It will be just a brief note, and I have no definite answers to the question. We will try to speculate what strategies are and what result they will provide.
First of all, you can set, so to speak, the general framework of the conversation and indicate one fact: work in Russia is generally cheap, including in our area. Well, for example, the well-known salary calculator GitLab , which is already known to many habravchane, which for the senior developer level professional will produce approximately the following results:
$ 114,320 - $ 154,668 - NY
$ 106,896 - $ 144,624 - Dallas
$ 64,130 - $ 86,764 - Barcelona
$ 73,491 - $ 99,429 - Berlin
$ 83,921 - $ 113,541 - London
$ 44,982 - $ 60,858 - China
$ 64,887 - $ 87,789 - South Korea
$ 117,425 - $ 158,869 - Singapore
$ 64,271 - $ 86,955 - Armenia
$ 64,271 - $ 86,955 - Belarus
$ 41,776 - $ 56,520 - Ukraine
$ 45,031 - $ 60,924 - Moscow
$ 38,563 - $ 52,174 - other russian cities
Yes, there is such a thing as purchasing power parity (something in Russia is cheaper). Plus, the tax system is very sparing for people with income above the average (in Russia, a flat personal income tax rate of 13%). However, in the world system of division of labor, we have the following place: IT with very good brains for very modest money.
Now to segmentation within the Russian-speaking IT. You know, I've been here for almost 10 years, but I never cease to be surprised at such things. This is a screenshot from one well-known IT resource:
If we open the first paragraph, we see there a sheet from the description and requirements of 11 points. True, in the end they promise to pay 2000 p. But in advertising attract the cost of 600 works! And, as we see, there are responses!
Other projects right from this screenshot are no better. We go inside and read in the description: and you make me, a goldfish, so that I am a columnar noblewoman! Yes, and the development period is until tomorrow until morning! In fact, only one person indicates, as it seems to us, the imputed hourly wage of a highly qualified specialist with good knowledge - 1000 r / hour (about 180,000 / month, which fights with My Circle and HH.ru studies on the labor market in IT in Russia) .
From the very moment I started working on the web, I have subscribed to all kinds of freelancer sites, message boards. At one time, such work gave me more than half the income. And it always surprised me that they meet two types of people:
- the first ones are ready to look for a rather complex intellectual work of people who evaluate their work at the rate at best of a migrant with a shovel or a car washer;
- the second is ready to provide fairly sophisticated intellectual services at the rate of the most low-skilled labor.
I donāt really want to talk about customers. In any case, this is their business, they are free to risk their money (or the money of their company, if they are a manager and are looking for a subcontract). I knew a lot of such people, because I myself was engaged in simple sites. And I still did not understand how it works, in the sense of what convincing logic is behind it. For me, these people remain aliens. Just to illustrate, I will give two examples.
For example, there is an office that sells individual tailoring services. Ready-made suits and dresses for wealthy people. The office is located in a very pompous Moscow quarter, the rental price there is sky-high. Here they invite me to discuss the cost of the future site. They talk about UX for a long time and in detail, about keeping attention, about modern chips that should be remembered by a demanding client. I estimate the approximate amount of work, multiply by my very small hourly rate and say: they say, the first stage will cost something about 100 thousand rubles. There is so much work here, in freelance mode this is two months.
People turn sour right away, jam the conversation. Understandably, they expected something like "I will be glad to work for you for free." Although one single additional client attracted by the new site will bring dirty profits that exceed these costs, well, 3-4 will definitely allow the site to pay off. In fact, a new site in this case is just a golden investment!
Second example. A harsh customer leasing construction equipment. We need a simple, without frills, site that will be understood by its clientele: foremen, builders, estimators. He announced 30 thousand, it seemed expensive. Some slimy bargaining began in the spirit of "I saw what they do on Freelance for 10". I tried to explain that quickly, cheap, high-quality does not happen (yes, he himself knows, the builder!) - I meet a blank misunderstanding. Although, again, turnovers in the construction are such that even one additional client pays for a pack of such sites. I hope the idea is clear, it does not need to be developed further.
But what are we performers? Why are there always those who unanimously respond to ads for 600 rubles? Ready to do what the market average is rated much higher?
There are different circumstances. For someone, this is just a side job or he gets his hand on simple orders. Someone works in the provinces, almost never leaves home, and even such low rates provide very good income by local standards. Finally, many are dumping because the piecework market is international: your announcement will always be read by a lot of people, someone will respond. It is difficult to assess how professional a particular candidate is and what difficulties may arise when working with them. And the price is a universal remedy.
As mentioned above, I, too, was fond of such earnings. Still would! Literally after 2 years in IT, I already bought a red liter sport bike. Let not new, but very worthy. 3.5 seconds to the first hundred! But I still have a family that I can confidently support. Such success cannot but inspire!
But what is the cost of such "easy money"? - From morning till night, I sawed these endless sites on Jumla and WordPress, picked up self-written admins, wrote simple web scripts and agreed even to very modest rates. In short, he took the shaft. At some point, I did not have the knowledge to write an automatic script, and I got up at 3 o'clock every night for a month to start the next iteration of the process with my hands: a good order was at stake.
Would I act differently now? - Sure, yes. If only because I would have reached my current level not in 9 years, but in 5, probably. With the corresponding changes in salary. If you take a calculator and figure out how it would affect my total income, it turns out that I would already be in the black. Yes, itās elementary to get to a conditional senior as quickly as possible than to make a cheap freelance attempt, trying to take a number. Finally, working at the forefront of serious tasks is more interesting. Higher and self-esteem, and job satisfaction. Probably, there was simply no one authoritative enough for me who could then say: listen, you will have all this, and even more. But a little later. Build a house from the foundation, not from the roof.
I am happy when I see young guys who are in no hurry to fill all their free time with simple (as it seems from afar) freelancer earnings. Thoughtful, thorough. Ready to go after college, albeit not at the highest salary, but in a company where there will be access to best practices. Investing in oneself eventually pays off. Success will find someone who seriously invests in their level. The simplicity of the search for orders, the demand for our profession can play a trick on young people: after school it seems that āas many as 10 thousandā for a week's work is wealth. Itās worse to get stuck on it and after 10 years find yourself a hard worker, working hard on strange people who think only win-lose.
Sometimes itās hard to find something worth working on. It seems that when you make someoneās specific order, your work is useful, itās not empty. A pet project is almost always done at the table. But in this case, one should not be afraid to copy someoneās ideas, try to do about the same, but his own. In the implementation process, everyone will have their own thoughts. You might want to solve some problem that is not immediately visible. It will be possible to write a large article on a single, suffering topic, make a library or a free application, and through this break through, make yourself known. In any case, I will not indicate in the resume 200 ++ sites that I have done for random customers: this is just a job that does not set me apart from thousands of others. And the skills gained on such orders are not very needed on serious projects.
Finally, I want to say that the cost of IT development should not fall even lower. Perhaps it seems to some of the employers that turning the industry into a huge freelancer swamp, where everyone will fight for orders with everyone (some of the locals even wrote a big proclamation of such a "paradise"), is a good idea both for cheaper production and to encourage programmers to work better. Not.
A sweatshirt, a running system for constantly escaping income, wears you out of thinking. To do quickly is not to do well. Fortunately, we need to think in our profession, and the more serious IT penetrates into all spheres of life, the more we need to think. We are more and more immersed in subject areas. The development world is getting harder.
The developer is forced, obliged to constantly improve his level, including by studying new technologies. No training is included in the budget for the 2000 cesspool. The developer should also have a good rest in order to bring his complex and very capricious tool - the brain - into his proper state in his free time. People do not grow, doing bottom business. People do not go to a new level, working part-time at the weekend by random break-in jobs. And there is hope that the more developers realize this, the fewer transactions will be ādo me at least something and I will pay you at least a littleā. And then IT products will become better, smarter, safer. Is not it so?
Photo by SebastiĆ£o Ribeiro Salgado