Digital Labor and the IT Labor Market in Belarus

Digital LaborAnd the IT Labor Market in Belarus

Digital Labor

• Immaterial• Cognitive • Computer as a work station• Globalized• Free & open job market

Risks/Advantages

• Unprotected• Easily Outsourced• Easily Quantified• Highly Specialized• Short-Lived

New Vocabulary(I'm teaching you bad, bad words...)

• Outsourcing• Precariat• ‘Playbor’• ‘The Vectoral Class’ • ‘Audience Commodity’• Neoliberalism

McKenzie Wark: the vectoral class is the one who controls vectors of information distribution

The dangers of neoliberalism: it destroys local economies and works to the advantage of larger capital owners.

Precariat vs. Digital White Collar

• ‘Freedom’• Learns on the go• Replaceable• Works from

anywhere• Small jobs, small

projects• Sell themselves

• Social security• Educated• Headhunted• Office hours• Large and

challenging projects

• Sales departments find clients

Internet Access

Total Export of ICT Services

If we divide it per population, then we are better than Russia and Ukraine, but worse than Lithuania and Poland, and Latvia takes the first place.

The EF English

Proficiency Index

This index also shows high correlation between ICT export and the level of English proficiency.

Back to Belarus• We are a part of global job market now.• We might be a bit better with English than Russia or Ukraine.• Internet access is relatively high, most likely computers are widely

available.• The level of social security is still relatively high. • (Another side of the same coin) The legal system is still backward,

high level of legal uncertainty. • Living standards are quite high, exploitative ‘digital labor’ not so

lucrative. • Legal, language and organizational skills are still helping. (And

everyone’s an economist.) • Disastrous state in the management and HR departments.

The Dark Side

• We don’t have any sustainable domestic industry (and we might not be able to afford it in the future). That's why EPAM Systems and Wargaming invest in R&D.

• No matter if we like it, we are just a convenient assembly line (just like in the Soviet times). Look at the history of the USSR and guess what happens if the current order fails (and Trump is capable of making it fail miserably).

• Look at China – they have never been great at outsourced development, but China has been investing fortunes into R&D for decades, and now they are buying American companies.

R&D Expenses as % of GDP, 2013, UNESCOLatvia 0.61

Belarus 0.67Ukraine 0.76Poland 0.87

Lithuania 0.95Russia 1.13China 2.01USA 2.73

Conclusion• We won’t see much exploitative ‘digital labor’ here.• People and companies are relatively ‘digitally literate’,

comparing to Russia and Ukraine, so they ‘fight for their rights’.• Wargaming is a Cyprus company. Viber is an Israeli company.

Epam Systems is a USA company. Even MapsMe was a Swiss company before Mail.ru bought it. Think about it. Think why.

• Outsourcing drains the resources that could be spent on research and development.

• In a long-term perspective, the industry might still generate stable income, on behalf of transnational companies acquiring successful projects.

Questions?