What skills do programmers from post-Soviet countries lack in employment in the USA - ForumDaily
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What skills do programmers from post-Soviet countries lack in employment in the USA?

People from post-Soviet countries pay a lot of attention to the technical side in performing tasks, but they lack communication skills and empathy. About it Voice of America told the recruiter and owner of a startup in Silicon Valley.

Photo: Shutterstock

IT specialists are among those who often leave their home countries for high-paying jobs. This trend is likely to continue, although the coronavirus pandemic has made adjustments to the labor market around the world. This also affected the United States, where changes to visa and immigration laws previously introduced by the Trump administration have already affected the situation with the employment of foreigners. According to The Wall Street Journal, technology startups in the United States laid off thousands of workers in the spring, and Computer World writes that thousands of IT specialists in the United States lost their jobs in November of this year.

In general, with a working American visa, it is possible to become an employee of an IT giant, such as Microsoft or Apple.

Meanwhile, for many Ukrainian immigrants, working in the heart of the technical world, in Silicon Valley, and in general with American IT companies is still just a dream. Sometimes even people with extensive experience in IT and a diploma with honors from a prestigious Ukrainian university do not get jobs there. Why?

Choosing a vacancy. Summary. Interview

Among Ukrainians who want to enter IT, the most popular is the position of a tester, says Iryna Nevozhai, who has been hiring specialists for IT companies in Silicon Valley for 4 years. According to her, currently there are too many such specialists on the US market and it is very difficult to find a job with the skills of a tester. The greatest demand in the labor market, says Nevozhai, is for such positions as developer, project and product managers, designers, and data scientist.

According to her, in order to apply for these vacancies, it is not necessary to have a corresponding higher education. You can complete special courses.

“I advise you to look for so-called bootcamps, that is, courses that are immediately prepared for developer. They offer training from scratch, the duration of training is from six months to three years. During this period, you can already do internships in IT companies. Many of them, such as Microsoft or Linkedin, offer special programs for course graduates. They recruit them for internships and offer them to study in companies at the same time. After a few months, you will be hired as a specialist by this company.”

If you already have an education, the next important step is to write a resume. Andriy Axelrod, the chief technology officer of the American-Ukrainian startup People AI, which is located in Silicon Valley, personally hired dozens of employees. According to him, if he sees that the resume does not meet the basic criteria, it means that the person has not prepared. Therefore, such an employee will most likely refuse. Andrey noticed some mistakes of Ukrainians, which became tendencies in the resume.

“Instead of connecting their engineering projects with business and results, people exclusively write what they did technically. To a peasant’s mind, in a resume it sounds like this: “I dug a vegetable garden” or “I dug up a large vegetable garden in two days, planted potatoes and then sold them for such and such a price.” As a manager, simply “I dug a garden” doesn’t tell me anything except that the candidate hasn’t done basic research on how to write a resume correctly,” says Andrey.

On the subject: How to get a job in the USA, and what is wrong at Google: the experience of a Ukrainian developer

Among other basic requirements for a resume, according to experts, there are such points: you cannot show your photo, indicate your age or marital status. It is also recommended to use the so-called code words.

“When you look at a job description on the Internet, use the same words in your resume as in the job description on the site. This is the easiest way,” advises Irina Nevozhay.

When you are selected for an interview, the employer does not expect blind completion of the task, but questions about the vacancy. This will show the employer that the employee is ready to see the bigger picture, he knows how to communicate with the client.

“When we give a task, we expect the person to raise the question of the tasks, and not rush to immediately complete it. So they tell you to “architecturally build a website for sales.” It's very abstract. We must ask: why, what will be sold, for whom exactly. This is basic,” notes Andrey Axelrod.

What are soft skills?

In general, among employers in Silicon Valley, Ukrainians have good reviews, they are considered technical, executive and hardworking, experts say. However, they note that Ukrainians lack soft skills, non-technical skills. Soft skills include creative thinking, communication, teamwork, the ability to manage time efficiently, and the ability to resolve conflicts.

“Ukrainians lack empathy and the ability to sell themselves. Our compatriots are very uptight and modest. You need to understand people’s emotions well and not be shy in communication, because a technical engineer is a team player,” explains Irina Nevozhay.

“The term soft skills means that you need to be able to work in a team, be able to communicate with a client, and understand the reasons why this product will be used. If you are a good engineer, you should always have an idea, and you must be able to infect others with it,” explains Andrey Axelrod.

As for communication, among the largest complexes of Ukrainians can be called English, the interlocutors of the Voice of America shared. And employers believe that Ukrainians attach too much importance to the correctness of English. There are a lot of immigrants working in Silicon Valley who speak with an accent, and speech mistakes are perceived normally.

Is it worth going to Silicon Valley at all?

Due to very high housing prices in and around San Francisco, as well as high taxes, many companies began to move to other cities during the pandemic. Austin in Texas and San Diego in Southern California are especially attractive, in their opinion.

Say, Hewlett Packard Enterprise intends to move its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Texas, and last week, Tesla and SpaceX owner Elon Musk announced that he was moving permanently from California to Texas.

Many small companies and startups are thinking about moving, said Irina Nevozhay. She says: “During the crisis, many companies realized that being in Silicon Valley was unprofitable. People have to pay $6000 for low-quality small housing. Therefore, if it’s expensive to live in San Francisco, but you want to work in IT, then the city of Austin is becoming a new hub where both giants and young startups are moving.”

About what kind of workers would be invited from Ukraine to an office in the United States, Andriy Axelrod replies that it is very difficult to transport people with the current American laws of migration policy. But a promising employee can be invited to the office of a company in Canada, because Canadian laws, unlike American ones, encourage workers from abroad in every possible way.

“A promising employee will be considered one who sees the big picture and the connections between business and technology,” Andrey assures.

Meanwhile, Irina Nevozhai suggests that the visa situation in the United States may change to a more favorable one for foreign IT specialists with the coming to power of the newly elected US President Joe Biden.

“Unfortunately, companies are very cautious with H-1B work visas. With the laws that were in effect under President Trump, the process of opening new work visas has stopped; it is very long and unprofitable. We expect that with the new government there should be a thaw and it will become easier to open visas,” Nevozhay explained.

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Meanwhile, the demand for IT specialists is also growing within Ukraine: according to Interfax-Ukraine, it grew by 50% in the third quarter of 2020. According to Forbes, Ukraine is one of the largest exporters of outsourcing IT services to Silicon Valley.

In July of this year, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky spoke about the outflow of personnel abroad as a problem for Ukraine. According to Zelensky, “until there are normal jobs, normal wages, there is nothing to keep people.” Last year, then-Prime Minister of Ukraine Alexey Goncharuk insisted that he planned to encourage talented IT specialists to remain working in Ukraine.

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