The IT crisis is not as bad as it is made out to be
In my opinion, during this time, from a not very motivated junior, it would be possible to mold a more or less tolerable middle, and the middle could be promoted to senior, if there was a desire and such a strong personnel shortage as it is described. But this did not happen, and as if it will not happen, and there is a slight feeling that in a year or two, the old songs about the main thing will be heard again, that cool specialists are needed.
You shall not pass!
And of course, once the juniors are hooked, how can you not think about the topic of “voitishniks”. Another measure of the state of the industry is the overabundance of people willing to break into it by any means. There are a bunch of online courses promising guaranteed employment, and a galaxy of seniors who are ready, for a “symbolic” reward, to be a personal mentor and coach, coach you to an interview and help with an offer. Those who like to “cheat up” experience and pretend to be a signor for the sake of the coveted offer stand apart.
Urgently, the guy needs help
Somewhere on the sidelines stand thousands of graduates of technical specialties, graduated from universities every year, with a silent question: “What should we do, we studied for this for 4 years?”
Actually, if we also leave out the years 2020-2021, when almost everyone who wanted it was hired for the minimum skills, then the situation has changed in only two aspects.
Much more is required from a beginning developer than 5-6 years ago. The reason, in my opinion, is trivial – the requirements for software development have increased, which has led to the use of additional tools that you need to be able to use. These are frameworks for web applications, and frameworks for testing and for working with databases. Containerization has become the de facto standard for application deployment, which is also asked of candidates. And Git, where would we be without it. Somewhere else they throw up a bunch of questions and ask for message brokers and other niceties. At the same time, the standard requirements for understanding SQL and programming language theory have not gone away.
The employer is not interested in candidates without commercial experience. The reason, it seems to me, follows from the previous point – this is the easiest way to select those who have mastered these technologies. This is, of course, a very debatable point, but it’s difficult to come up with a way out of the many candidates to select those who can quickly adapt to your business processes and spend less time learning the necessary technologies than others. Well, as an additional bonus, if a person has worked somewhere for a year or two, then he will be able to work in a team, will not suddenly disappear, will not fail the sprint, etc. Therefore, during the day you won’t find developer vacancies that hire remotely and without experience.
Hence all these thousands of people who want to enter behind the fence, thousands of views on videos “How to enter IT”, attempts to pass themselves off as an experienced specialist and everything else. And, in my opinion, this in no way means that there is anything wrong with IT. For every product there is a merchant. As I wrote above, in IT there are still high salaries, which are physically faster and easier to get than in other industries, so people take courses and want to break in lightly. Unfortunately, it won’t work out lightly; they will spend their money, won’t receive an offer and will forget about this idea, making room for the more motivated and talented.
Take professional sports for example. Many people know that football players receive a lot of money, but few realize that this is just the tip of the iceberg. And behind high salaries there is exhausting regular work, discipline and motivation. In the same Russian Premier League there are 16 teams, which in total is about 350 football players who receive a good salary and are the elite. And the RPL is followed by several more divisions, where they receive significantly less, or even combine it with other work. At the same time, dozens of football academies graduate thousands of students every year; calculate for yourself what their chances of entering the sport are. Therefore, anyone who is talented, hardworking and purposeful will have a chance to get somewhere to be screened, and perhaps get a contract. And the vast majority will simply abandon the idea of professional sports and this does not surprise anyone.
Yes, perhaps it is not entirely correct to compare these things, but I just wanted to say the obvious – a situation is impossible when a warm, tasty place will be empty for a long time, and you can get a job easily and playfully. Actually, this is what happened with IT, which was bound to happen sooner or later. Only those who are willing to study a lot and hard, practice and be able to quickly absorb information will enter IT. Isn’t that a sign of a healthy industry, as opposed to mass recruitment of everyone? And there are still internships in large companies, regular qualifying competitions and online campuses from the largest companies.
Actually, what was all this said for? I recently became a developer and the IT boom passed me by, but I look at the current situation through the eyes of a person who knows a little about economic theory. And the idea that I wanted to convey is the following. Most people who have been in IT for many years, in my opinion, take the past boom for granted, considering it natural growth, and the current state as unhealthy, because it was better before. As for me, it’s more likely that what happened before was not particularly healthy and was the very disease for which IT can be treated quite successfully.
I would like to know the opinion of the community, how do you generally feel about the IT industry in Russia now, what are your thoughts? Don’t you think there’s too much ado about nothing?
Also, I also have a small telegram channelwhere I will be happy to chat and answer any questions.
