"Salaries in the IT industry are known to have witnessed the highest increase over the last few years, and in Romania the difference between the average IT salary and average salary of the entire economy is one of the biggest. Any tax raise jeopardises lots of ongoing projects, as well as the capability of some companies to pay the salaries of their employees," Dragan explains.
There are about approximately 60,000 people working in the local software industry and the average net salary for one programmer revolved around 1,000 - 1,100 euros last year according to the ANIS data. The average net wage of the entire economy went up by almost 23% to 350 euros last year, according to the data of the National Statistics Institute.
Software industry salaries went through the roof as human resources became harder and harder to find on the market, as a result of the several-fold increase of the number of employees from approximately 13,000 in 2000.
The salary budget accounts for approximately 60-70% of the budget of a software developer. Dragan says that in order to remain competitive on the international market, companies in the Romanian IT industry are faced with the prospect of having to cut salaries.
"We don't know how many of the Romanian IT specialists will agree with this. We also know that massive redundancies are being operated in Romania as a result of the crisis, but we have not had any such case in the IT industry. Hopefully, we won't get there," Dragan said.
The most powerful impact of the situation on the market could be felt by those programmers that are now taking their first job, software industry managers told ZF. "Clearly there is no company on the market at the moment that did not freeze salaries. It is quite difficult to cut salaries of the existing personnel, but bonuses are the first to go in more and more companies.
The incomes of those that come to get a job now will surely go down. The situation is normalising on the market, we will no longer see 1,000 euro salaries for students."
Still, the difficult economic context has not frozen the market completely. The biggest online recruitment sites on the domestic market continue to post job ads for programmers, some of which were placed some time in the last few days.
Oracle Romania, the local representative office of the US software company, is one of the employers running most ads. Also companies like IBM, Microsoft or TotalSoft continue to look for software specialists.
The ANIS official, who is also the general manager of business software solutions developer TotalSoft, believes the budget recently devised by the Government for this year is actually something thrown together in a hurry and as such will undergo numerous adjustments throughout 2009.
"Many anti-crisis steps concern the taxation system and are steps that can severely affect the business of companies operating in various industries, not just in IT&C. We would expect steps to restructure all governmental entities, to make sure we are ready to go through the crisis at least procedure-wise," Dragan explained.
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