We live and work not in capitals: software development market in Nizhny Novgorod
Nizhny Novgorod. Photo by Stanislav Kaznov
Most recently, I visited Innopolis for the first time, if someone has not yet heard, “the Russian Silicon Valley”. At the event in which I participated, there were presented slides about the possibility of relocating IT specialists in Russia and, in particular, a slide with the cities most attractive for relocation. The first two places in it were obvious, but then there was a place for questions. The third place was taken by Krasnodar, the fourth - by Novosibirsk, followed by Nizhny Novgorod and Kazan. The distribution of the last two cities caused almost indignation among the audience, why Nizhny was higher. Nizhegorodtsev at the event were three people, we did not justify, although this distribution was obvious to me.
In Russia, companies working in the field of software development are mostly located in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and you can’t argue with that. About these cities they write a lot, and capital companies more often fall into all sorts of ratings. However, in addition to the two capitals, we also have several relatively large centers of concentration of development companies. I am sure that many will at least be curious to learn about the state of the development market in the regions of the country, and the rating compilers will definitely learn a lot of new things.
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I will tell you about Nizhny Novgorod, one of the five largest IT-cities in Russia. Unfortunately, you will not find any official statistics or just data on the number of specialists working in the regions, but the place occupied is confirmed by indirect data from various sources. By the number of resumes and vacancies in the “Programming, Development” and “Testing” professional areas, posted on hh.ru for the last month, Nizhny Novgorod is in 5th place after Moscow, St. Petersburg, Moscow Region and Novosibirsk. In LinkedIn, by the number of specialist profiles in the Computer Software and Information Technology and Services industries, Nizhny Novgorod is in sixth place after Moscow, St. Petersburg, Moscow Region, Novosibirsk Region and Sverdlovsk Region (LinkedIn locations coincide with the administrative and territorial division of the country, i.e. professional network considers users not by city, but by region). In one of the few rankings found by outsourcing world centers, Nizhny Novgorod in 2016 took the 60th place and became one of three Russian cities, which fell into it (the 37th place was taken by St. Petersburg, 64th - Moscow) and this is a very worthy result for the city. In my estimation, at the moment, there are 8-10 thousand software development specialists working in the capital of the Volga region - development, testing, business and system analysts, project managers (my vision differs from the official data of the Ministry of Communications and Microsoft data, which totaled more than 350 thousand professional developers in Russia at the beginning of the tenth). Let's see what they all do.
Specialization of Nizhny Novgorod companies
Nizhny Novgorod can rightfully be called one of the centers of international IT outsourcing and software development. The city has the widest range of companies by size and geography of work, by specialization and technology. Unlike other locations, Nizhny definitely has its own “face”: the main players in the market are not small web and mobile development studios, not state companies, but big companies developing serious products, developing development tools and research projects. The areas of activity of development centers in Nizhny Novgorod are really diverse: there are projects related to mobile development, incl. development of mobile devices at the level of HW platforms, web development, projects in telecom, banking, billing projects, Big Data and IoT solutions, many automotive projects, computer vision projects, VR and AR, neural networks and machine learning. There is also the development of "hardware" and related software.
Office MERA on the street. Business. Photo MERA Intel Office on the street. Turgenev. Photo A. Lis
Harman office on st. Salganskaya. Photo HARMAN BC "Orbit" on the street. Nartova. Auriga Photos
The largest software development companies in Nizhny Novgorod are now MERA with more than 1,300 employees, Intel with more than 700 employees, HARMAN with 600 employees, NetCracker with 300+ employees and MFI Soft with the same 300+ employees. The table below lists the 20 largest companies and their specialization is described. Of the well-known in Russia in Nizhny Novgorod, their offices were opened by Yandex, Mail.ru, Tinkoff Bank, GameInsight, Luxoft, Auriga, ROI, First Line Software, Positive Technologies, Artezio and LANIT-BP, Bell Integrator , “Jet Infosystems”, “IT”, “Sberbank-Technology”. In total, the city has more than 150 companies whose main activity is software development.
The past few years, news in the local market appeared one after another. NetCracker and Sberbank-Technologies offices and a whole scattering of smaller companies opened in the city. Intel started optimizing and concentrating the entire development in Nizhny Novgorod, and then announced the purchase of ItSeez, a Nizhny Novgorod-based company in the field of computer vision. Outsource Teleca was purchased by the manufacturer of automotive embedded systems and sound equipment HARMAN, which in turn, has just become part of the huge Samsung. Amazon acquired a small company 2lemetry, another company, Opencascade, was taken over by Capgemini. MERA grew into an international holding, went beyond Nizhny Novgorod and opened offices in Kazan, Belgrade (Serbia) and Santa Clara (USA), and then moved its headquarters to Zurich, Switzerland. Not without loss: the telecommunications developer SwitchRay ceased to exist due to problems with finding customers.
The main news of this year has already become the opening of offices of development of “Tinkoff Bank” and Luxoft. Another noteworthy news was the organization of the development office of the startup “Dodo Pizza” based on the Nizhny Novgorod company SmartStep group. It will be interesting to see who's next.
| The largest software companies in Nizhny Novgorod | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Title | Specialization | Number of employees | ||
| Mera | Custom software development for telecommunications, automotive, retail, medical, energy and other companies | 1300 | ||
| Intel | Development in the field of computer vision and machine learning, multimedia, IoT, tools for developers | 700 | ||
| HARMAN | Development of automotive embedded systems, IoT, mobile devices and mobile devices | 600 | ||
| MFI Soft | Development of information security systems, traffic filtering and legal control systems, antifraud systems | 330 | ||
| Netcracker | Development of OSS / BSS, SDN / NFV solutions for telecom operators | 310 | ||
| Tecom | Software development in the field of broadcasting and telecommunications | 160 | ||
| Auriga | Development of application and system software for high-tech, medical, automotive companies | 160 | ||
| Seldon | Development of information and analytical systems | 150 | ||
| Five9 | Cloud Call Center (SaaS) Development | 130 | ||
| Transit | Development of ERP, OSS and CMMS solutions | 130 | ||
| Artezio | Custom software development in the field of enterprise-wide information systems, web development | 85 | ||
| Sberbank-Technology | Banking Software Development | 80 | ||
| OS33 | Development of corporate applications and solutions | 80 | ||
| First Line Software | Custom software development in industrial, financial, technological areas, for state-owned companies | 80 | ||
| Game insight | Game development | 80 | ||
| SVTEKNN | Development of automotive multimedia solutions | 70 | ||
| Yandex | Development of Yandex.Browser, Yandex.Maps services | 70 | ||
| New communication technology | Multimedia solutions development, mobile and web development | 65 | ||
| ROI | Custom Software Development | 60 | ||
| Intech global | Development of solutions in the field of mobile commerce, digital content, IoT | 60 | ||
| The plans of Tinkoff Bank office are 50-100 employees, Luxoft - 80 employees | ||||
Schools and training opportunities
Nizhny Novgorod boasts two excellent institutions of higher education that prepare software developers. The first of them Nizhny Novgorod State University. N. I. Lobachevsky (UNN), the second - Nizhny Novgorod State Technical University. R. E. Alekseeva (NSTU). At UNN, specialized specialists are issued by the Institute of Information Technologies, Mathematics and Mechanics, at NSTU - by the Institute of Radio Electronics and Information Technologies. In addition to these two universities, excellent specialists are graduated from the Higher School of Economics and their Faculty of Informatics, Mathematics and Computer Science, a certain number of specialists are trained by other universities in the region, which have opened corresponding faculties and courses. Just a year, local universities produce more than a thousand technical experts, of whom several hundred choose the work of a developer.
Building of the 2nd building of UNN. Photo Wikipedia NSTU main building. Photo Wikipedia
A significant role in the training and retraining of specialists is played by the largest companies working closely with universities. Back in 2004, the largest MERA organized the Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Information Technologies - the Institute for Advanced Studies and Retraining. Here, according to information on their website, training is provided for schoolchildren, students and adult specialists, 400-500 people graduate a year. Actively develops its cooperation programs with Intel universities, in Nizhny Novgorod - with UNN. Together with the State University, the corporation organized a Competence Center for Wireless Communication Systems. Several dozen students annually do internships at Intel and gain experience and knowledge quoted throughout the world. In addition, Intel holds an annual summer school, which invites not only students of Nizhny Novgorod universities, but also from other regions. Many of them subsequently receive an offer to become part of the Intel team and move to Nizhny Novgorod. Other companies have their own development and testing schools - HARMAN, NetCracker, Auriga, Tecom. By the way, well-known international companies that are not represented by offices in Nizhny Novgorod cooperate and develop their schools: within the framework of cooperation with Microsoft, the Center for High Performance Computing operates, together with NVIDIA the Technology Research Center is established and successfully operates.
Finally, the professional community itself contributes to the training. Perhaps the best example is the free testing schools run regularly by the QA Alliance. This community, organized by enthusiasts, is developing well and is known, including outside Nizhny Novgorod.
Communities, groups and events
As you know, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Perhaps for this reason I have a feeling that local communities still have room to develop. However, it is gratifying that in the last year the growth is really visible. Finally, the number of groups and communities flows into quality. Also, new players who came to the region began to use new formats of interaction between specialists, there is a qualitative improvement in the events held, and the number of participants is growing.
In order to make it easier for various specialists to keep track of IT events, a single portal IT52 was created. Currently, information about events is distributed to all popular messengers using written bots and on social networks. Here is the site of events and the Vkontakte group . C ++ developers, Java developers , JSNN JavaScript developers, Python developers , game developers, QA Club testing engineers, Google technology fans (where without them!) Created their own independent and relatively independent groups. GDG Nizhny Novgorod , IT HR Nizhny Novgorod IT HR community (where without them - 2!) And others. All these communities and groups regularly hold events of various formats. In addition, [recruiting] events on certain topics and for certain categories of specialists are regularly held by many companies, first of all, relatively recently opened their offices. The drawback is felt only in top and mass events with the invitation of foreign speakers and the corresponding entourage. Last year, the second GDG DevFest, which took place in December and gathered more than 300 participants, was almost the only such event.
One of the GDG events. Photo GDG RFBL Cup in Nizhny Novgorod. Photo RFBL
Separately, it is worth noting the sports life of the city. Unlike St. Petersburg, where IT-Dominant creates an excellent base for sports competitions, IT-Olympics annually take place in Nizhny Novgorod, organized by one of the industry's enthusiasts. Nikolai Alexandrovich Zelenov once worked in one of the oldest IT companies in the city, Telma (now HARMAN Connected Services), and organized sports events, and after leaving the company, he began to organize the same events on a city scale. The first Olympics was organized ten years ago by three major companies - MERA, Telma and Intel. Today from January to April there are competitions in mini-football, basketball, volleyball, badminton, table tennis, rifle shooting, chess, darts in which dozens of local companies participate. In addition to this IT Games, other sporting events regularly take place in the city, but without bright IT coloring.
Government support for the information technology industry
This part will not be too long. I think that government support for the development of information technology in Nizhny Novgorod is not particularly different from other regions. Of course, initiatives are being declared, round tables are regularly held, I am sure that positive reports are sent to the top, but the results are not visible. In 2015, on the outskirts of the city, the Ankudinovka Technopark was built (according to the same state program “Creating Technoparks in the High-Tech Sphere in the Russian Federation”, technoparks were built in other cities), which, as declared, will become the center of industry development in the region . However, so far, not a single more or less significant company has yet appeared among its residents. The park's website lists 12 residents , most of whom are small web and mobile development studios. In my opinion, at the moment the technopark building is a good place to hold various industry events, for which we will say thanks to our state.
Building Technopark Ankudinovka. Photos from the website of the Ministry of Communications of Russia
Cost of living and wages
Nizhny Novgorod is far from the most expensive city in Russia and, accordingly, wages are not the highest in the country. By the way, this, along with the number of technicians graduating from universities, and the total number of companies, was one of the factors behind the high-ranking Tholons rating mentioned at the beginning of the article. Nevertheless, if we talk about the salaries of programmers, then we can say with confidence that they are growing at a rapid pace, well ahead of the average salaries of employees of companies from other industries. At the same time, competition between companies led to a wild state of the market, when specialists with a couple of years of experience can get more or the same amount than experienced specialists with five years of experience. Companies opening offices in Nizhny Novgorod, while able to easily offer good conditions and save compared to employees in Moscow. At the same time, newcomers are fueling the growth of supply from long-established companies. Of course, the specialists who work remotely for Western companies can boast the highest salaries.
The cost of living in Nizhny Novgorod can be viewed, for example, on the Numbeo website. This is an international resource and Russian cities are not so popular in it, but the data presented in it may well give a general idea of prices. Here are quite detailed data on Nizhny Novgorod and a few key lines here.
| Cost of Living in Nizhniy Novgorod | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurants | Avg. | Range | ||
| Meal for 2 People, Mid-range Restaurant, Three-course | 1,700.00 rub | 1,000.00-2,000.00 | ||
| Utilities (Monthly) | Avg. | Range | ||
| Basic (Electricity, Heating, Water, Garbage) for 85m2 Apartment | 6,083.16 rub | 5,000.00-8,500.00 | ||
| Sports and leisure | Avg. | Range | ||
| Fitness Club, Monthly Fee for 1 Adult | 2,025.90 rub | 1,126.63-3,000.00 | ||
| Rent per month | Avg. | Range | ||
| Apartment (1 bedroom) in City Center | 19,059.18 rub | 15,000.00-22,532.64 | ||
| Buy Apartment Price | Avg. | Range | ||
| Price per Square Meter to Buy Apartment in City Center | 78,666.67 rub | 70,000.00-100,000.00 | ||
| Price per Square Meter to Buy Apartment Outside of Center | 55,000.00 rub | 50,000.00-65,000.00 | ||
| 12 months from 32 different contributors. Last update: April, 2017 | ||||
Talk about salaries is a very ungrateful business. I have already mentioned that the market can be called wild and the variation in the resulting income of experts who are similar in experience is very large, but for the sake of completeness, let's try to give an estimate. The numbers will be more or less relevant for professionals working in the office full-time.
| Specialist Experience | Salary framework, rub. |
|---|---|
| Junior Development Engineer, 0.5+ years | 25000-35000 |
| Development Engineer, 1+ years | 40000-70000 |
| Senior Development Engineer / Lead Development Engineer, 5+ years | 80000-160000 |
| Architect, 11+ years | 120000-230000 |
| Junior Test Engineer, 0.5+ years | 20,000-30000 |
| Test Engineer, 1+ years | 35000-50000 |
| Senior Test Engineer / Lead Test Engineer, 5+ years | 55000-100000 |
| Project Manager, 8+ years | 120000-230000 |
Instead of conclusion
Despite the serious differentiation of the development market in Russia with a serious bias towards the capitals, it is pleasing that Nizhny Novgorod does not stand still. There are a lot of companies working in the most recent “hot” areas in the city, new players come to the city every year, the connectivity of communities and the IT ecosystem as a whole is growing rapidly. Among the negative factors, I would point out the insufficient attention to the development of the industry by the state and the insufficient development of the city itself as an attractive place of residence. Many recognize that the city has great potential in terms of tourism, but as a resident I will say that it is not yet used sufficiently. It is great to see the emergence of top events of all-Russian and even international scale, such as the Alfa Future People electronic music festival or the Volga Swim sport event, but I would also like to see the work of the state again. I would like to hope that future big events (the World Cup in 2018 and the 800th anniversary of the city in 2021) will transform the city. Nizhny Novgorod in its history has passed a remarkable path - it was a fortress on the outskirts of the country, became a trade capital, turned into the largest industrial center - and now it would be logical to see it as a major IT city. We'll see.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/327838/
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