The Russian invasion of Ukraine made many IT experts leave Russia, which caused the Red Bear Country to lack IT experts.
The Russian government took a unique step to solve this problem, namely by employing convicts. Of course, not all prisoners are made IT experts, but prisoners who already have expertise in that field.
Reported by KrebsonSecurity, Russia's federal prison management announced its plans to employ IT experts who are serving prison sentences as remote workers in various commercial companies.
This step had to be taken because many entrepreneurs in Russia had difficulty getting IT experts to work for their companies. Previously, Russian state media had stated that there were 95,000 vacancies in the IT sector that had not been filled since March 21.
This figure is 25% lower than the figure in the previous month. However, this happened because many companies delayed or canceled their projects, mainly because of the many sanctions imposed by various Western governments.
The Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC) estimates that between 70,000 and 100,000 IT experts have left Russia. A number of countries that became their main destinations include the United States, Germany, Georgia, Cyprus, and Canada.
Russia is currently one of the countries with the highest number of prisoners in the world. That is, there are almost 875 thousand prisoners, or 615 prisoners per 100 thousand inhabitants, the second highest in the world, behind the US with 737 inmates per 100 thousand inhabitants. However, it is not known how many of these prisoners are IT experts.
So far, the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service has employed many prisoners in various fields. The average salary of the prisoners is around 20 thousand rubles per month.