Why Russia

When you hear offshore software developers, India may come to mind first. But is India the best or only place to look for programming talent? If you are looking for a team of 300 or more developers, India is currently the best place to find software factories of such scale. Most Russian teams are smaller and do not have these resources. However, there are several advantages to working with Russian rather than Indian programmers.

Expertise

If you want world champions on your team, you should think Russia. Russian education has been strongly grounded in math and science and has resulted in some of the best scientists and programmers in the world coming out of there.

We need only to look at the computer science world competitions of recent years to find proof of Russian excellence in the field. In fact, Russian students dominate the computer science world.

Availability of stars is a strong draw to Russian outsourcing. Due to the transition in Russian economy, many talented people who worked in the military, industrial or scientific sectors are moving into the labor market. This process is far from finished and it results in plenty of bright minds available in Russia, unlike more developed markets, where the best and the brightest are already working for Western clients. We all know that success of any project is heavily dependant on leadership and innovation of very few people and this makes having stars on your team crucial.

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Experience with Complex Projects

Russian talent is not only well educated but has experience in complex projects. Russian programmers and engineers have been engaged in large scale projects that cut across industries for decades as the country produced military, nuclear and satellite systems. While government funding for such projects has decreased, much of the highly qualified workforce is now available for commercial projects. Many engineers who have been working in those sectors are also excellent programmers and are able to apply their strong analytical skills to new projects.

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Cultural Link

Russia is culturally much closer to North America than its main competitor here - India. Having fewer cultural differences helps reduce some of the problems that arise as a result of such differences and leads to better understanding in software human interface for American and European markets.

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Untapped resources

Russia has more total research and development personnel than any other country in the world. It is in a close third place after Japan and U.S. in Scientists and Engineers (per millions inhabitants). It is first in science students as percent of total students. (Source: World Bank, Unesco).

Russian government has not promoted offshore software industry and its programming talent is currently untapped. Russia is also less penetrated by Western companies; its domestic industry is less developed, resulting in higher availability and better choice of talent.

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