Russian IT workers move abroad to avoid mobilisation

GDANSK, Poland : Russian IT professionals are moving abroad en masse in order to avoid military mobilisation, industry leaders have warned, despite official assurances that key technology workers won't be called up to fight in Ukraine.

The digital ministry says key IT workers will be exempted from joining the hundreds of thousands of reservists being drafted after some 70,000 IT staff left Ukraine in February.

Nikolai Komlev, director at an IT industry association, said that the new outflow of IT personnel could be two to three times greater than that exodus.

The head of domestic software company Russoft said that it was not possible to give exact estimates of who had left or might leave, but the head of domestic software group cautioned that it was not possible to give exact estimates of who had left or might leave.

The digital ministry has been trying to help key tech workers avoid being called up, and issued guidelines on Monday detailing how specific workers could be able to avoid the draft.

It recommended 195 IT and communications professions - including jobs in science, energy, transport and the media - whose workers it recommended should be exempt from mobilisation.

One industry official told RBC that the guidelines were vague and would not cover everyone in the IT sector. Senior officials have said that recruitment offices have been ignoring basic eligibility criteria, such as age.

The large-scale drain of IT workers puts pressure on Russia's nascent tech industry, which has tried to capitalise on Western internet firms leaving Russia because of the war.

A survey of over 500 IT specialists by Ventra showed that 19 per cent of IT managers had relocated some of their employees abroad in 2022, according to a survey by the human resources firm Ventra.

More than 30 percent of Russian IT professionals are planning to move abroad or have already gone, according to the survey conducted this month and published on Sep 21, the day the mobilisation was announced.

A senior lawmaker warned in April that Russia's IT industry, which employed about 1.7 million people last year, was experiencing personnel shortages.