Achievements of the IT industry of Ukraine: record growth of vacancies and requests for IT services, new formats of work:
- In the second half of 2020, Ukrainian companies fully recovered from the crisis and began to show record growth rates. Several Ukrainian companies have already crossed the 10,000 mark. The traditional TOP-50 DOU rating has increased by almost 8,000 specialists in six months and this is a record figure;
- Demand for IT specialists in Ukraine is growing by an average of 30% annually, there are 30-40 vacancies for each employed specialist. Currently, the number of vacancies in this area exceeds the number of relevant specialists who have posted their resumes on the Internet by 39.2% (analytics of the Center for Economic Strategy (CES);
- 15,000 / 20,000 is the number of IT graduates of Ukrainian universities each year, but this is not enough. A positive result gives an increase in the switchers’ industry (specialists who have retrained as IT specialists);
- The industry needs at least 54,000 new IT engineers in 2021, given the 30 percent growth in the job market;
The biggest challenges of the Ukrainian IT industry: the exhaustion of the Ukrainian talent market, the growth of competition in the world, etc.:
- Lack of qualified specialists. Every year, Ukrainian educational institutions graduate 15-20 thousand technical specialists, but in 2021 the industry will need at least 54 thousand specialists to cover the needs of the market;
- The education system needs to be restructured to support the growth of the industry. This is possible given the synergy of efforts on the part of the government, business, and educational institutions. A powerful platform for this is the largest conference in the field of IT education Synergy: IT Business & IT Education, which is organized annually by IT Ukraine;
- For a qualitative leap of Ukrainian IT-education we need:
- close cooperation between business and government in the development of training programs that meet market challenges;
- resource provision of educational institutions, which will allow studying theoretical material in practice;
- cooperation of business and educational institutions in the direction of continuous professional development of teachers: internship programs, participation in projects, trainings, and seminars, etc.;
The Association constantly cooperates with the Ministry of Education and Science in the direction of IT education development. Therefore, in November 2020, we re-signed a Memorandum of Cooperation. The reason for this was the strengthening of cooperation between the parties in the form of the implementation of a number of educational projects, especially relevant in quarantine in the context of digitalization of education.
- Challenges of the “overheated” market: due to the difficulty in finding specialists, customers can pay attention to other countries;
- Ukraine’s IT market is part of the global market, so Ukrainian IT companies are increasingly competing with global giants – not only for customers but also for professionals. For example, currently Ukrainian IT companies are actively hiring IT specialists in Poland and other countries. For example, in addition to Poland, Intellias has started hiring specialists from Belarus, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.
Diia.City – Law №4303 passed. What to expect next:
- Taking into account all comments from the IT industry in the context of Diia.City is very important to maintain the growth rate of the industry;
- IT Ukraine Association has defended and continues to defend the interests of the IT industry throughout the period of work on the draft law № 4303. At present, not all comments and suggestions from IT Ukraine have been taken into account;
- Among the most important points advocated by the IT Ukraine Association are:
- protection of IT specialists-sole proprietors who cooperate with IT companies. Such cooperation should not be limited and regarded as an employment relationship;
- maintaining the existing tax burden on the IT industry and existing business models;
- exclusion of the section on the association of residents of Diia.City (the so-called SRO) from the bill. After all, individuals and legal entities already have such a constitutional right, regardless of the law on Diia.City;
- lack of any governmental regulators for the IT industry;
- development of IT education;
- adoption of the law “Masks-show stop-3”.
- We are waiting for the vote on the tax law №5376, which will determine what will actually be the burden on the industry for the next 25 years.
