The Death of Belarusian IT: How to Kill a Successful Industry

No matter how Belarusian officials try to put a brave face on it, the exodus of IT from the country is a fact. And for many years the IT sector was the nation’s calling card and a fairly substantial share of GDP.

Just the other day I had to discuss yet again what will happen to this industry now, and when it might recover. Unfortunately, my forecast is bleak: Belarus will never again be an IT country. Or at least not for decades. I could be wrong—I’m no great economist—but I’ll try here to lay out the considerations on which I base this view.

But first—a bit of history.

Belarus didn’t become strong in IT out of thin air. In Soviet times, Minsk was an assembly shop, including for computing hardware. It was in Belarus that the large “Minsk” computers were made, and later the ES personal computers, which people chased after even when I was a teenager, because they were IBM-compatible machines you could buy for home use and, for better or worse, enjoy the benefits of a personal computer.

Of course, supporting such hardware required the right specialists. Those were precisely the people the republic’s universities began to train. Curricula were developed accordingly. Belarusian State University (BSU) and the Minsk Radioengineering Institute (MRTI, now BSUIR—Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics) vied for the right to train the best programmers. And, apparently, to this day there are wars over which one is better (although, in my view, BSU—given its program—was always geared toward applied specialists with an emphasis on mathematics and algorithms, while BSUIR produced more “systems” people, as they went much deeper into low-level hardware issues). Nevertheless, both universities (and now others as well) produced very strong specialists, many of whom now work at world-famous companies—or founded them themselves.

In the early 1990s, few believed programmers would be needed in this world. I was even told it was a dying profession (yes, that was a thing, around 1992–93). And even when I got my diploma (in 1999), although the profession was already in demand, in terms of money it still lagged behind most other, “classic” fields. Assembling computers and selling them—that was lucrative and prestigious. Writing software—better go be a shop-floor foreman at a factory.

But demand did start to take shape. And even in those years, universities were already noticeably failing to keep up with it. At my alma mater, BSU, there was an excellent school of mathematics, but very few could give students truly applied knowledge. Either there were passionate, self-taught pros—countable on one hand—or people teaching as a hobby while making their real money in their own computer businesses. Or, unfortunately, those simply running out the clock in academia, who didn’t understand a thing about modern realities. The latter neither could teach anything nor could they assess work properly: you could hand in absolutely any gibberish, and they’d still take it at face value.

And when demand suddenly began to grow, many up-and-coming IT companies gradually started creating their own courses, introduced internships, and even offered free training to build a talent pipeline—ideally for themselves. EPAM took this route, and later others followed, including Wargaming, where I worked just shy of 12 years. In other words, business became not only a money-maker but also an educational center for future specialists.

In 2005, Belarus created the High-Tech Park (HTP)—an IT cluster that gave its residents far more favorable business conditions than the state allowed other legal entities. These included reduced personal income tax rates, no corporate profit tax, and much more. Most importantly, joining the HTP made it entirely legal for IT companies to pay high salaries to their employees; the profession became even more in demand, quality remained high, and investment flowed into the country. As a result, budget contributions began to grow sharply. At the same time, the quality of Belarusian programmers was very high thanks to the solid educational foundation inherited from the USSR. The IT sector became an outlier: relatively honest taxes, high salaries, stable contracts, and almost no excessive oversight from the “competent authorities.”

And the industry began to grow; many product companies emerged and later became globally known. I’ll list just a few: EPAM, IBA, Wargaming, Flo, Viber, TargetProcess, and many others. Belarus became a kind of brand for quality development. Investors were happy—and fairly comfortable—putting money into the sector. Many companies sought to open their development offices in Belarus because the price/quality ratio was so favorable.

The situation changed radically in 2020, after the protests over yet another presidential election. In official speeches the rhetoric about “fat-cat IT guys,” fattened by the West, started up again. But the authorities failed to account for the fact that these are precisely the folks who could most easily pack up and leave. First, IT is needed everywhere. Second, in this sector many people speak English, so moving to another country isn’t so daunting. And third, software isn’t tied to a location. You can’t relocate a tractor factory so easily. An IT company is, above all, brains—people. They can work remotely, and it’s far simpler to change an office than to build a new plant.

Amid the wave of repression and the tightening of state policy toward IT companies, the outflow began. And when the state broke its own promises—overnight changing the conditions guaranteed by law for HTP residents—and started jailing company top managers who disagreed with the government’s line, everyone understood: the Belarusian IT paradise was over.

According to dev.by’s estimates (the article is in Russian), more than 20,000 (!!!) IT specialists have left Belarus since 2020. To give a sense of the scale of the disaster: in 2020 Wargaming’s Minsk office had roughly 2,000 employees. At EPAM, by 2020 more than 9,000 people were working in Belarus alone. And these are among the largest companies in the sector in Belarus. And in two years, about twice as many left the country as those two companies combined.

And now let’s move on to the points explaining why I believe this industry in Belarus will almost never recover.

1. As I already said, the industry didn’t grow out of thin air. Education is a huge component of success.
   • But the quality of teaching at universities was, on average, declining (to my knowledge), and after 2020 many capable instructors were either simply fired, imprisoned, or forced to leave the country.
   • For more than 10 years the industry itself had been educating the younger generation. The departure from the country of the largest players practically means the winding down of their educational initiatives.
2. All these years, inspired by Belarus’s IT success, our neighbors tried to create similar conditions. The closest ones made quite a lot of progress. Ukraine managed to set up very favorable conditions, drawing many Belarusian IT folks. Unfortunately, the 2022 war hit that sector in Ukraine very hard. But Poland, Lithuania, and Estonia didn’t stand still either. And since 2022, Armenia, Georgia, and other countries have introduced numerous incentives for IT as well. Good IT specialists don’t grow on trees, and if they’re on the move (Belarus, Ukraine, Russia), you need to create the most attractive conditions so they move to you.
3. Relocating is never easy. And if you’ve moved once, you may not want to do it a second time. Life in another country is by no means the rosy adventure many imagine. Belarusians felt like kings at home, in part thanks to the generally low cost of living. On the same salary next door, they may be far less happy because overall costs can be higher. And much of what you had back home from birth simply isn’t there. So some will be ready to return over time—but by no means all. Especially those who moved with families and children who are now in the European education system, from which returning to the Belarusian one is not easy—and, often, not desirable.
4. Relocating a business is not a cheap pleasure for a company. When you’re forced to do it so as not to lose your valuable talent and your business—that’s one thing. But repeating the process “in reverse” may turn out to be not nearly as advantageous as it seems from the outside—even if your costs in Belarus are lower (and neighboring countries will try hard to make sure you don’t want to leave).
5. Reputation is earned over years and lost in a single day. That is exactly what happened in the Republic of Belarus. Even with changes to the laws, a change of leadership, and a raft of reforms, it would still take years for business owners and investors to believe that Belarus is now a trustworthy place for long-term, serious investment. At the moment, trust in the state has been undermined. Better to pay more—but without surprises.

All these factors suggest that a return to being an IT mecca is highly unlikely. If Belarus once set the trend—being the first to implement such attractive conditions via the HTP—now, at best, it will be in a permanent catch-up mode. Major businesses have left (and keep leaving) for neighboring countries where conditions are already comparable, and some offer extra perks like freedom of movement within the EU, access to the EU-wide labor market, and so on. And even if some companies do start coming back, they’ll have to compete with those neighbors—including for qualified specialists, of whom there are fewer in Belarus with each passing day, and there’s almost nowhere for new ones to come from.

I would very much like my conclusions to be wrong. But for now I believe Belarus has shown how, in a very short time (a year or two), you can destroy a successful industry that grew for more than 20 years and promised even greater growth in the near future. I’m afraid the banner of Belarus as an IT country won’t be raised again.