Where to work well in Runet: All-Russian research of IT brands 2021

The Habr and ECOPSY team is starting the second survey of employers’ IT brands. It will be useful for HR and marketing departments of companies that are joining (or have already joined) the IT community, as well as for IT specialists who want to anonymously convey their wishes to employers. By participating in this research, you are helping to grow the community, because companies that are trying to become more attractive to IT pros take inspiration from our analytics.

Results of last year’s research here (if you are too lazy to read, you can listen to speech by Artem Grinev). Thanks for the blog discussions, comments and suggestions: we’ve made a lot of improvements. About what was and what will be – under the cut.

What goodies we got from past research

We talked about the research at various conferences and meetups. We visited the RIF, the IT-summit, the conference of the “State” magazine; preparing for a couple more conferences. By popularizing the agenda and expanding the potential scope of the study, we were able to paint a comprehensive picture of the IT labor market.

We learned a lot about the relationship between employers and IT specialists

The study revealed the real picture of communication between employers and IT specialists, and we have made a number of publications about this. Read, for example, article on IT education (especially if you are a humanist and are afraid to ask how to become an IT specialist) or post about who represents the IT community (Recommended if you’re wondering how popular your specialization really is). These are just two of the many cases: the rest of the publications can be found here…

Companies were able to see themselves from the outside

Of the 500 companies that participated in the survey, 30 were especially interested in the survey results. We talked to representatives of these companies more closely and showed them how IT people perceive them as employers. This required recreating company portraits through the eyes of different target audiences, and for many, such an outside perspective was insightful, sometimes inspiring, and sometimes down-to-earth. “Who is the loveliest in the world?” – not all the magic mirror answered this question the way they would like.

For example, it was a discovery for one company from the fintech industry that employees do not see the potential for professional growth within the team, but at the same time, applicants believe that the company provides opportunities for rapid skill development. The result is a situation of overheated expectations of candidates with the attendant risks of disappointment in employment.

At meetings with the management of the companies, we found the reasons for the discrepancies and negative assessments. As a result, the companies improved their communications and IT brand – objective analytics helped rethink processes and introduce new practices.

It became clear how to work with IT specialists

We have launched a cycle of free habraseminars on the IT brand (for details, see. here). The most daring and open employers came to us and shared insights: they talked, for example, about the difference between building an IT brand for companies from industry and fintech, who the devrels are, and what role content plays in entering the IT community. Real cases from their own practice were analyzed by such companies as MegaFon, Deutsche Bank and Severstal.

What we took into account in the second study following your comments

We launched the first study a year ago, when we assessed the situation in the IT-specialists market and realized that a noticeable staff shortage with rapidly growing demand is becoming a trend. Thus, the Agency for Strategic Initiatives has established that there is a need for 1 million specialists in the Russian Federation, while their actual number is about 350,000 people. Our initiative was different from previously released IT employer ratings (for example, from Habr Careers) methodology and point of view: we proceeded precisely from the attitude of the IT specialists themselves to the IT brands of employers. At the heart of the survey is a funnel of four levels, through which companies were driven:

Following the chosen principle, we listened to the feedback from respondents and worked on the mistakes.

“I don’t find company X on your list, but I wanted to evaluate it …”

Indeed, given the fact that employers are more than 20,000 companies, making a complete list is not a trivial task. However, we:

• added a number of companies to better cover the market of IT employers (there were 500 in the list, now 702). Last time, some respondents directly indicated in the comments inside the questionnaire which companies are missing;

• added the ability for the respondent to search for companies in the list, and at the end of the survey, list the missing ones, if he wants.

“Did you only take part in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Voronezh? Where are the rest of the regions? “

The most active were the respondents from these locations. It’s cool, but I still want to expand the list of regions. To solve this problem, we have partnered with regional universities, communities, conferences and other organizations that would be interested in “measuring the mood in the IT labor market”. Here is a list of our friends who will attract IT specialists through their channels: HSE (Higher School of Economics), ITMO University, MAI (Moscow Aviation Institute), Kazan Federal University, Novosibirsk State University, Higher IT School HITs and Tomsk State University, Tyumen State University, SEZ “Innopolis”, Academpark (Novosibirsk), RAEC, krd.dev, a consulting company in the field of game development Values ​​Value, Open Data Science, ProductSense, ITMO Case Club, Ontico, Moscow Programmers Club.

By the way, if you are an IT community (conference, public, group, media or university) that wants to understand its own device and find out the opinion of its employees, just collect a representative sample and write to us. We will help you conduct your research and come to useful conclusions.

“It’s a pity that they didn’t publish the entire rating – it’s interesting to see the full picture, and not just the list of tops.” And one more thing: “I wish there were more such publications: it is useful for HR and devrels!”

We agree with both comments. In 2020, the study was essentially a pilot, such a project (both in terms of volume, methodology, and sample size) was implemented in Russia for the first time, so we published and voiced only the top 20 companies and key findings. This year we decided that:

• we will publish a wider list of employers (at least the top 50) so that each Habr reader can see a more complete picture of the companies and get acquainted with the opinions of their colleagues in the shop. We will add divisions by market sectors to the ratings – this was also asked by many blog subscribers;

• We will tell you about the types of specialists based on their preferences when choosing an employer, as well as what industry specifics we have seen in companies;

• we will make publications about motivational profiles for different age categories and tell you about whether the criteria for choosing an employer are different for men and women.

There were also a lot of comments on the technical part of the survey… We have fixed all the bugs that you wrote about in the comments, but we do not stop there and ask you to leave suggestions on what else can be fixed or made better.

So, what goodies you can get from research is clear. But how can you participate in it – and thereby improve the IT landscape and make the life of IT people a little better?

How the survey works

Any IT specialist can take part in the survey. You don’t need to go anywhere, you don’t need to show your passport either, everything is done quickly and anonymously. Here is the survey itself.

We do not ask for your full name, mail, ID or anything else that can identify you. We only collect socio-demographic information and occupational data in order to analyze it and make perceptual cuts. Moreover, we do not show the raw data to anyone, so the respondents’ answers are completely anonymous.

We accept your grades and employer stories until August 15th. Then we will process the data and share the results. Well, so that the wait is not boring, along the way we will publish our observations on the previous survey and conduct habraseminars.

When will the results be

We will share the results as soon as we complete the survey and process the data. Tentatively – September. Until that moment, it will be available analytics from past research…