asked what they need to do to increase their salaries, but also offered specific ways to improve their work, for example, speeding up the completion of a project or reducing the number of employees required for this.
“This approach makes decision-making easier, since the employee already provides all the necessary data and independently analyzes opportunities to improve his work. This is an ideal scenario for interaction between an employee and management,” the expert sums up.
Universal advice for those who want to earn more is to be proactive, says an Amazon employee.
“Companies are usually accommodating if you show initiative and are interested in how to improve your skills or take on more responsibility to increase your salary. If your price is no longer too high, then you can usually achieve an increase without any problems,” the expert reassures.
And again, instead of output
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