I'd go to IT specialists

I decided to write this post following the results of the IT Entrance conference , which we held with the help of Recoursia.by and the Hi-Tech Park two weeks ago. I want to speculate in it about the attitude of Belarusians to IT, to their own possible future in this area, and why it is so difficult for us to build an IT country.

Despite the fact that the conference was sold out, and everyone besieged the stands of the training centers, the general mass of Belarusians treat IT rather negatively . Well, how, in fact, can you still relate to people who sit in a warm office, do something at the computers, and receive a monthly six-month salary of the one who really works hard to unload the cars? But at the same time, nobody forgets to advise their children to go to IT. Many visitors to the conference in the category "over forty" did not come to listen for themselves, which was directly reported in the registration forms.

“The unity and struggle of opposites” is precisely what distinguishes the attitude of the Belarusian society to IT from its attitude to other spheres. To put it more simply, “I want to and inject”. Recoursia will publish the exact statistics on the conference a little later, but now we can say that there are many more people who want to do business analysis, project management and testing than those who are ready to program. And this, in my opinion, is the main reason that is holding back the growth of the Belarusian IT industry today. These are people of the most active age group 25-34 who are unhappy with their current careers and would like to develop further in IT entry level computer science jobs.

In fact, these are people who do not want to change anything, and who would be quite happy and satisfied with life if they could earn more in their current workplace. From the IT sphere they need one thing - high earnings. They choose specialties for themselves with a minimum entrance threshold, since they do not have sufficient motivation to become those that the country really needs - software developers.

Leaving aside the question of whether anyone can be a good programmer . Not everyone can become a good tester or designer either. But the demand for these specialties among "switches" (as they call in educational institutions those who want to change their profession to "IT") is incomparably higher than for programming.

Is this normal? More than. But it is the discrepancy between the demand for professions on the part of "switches" and on the part of employers that is the most serious obstacle to the mass transition of Belarusians to IT specialties. Simply put, while Belarusians do not live so badly as to massively learn to program . But there is still hope that they will still want to study.