IT Professionals in Azerbaijan (Week 8)

             IT professionals are an essential part of the modern world; they are the people who carry out several tasks which include testing, creating, installing and maintaining software and hardware that are within the companies [1].  On the subject of the country that is best for these professionals, I would say is the USA as it is the homeland of the big tech companies and also the foremost option for the imminent foreigners. When it comes to my country – Azerbaijan, I can say that the IT sector has seen a dramatic change in the last 20 years. Even though the development is not as good as the top countries, it can be considered a decent one. Throughout the following paragraphs, I will concentrate on the changes that Azerbaijan has seen over the past 20-30 years in the IT sector as well as talk about the other aspects like skills, education, qualities, and so on.

Soviet Times and E-government

As a former part of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan did not have many opportunities, especially in the IT sector. The main reason behind this is that the ’90s was the hardest year for our people to be interested in such jobs while there was an ongoing war in the Karabakh region after the collapse of the Soviet Union. These years led to hunger and hardship within the whole country, but after the war was over, my country started to see some major improvements. Now when we look at the current status of Azerbaijan, I can say that we have an e-government that was mainly developed with the help of a project called “Azerbaijan and Estonia – Two Eagles in e-Government”. This project led to the evolution of good e-government and eventually resulted in a relative review of e-government in Azerbaijan and Estonia [2]. I remember this platform as most of my state exam results were uploaded there and it would always be interesting to me how and when e-government was developed here.

Lack of Education

On the other hand, the quality and the education of our professionals are yet to be developed. When we refer to the universities, there are few which can really educate you well enough to be a good future IT professional. Eventually, most people would be jobless after 4 years (Bachelor’s) plus 2 years (Master’s) of education because the education coming from our universities would not be much applicable for the companies. That is why most people who are studying university also attend various courses like programming, networking so that they do not end up jobless. Furthermore, information security inside the companies is mostly handled by foreign companies. Generally speaking, this does not mean that we do not have good IT professionals as the good ones leave the country for abroad job opportunities. I believe that if the salary of such jobs increases in a well amount, then our people would consider continuing their journey in their own country instead of looking for jobs in other countries.

Conclusion

            In summary, it can be said that even though Azerbaijan had a good improvement in the IT sector over the last 20-30 years, the education of such professionals is yet to be developed. For a better future for my country, I would like to see our people getting a good enough education and the rise in the salaries of most jobs as this is the primary cause of the well-educated (especially local people educated in foreign countries) professionals not considering jobs in our country.

 

References

[1]	"What All Does An IT Professional Do?," University of The People, [Online]. Available: https://www.uopeople.edu/blog/what-does-an-it-professional-do/#:~:text=What%20is%20an%20IT%20Professional,IT%20professionals%20for%20specific%20tasks.. [Accessed 18 February 2022].
[2]	"Introducing Azerbaijani e-Government," Ega, [Online]. Available: https://ega.ee/project/introducing-aserbaijani-e-government/. [Accessed 18 February 2022].