russian software developing industry and software exports

Chapter 6.
Human Resources and the Labor Market Situation
in it are worthy of attention since top rating positions
are determined by real achievements.
Brilliant results of students in international
programming competitions prove that our
universities can prepare top-class professionals. Such
contests are regularly held by leading corporations to
find talented programmers. Although champions and
winners of collegiate programming not always obtain
equally outstanding results in practical applications,
as a rule they are able to fulfill the most complicated
tasks at work.
Many of Russian champions and winners of ACM
Contest have set up successful software companies
or are key specialists in such companies. Probably,
they lack entrepreneurial skills and management
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
Weighted average amount of university graduates
in companies' staff, by turnover
13%
up to 0.5 MUSD
16%
19%
from 0.5 MUSD
to 4 MUSD
15%
from 4 MUSD
to 20 MUSD
6%
5%
over 20 MUSD
Weighted average amount of university graduates in companies'
staff, by the share of export revenue in gross earnings
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
up to 50%
over 51%
Weighted average amount of university graduates
in companies' staff, by companies' location
4%
Moscow
19.2%
St. Petersburg
1%
Novosibirsk
12%
Others
experience for successful commercialization of their
knowledge. With such knowledge their business
achievements would be even more significant.
Unfortunately, substandard infrastructure does not
allow to advance software development for export in
many of Russian cities that have opportunities to train
big numbers of qualified specialists. Many talented
graduates of provincial universities move abroad or
to the major Russian cities (mainly to Moscow and
St. Petersburg), but not all are ready to leave their
native towns.
The victories of students reflect the general level
of specialists training.
It is unlikely that many graduates who failed to
get into the world championship final are inferior
to winners and champions. Sometimes it’s just the
matter of luck or lack of a well-established system of
preparation of students for such contests.
The fact that since the last decade participants
from Russia dominate international programming
competitions confirms a very good quality of training
of software developers in Russia, including those
universities whose teams to not get into the finals.
Over the past 10 years of participation in ACM
championships the number of university teams from
Russia that entered the world elite has grown. Since
1999 10 Russian universities won prizes in these
competitions, with 4 teams becoming absolute
champions in different years. It is by far more than in
any other country. In the last decade Russia won the
champion title 6 times.
In the final of the last team world programming
championship among students held in Stockholm in
April 2009 the absolute first place was again taken by
Russians. For the second consecutive time the world
champion became the team of St. Petersburg State
University of Information technologies, Mechanics
and Optics.
Apart from universities, whose teams were the
winners of the programming world championship as
elite also may be classed Ural State University, South
Ural State University, Stavropol State University, Orel
State Technical University and Moscow Institute
of Physics and Technology. Being among 30-40
best universities based on results of the last final of
the prestigious contest may also be considered an
excellent achievement.
Judging from the world championship results,
high-class programmers can be trained in universities
of 13 Russian cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Saratov,
Perm, Izhevsk, Stavropol, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk,
Ufa, Barnaul, Orel, Chelyabinsk and Petrozavodsk.
About ten more Russian cities are equally good to
compete with them.
In individual contests on programming and
informatics Russian students and school children also
perform very well. At the championship TopCoder
Open 18 participants reached the semi-final 4 of them
representing Russia. The semi-final and final rounds
took part in Las-Vegas June 3-4, 2009.
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