The first alarms about the IT escape came already at the end of February last year. When Putin then ordered a “partial mobilization” in September, the flow of IT employees gained further momentum.
In December, Russia’s Minister of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev was quoted by Russian media as saying that the number of IT specialists who left during the year had reached 100,000 – a figure described as low by experts.
It is no coincidence that employees in the IT sector in particular choose to leave to a large extent. Many have made international contacts through their work, while the salaries are often higher than average.
Civil society is hit the hardest
According to Shadayev, the loss corresponds to around 10 percent of the industry, which already sounded the alarm about staff shortages before 2022. Then add Western companies leaving the country and sanctions against technology imports and a dark picture of Russian development emerges.
The biggest loser looks to be civil society. When skills are lacking, Russia has a tradition of prioritizing defense, explains Carolina Vendil Pallin, research leader at the Total Defense Research Institute (FOI).
– When it published its national security strategy in July 2021, it had a goal of balancing security needs with socio-economic development. It has completely disappeared I would say. The whole of Russian politics is now dominated by the warfare in Ukraine.
Defense industry unattractive
But even if the message from Putin is that the defense will get everything they need, there are apparently problems there as well. Russian IT specialists with whom SVT has been in contact testify that the defense sector is seen as an unattractive employer associated with low wages and “Soviet-like” working methods. Vendil Pallin tunes in.
– If you work in the defense sector, you cannot travel abroad in the same way. You can’t even have the network of contacts that many are used to in this sphere. The fact that Russia is cut off from a large part of the world also has negative consequences.