Ukraine has become the second most popular place for relocation among Belarusian IT specialists. First is Poland. In April 2021, 15% have already left. A third of them does not plan to go back.

Belarusian technological media dev.by conducted a survey of 1,778 IT specialists. According to the survey, 14.8% of specialists (264 people) left the country. Almost 90% of them made this decision after the events in August 2020. Ukraine has become the second most popular place for relocation among Belarusian IT specialists. 13.3% of respondents moved to this country. The first place is occupied by Poland with 53.4%.

At the same time, 29% of respondents are still planning to leave for permanent residence in another country. 32.7% of those who left have not yet decided whether they will come back. Another third (30.4%) are going to stay abroad.

According to the questionnaire, most of the specialists who left, almost 90% (89.8%), left the country after the events of August 2020.

Most of the relocators are the “elite” of the Belarusian IT sector. Among all those who left, 38% were senior specialists. The second place is occupied by specialists of the Middle level (27.3%), and the third is by specialists of the Lead level (26.5%).

In the first place in the ranking of relocators by specialties: DevOps Engineer. Of all the DevOps Engineers who participated in the survey, 18% are already abroad.

Poland remains the most popular move option for Belarusian IT specialists. More than half of the relocators chose it. Moreover, over the past three months, the percentage of IT specialists who have left for Poland has grown.

Ukraine and Lithuania remain in the top 3 most popular locations for Belarusian IT specialists, but with a large lag behind Poland.

According to the results of the April survey, Georgia was in the top 5 most popular locations. Some employees found options for work in Spain, Belgium, Serbia, Italy, Montenegro, Bulgaria.

Almost 33% of IT specialists have not yet decided whether to return to Belarus and when.

Another third of the specialists who left do not exclude the possibility of returning, but on condition that the situation in the country returns to normal. True, the majority in this category are ready to wait no more than a year or two for normalization.

4 people said that they will return anyway: they are uncomfortable abroad. 30% are not going to return.

The share of specialists who do not want to return has grown dramatically. Back in September last year, only 2% of relocators were categorically against returning to Belarus, in January this year about 8%.

Who participated in the survey:

• Developer (software engineer) — 45,4%
• Team Lead/Tech Lead — 8,7%
• QA Specialist — 7,6%
• QA Automation Engineer — 4,7%
• Project Manager — 4,2%
• DevOps Engineer — 3,4%
• Business Analyst — 3,2%
• C-Level — 2,5%
• Architect — 2,0%
• Product Manager/Product Owner — 1,9%
• Data Scientist — 1,8%
• Delivery Manager — 1,8%
• Others — 1,7%
• Designer — 1,6%
• Resource Manager — 1,5%
• Marketing Specialist — 1,3%
• HR Specialist/Recruiter — 1,2%
• System Administrator — 1,2%
• UI/UX Designer — 1,0%
• Sales/Business Development Manager — 0,7%
• Account Manager — 0,6%
• Support Specialist — 0,6%
• DataBase/Administrator — 0,4%
• System Analyst — 0,3%
• Technical Writer — 0,3%
• PR Specialist/Manager — 0,2%
• Copywriter — 0,1%