Russian software developers are some of the best in the world, especially when it comes to finding innovative solutions to complex IT tasks. This is hardly surprising if we consider that Russia produces over 200,000 university graduates in technology-related disciplines each year. Computer Science, mathematics and physics are popular majors in Russia (unlike in Europe and America) and this means Russia is never short of IT talent.
“We at Intel have a saying: Give the impossible tasks to the Russians. The Russians can do anything.”
Russia has a wealth of highly-qualified specialists working at over 4,500 R&D centres across the country. This makes it an attractive outsourcing location for leading global IT companies such as Microsoft, IBM and Intel which are eager to take advantage of Russian expertise.
“Russia is important to Microsoft because it is emerging as a center for technology innovation.”
Russian programmers consistently outperform their foreign colleagues in international competitions and have received numerous awards:
- ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (sponsored by IBM): Russian university teams have won this prestigious prize 5 times – most recently in 2008 and again in 2009.
- International Olympiad in Informatics: Russian high school pupils have won 25 gold medals between 1999 and 2009.
- Google Code Jam: Egor Kulikov, 2010 winner.
- TopCoder.com: Russia top in algorithm competitions, ahead of China (2nd) and India (12th).
Famous Russian programmers are renowned throughout the world: Sergey Brin (Google), Yevgeny Kaspersky (Kaspersky anti-virus), Arkady Volozh (Yandex), Alexei Pazhitnov (Tetris), etc.
2002–2024