We Live in the Golden Age for IT Specialists

Andrey Ivashin
IT Director, Dynatech

The modern world offers us unlimited opportunities for professional development, and at any age. Oftentimes the key role in success is played not by the number of degrees, but by one’s communication skills, and the ability and desire to constantly gain new knowledge and experience. The IT industry in Latvia is one example. With a low threshold for entering the profession, a growing demand for IT specialists and, as a result, guaranteed career growth, Latvia today is one of the most desirable countries for improving in IT, where both local and global projects are being developed.

Over the past fifteen years, Latvia has often appeared in international IT-related rankings: from the countries with the fastest Internet to the most favorable states for IT startups. Despite the fact that all three Baltic states started at about the same level, the development of the IT sphere went along three different paths. For example, while Estonia rarely, but spectacularly, sees its own startups grow into truly global projects, such as Skype, Latvia is distinguished by enviable perseverance - numerous local and international projects in which all kinds of IT specialists are able to practice and develop their skills. It was Latvia that at one time became a pioneer of social networks, not only among the Baltic States, but also throughout Europe, launching local networks One.lv and Draugiem.lv at exactly the same time as Facebook was launching in the United States. It was in this country that one of the largest social networks in Russia was developed, Odnoklassniki.ru. All such large startups generate entire generations of highly qualified IT specialists.

Paradoxical as it may sound, the rapid development of the IT industry and the competitive advantages of our local IT specialists have largely become possible due to the fact that Latvia is a small country. Being largely subordinate to business needs, the IT industry develops along with them. While large European countries, for example, France or Germany, have substantial domestic markets they can cater to, Latvia is forced to think globally. Many entrepreneurs quickly outgrow our small country and are forced to seek international opportunities, and along with them, all IT-related services get to expand as well.

As a result of this, customers often come from abroad, with their own culture of setting goals, checking performance and providing feedback. For example, when working with Scandinavian customers, of which there are many in Latvia, there is a clear demand for structure even prior to starting a project. At the other end of the spectrum, customers from other countries may simply assign a task to a contractor, giving them control over both the development and some routine aspects of the process. All the while with other customers, cooperation is essential to the working relationship. The strength of our IT specialists lies in their flexibility of thinking and the ability to work in different environments.

As a result of these factors, a serious struggle for IT specialists has been unfolding on the Latvian labor market for the last decade. The crisis caused by Covid-19 has shown very clearly: as soon as a company shows weakness, its competitors will not take long to wait. We felt it quite clearly ourselves. Since Dyninno Group, for which we are the sole provider of IT services, is heavily invested in air travel between the United States and the rest of the world, it was substantially hit by the news that the US was closing its border. Immediately after, headhunters began calling our people, trying to convince them that we were on the verge of bankruptcy. Retaining in-demand IT specialists in a crisis, when it is necessary to reduce costs, was an immense challenge, with which, fortunately, we managed to cope.

In general, Covid-19 has once again proven how technologically advanced our country is - with the closure of shops and catering venues, local IT resources have quite literally saved many businesses from vanishing in both Latvia and abroad. To take our example again: in just a few days, we managed to transfer over 3,500 employees of the Dyninno Group around the world to working remotely and pivoted the business from international flights to US domestic flights. And there are many such success stories in our country.

High demand lowers the threshold for entering the profession, with earnings several times higher than the national average. If we compare, for example, doctors, who have no space for experimentation within their field, a novice IT specialist can easily overcome failure and proceed onwards. A fundamental IT education with universities and online courses, and large IT companies with their bootcamps, unified service centers and the ability to quickly switch over to large projects, all create a very clear career path with growth opportunities for an IT specialist in Latvia. We live in the golden age for IT specialists, when anyone with knowledge in the field of IT, the ability and desire to learn and communicate can become truly successful.

Source: https://www.delfi.lv/bizness/versijas/dzivojam-it-zelta-laikmeta.d?id=53381791.


Blog

Refining Incident Management with Metrics and Looking to the Future

Tue Feb 20, 2024

Streamlining and Implementing Incident Management at Dyninno

Fri Feb 9, 2024

Want to be our next success story?
Apply now!

Let us know if you are interested! We will contact you and maybe soon you will be here at our office, drinking great coffee!