Programmers from Vietnam, India, and Cuba are rushing to Russia.

Russian companies have begun offering employment to Vietnamese programmers at salaries of 140,000 rubles in 2025, according to hh.ru. Experts believe that Vietnamese IT specialists are unlikely to compete with Russian ones. This isn’t just due to the latter’s creativity; those who perform simple tasks will be replaced by AI anyway.

Russian companies have begun actively hiring programmers and developers from Vietnam, according to hh.ru. In 2025, Vietnam became one of the top three foreign countries from which Russian companies recruited personnel, surpassed only by India and Cuba.

Since the beginning of the year, the most active job seekers with resumes on hh.ru and seeking work in Russia, while also originating from foreign countries, have been residents of India (more than 5,000 resumes since the beginning of the year), followed by residents of Cuba and Vietnam. This year, Vietnamese job seekers most frequently sought work in Russia as programmers.

Software developers accounted for 9% of all resumes from this country. Of the total number of Vietnamese job seekers who received offers from Russian companies, 6% were programmers or developers. The median salary offered for them was 140,000 rubles. IT specialists from Vietnam were hired almost as actively as Vietnamese sales managers (with a salary of 120,000 rubles) and waiters (86,000 rubles).

As for India, programmers and developers accounted for only 3% of all resumes, while Cubans accounted for 4%. However, the number of programmers hired by Russian companies was less than 1%. Employers most often offered jobs to Cuban and Indian sales managers (117,000-150,000 rubles). The highest paid were Cuban drivers with a salary of almost 200,000 rubles, and Indian marketers and partner managers with 150,000 rubles. Indian and Cuban laborers were also among the highest paid, earning between 120,000 and 130,000 rubles.

Half a Million Programmers in Vietnam…
The Vietnamese publication Vietnam.vn, citing the personnel training platform TopDev, reported that in 2023, there were approximately 530,000 programmers in the country, with a labor shortage of 200,000. The number of IT university graduates was growing, and the shortage was primarily due to an insufficient balance between training and business needs.

According to the same publication, the average salary for entry-level IT employees in Vietnam is 30,000-60,000 rubles, with the maximum salary for department heads reaching 160,000 rubles.

Vietnamese specialists dream most of all of working as programmers in Russia. Some Vietnamese programmers have achieved success. For example, Nguyen Dong, the developer of the legendary game Flappy Bird, has achieved worldwide fame.

The salaries that Russian companies are willing to pay Vietnamese are not significantly lower than those of Russian programmers.

A developer’s salary in Russia depends on many factors: their specialty and stack, skill level (i.e., grade), and the specifics of the company and product. Unfortunately, studies don’t always take these factors into account, as well as additional bonuses that affect an employee’s total annual income, the expert noted. This explains the wide range of figures—some say it’s around 90,000 rubles, while others claim 250,000 rubles per month, but the median salary is probably currently more commonly cited at around 185,000 rubles.

In 2023–2024, Many large companies have already tried hiring Indian and Vietnamese specialists. The results were mixed, due to cultural differences, language, the peculiarities of local English, and time zone differences. In any case, these specialists were mostly hired remotely, not relocated. Currently, this need is virtually nonexistent, as the Russian market is abundant with strong, high-quality IT specialists.

Large corporations require a huge volume of relatively cheap and simple work, and it’s very difficult to assign a truly high-quality programmer to such work. A poor-quality programmer will do a very poor job, and they’ll have to be constantly monitored.

Russian programmers are currently unrivaled; Russian engineers primarily solve problems through creativity and a deep understanding of how code is structured at the layer level.

Russian engineers are among the world’s best in terms of development, creating something new and more efficient, for example, in terms of compressing AI models and increasing their speed. So let our developers pursue this path, and simpler tasks could be outsourced.

But for Russia, access to developer markets like Vietnam has only advantages. One of these is competition, which stimulates Russian talent.

Firstly, for traditional software engineers, this competition is a requirement for growth and development. After all, many programmers now simply completed short courses and are entering this profession because it pays, not for any other reason. It’s good to have, so to speak, international competitors so that everyone becomes more focused on complex tasks.

Companies considering hiring foreign specialists should focus not only on their coding skills but also on the smooth integration of such employees into the team. For the company, onboarding such an employee again requires resources and risks.

For example, most companies have already created comfortable conditions for remote work, but recent news indicates a gradual return of employees to offices.

They will be replaced by AI anyway, and there is no prospect of hiring large numbers of programmers from Vietnam or India. Those who perform simple tasks will be replaced by AI.

In time, AI may even replace programmers from Vietnam or India, because the process of writing a particular piece of code will become increasingly algorithmically understandable. And the specialists who build the entire IT architecture will become increasingly important and valuable. That is, this is what is being provoked, or what is being stimulated, what this democratization of the market leads to, when Russian developers face such competition that they either leave the market entirely or become more sophisticated, less common.

It is also important to consider changes in the Russian labor market as a whole: in recent months, there has been an increase in the number of resumes, including for IT specialists, while specialized vacancies, on the contrary, are declining. More and more companies are focusing on assessing their current teams and implementing internal training and development programs.

The market as a whole is going through a difficult period; significant layoffs have occurred, and new project launches have been canceled. According to her, there is no particular need to hire new people, especially foreigners. The exception will be unique specialists working at the intersection of different technologies.

However, cooperation with BRICS countries and attracting their specialists has potential: this brings international experience, addresses niche needs, and helps Russian companies enter foreign markets.