For the first time, a company with over 11,000 employees (EPAM) appeared in the ranking, and in general, the staff of the top 50 Ukrainian IT companies grew by 12%.

Here is the full list of the top 50:

• This year, Together Networks was included in the ranking for the first time. In 2020, the company was actively growing with its product in the field of dating. Beetroot returned to the 50th position in the ranking. AllSTARSIT and Brightgrove were also included for the first time.
• This edition of the ranking does not feature Murka Games, Jooble, Netpeak Group, Samsung R&D Institute Ukraine.
• During the first half of 2021, the number of professionals at the top 50 companies grew by 12.7% (9,719 people). As of July 1, 2021, these companies employed over 86,000 people.
• Twenty-three companies included in the ranking grew by over 100 professionals in six months. In the second half of 2020, similar trends were observed in 16 companies.
• Only eight companies from the top 50 opened new offices in the first half of 2021.
• Thirty-two companies said they plan to hire 100+ new professionals in the next six months.
• Only three companies are ready to relocate 50-100 specialists. The majority of companies (28) do not have such plans.
• Most of the companies from the ranking (36) have employees practicing a hybrid work model — they mix work in offices and from home. Only three companies on the list work completely remotely.

AIN.UA chose the most interesting data.

Top 50

Top 5: EPAM, SoftServe, GlobalLogic, Luxoft, and Ciklum.

There are four companies among the newcomers of the ranking: Playrix (22), Andersen (42), Murka Games (45), and Beetroot (50).

Parimatch Tech moved up from 35th to 26th position, Ubisoft – from 25th to 17th, and EVOPLAY entered the top 7 by shifting Infopulse.

From January till July 2020, the number of specialists in the top 50 increased by 1,299 (1.9%), which is the lowest figure in history. Before that, the top 50 grew by at least 6% every six months.

Growth dynamics of companies

For the first time in the history of the ranking, the “big five” have negative growth dynamics. The number of professionals decreased by 336 people. Only 26,601 professionals work in the five largest tech companies, which is almost 40% of the total top 50.

• From January to July, the leader of the ranking, EPAM, had no changes in the number of professionals, it remained 8,300. Over the past two years, the company has been growing on average by 12% every six months – there was no positive dynamics only once, in January 2014.
• SoftServe shows negative dynamics: the number of specialists decreased by 252. Such a situation is also atypical for the company – since 2011, SoftServe has only been growing.
• Luxoft and Ciklum showed negative dynamics in the first half of the year – 152 and 225 professionals decreased respectively.
• GlobalLogic is the only company out of the top 50 that shows positive dynamics at the end of the first half of the year. The number of professionals has increased by 293 people.

In general, only 23 companies of the ranking have positive dynamics in the first half of the year. Nine companies grew by more than 100 specialists for six months:

• EVOPLAY — 438 professionals,
• GlobalLogic — 293,
• Genesis — 250,
• Ubisoft — 242,
• Parimatch Tech — 216,
• EVO — 114,
• NIX Solutions — 113,
• DataArt — 100,
• Ajax Systems — 100.

It should be noted that DOU collected data as of July 1 for the summer ranking. Now, most companies reported that they have resumed hiring and have gone through a crisis period.

AIN.UA has selected the highlights.

About The Ad Masters

Within the Ukrainian IT labor market, The Ad Masters is billed as a developer of advanced online-sales and marketing software for entrepreneurs and e-commerce business owners. However, according to those interviewed by DOU, the company has actually been developing just one product, which is a website selling diet pills in the USA.

“Having bought a set for $139, a person would subscribe for monthly deliveries and monthly charges from their card. It would take several months for the customer to figure this out. And as we learned later, there were either no pills at all or just something like Vitamin C dragées,” says Pavlo, a former employee.

So that banks would not trace the scheme, so-called pre-landing pages were created. DOU has obtained a list of such pages:

What ex-workers complain about: layoffs without pay

Just a few people among DOU’s interlocutors worked in The Ad Masters for more than six months. Usually, employees would not spend as much as a month there. Some of them were fired immediately ahead of the payday. Sometimes this caused whole departments to leave.

Yaroslav Bokiy, the former HR Director, has told one of such stories:

“I’ve been working for 16 days, and during that period, I’ve only had one day off. Some day, Larby told me to fire my subordinate Mykyta Melnykov without giving a reason. And the day before that, Larby has raised Mykyta’s salary. When I was told to fire another two people, I realized that they were probably not going to receive their pay either. I gathered my department, told them everything, and said I was leaving. Everyone decided to leave also. This was on the twelfth. And the next day we were not paid our salaries,” Bokiy says.

According to Yaroslav’s estimates, Amirouche did not pay at least 8 employees from his team for their work. He also says that his colleagues have filed a group report to the police.

Similar cases have been described by commenters on DOU’s website.

“Our whole department quit on our own accord because we realized there was reason to stay and waste our time. The parting was far from rosy: we were refused the pay under the pretext of ‘having worked ineffectively.’ And it turned out that all the people who were fired did not get their pay for the same reason,” says the IT recruiter Valeriya Bors in her comment on DOU.

“I have been working in this company for 14 days as an HR department project manager. During the whole period, I was being told that I was doing well. On the morning of the 14th day, the CEO and I were discussing my KPIs for the next month. Besides, he offered me a promotion and a salary raise. But on the same evening, my colleague from the HR department, having no clue, called me and said that he was asked to tell me that I was fired and, in fact, not expected to come to work from the next day on. And of course, this happened right before the payday,” Mykyta Melnykov writes on DOU.

CEO’s mood swings

Some people interviewed by DOU note the CEO’s combustible temper.

“Our CEO’s mood swings seemed shocking in the beginning. There were also several occasions which frightened us. For example, once, while talking to the subordinates, Larby started yelling and actually put his fist through a plasterboard office wall,” recounts Bohdan, an ex-programmer.

“Once Larby fired me but changed his mind in three minutes. It was a record. As for other people, he could praise them at three pm and fire them at six pm with no explanation. Eventually, I quit on my own accord. The final straw was that many of my colleagues did not receive their pay after the dismissal,” Pavlo recalls.

Overworking, no days off, and fake reviews

According to ex-employees, oftentimes they had to work until late at night, as well as work on weekends. Those surviving it for longer than a month could not get leave, even an unpaid one. There was no overtime premium.

Some employees performed work outside of their duties. For example, the programmer Bohdan admits that from time to time he was engaged in recruiting and even “daylighted” as a storekeeper.

Former employees also recount being forced to write positive commentaries about the company on DOU.

“As soon as a negative review appeared on DOU, Larby would immediately make someone from the office write a positive one. Once he made me do it too; later I deleted that review and wrote an honest one,” Pavlo says.

The editorial team notes that immediately after the publication of The Ad Masters’ vacancies on DOU, nine users complained about junk mail from the company’s recruiters. After that, five users at once posted favorable reviews, which were, though, followed by a barrage of negative ones coming from ex-employees.

Intimidation and personal data breach

Some commenters claim they have been intimidated by their ex-boss.

“A person called, introducing himself as Amirouche’s lawyer. He said I had 12 hours to delete my comment on DOU. Otherwise, they would find my parents’ contacts and sue me. I said I didn’t mind litigation,” says Bohdan.

He provided screenshots of his Telegram conversation with Amirouche. The latter was threatening to complain about the “inappropriate behavior” of the former employee to his University teachers and his mother whose telephone number he would procure with the help of a private detective.

Amirouche also threatened Bohdan that he would get back at his friends. Probably, this referred to the developer’s colleagues still working at the company.

The editorial team has also obtained emails sent from the address larby@theadmasters.com to the mailbox of the FSB of the Russian Federation. In those messages, their author accused Bohdan and Pavlo of hacking, destroying his business, and working for Saudi Arabia’s oil industry. What was more, he attached copies of their passports.

Who is Larby Amirouche?

There are quite a few things known about The Ad Masters’ CEO Larby Amirouche. According to DOU’s findings, there were several lawsuits brought against him (or a person with the same name). The plaintiffs were the Attorneys General of Illinois and Arizona.

In both cases the businessman was accused of internet fraud with the sale of acai berries that were popular at that time. The Attorney’s office claimed that mister Amirouche had misguided customers by offering the first package for free and then charging the money from their credit cards.

Larby Amirouche’s company was also one of the fifty firms sued by the famous television presenter Oprah Winfrey back in 2009. She accused the companies of illegally using her name in acai berry ads.

The outcome of the litigation in Illinois is unknown, but after a similar process in Arizona mister Amirouche and the other defendants consented to pay a fine of $175,000. This was reported by the newspapers Courthouse News Service and Legal Newsline

EPAM Ukraine, the leader of the ranking, has exceeded its staff by 1,700 people and passed the mark of 8,000 specialists for the year. Also, four new product companies appeared in the rating, three of which are Ukrainian ones.

Here you can see the top 20 companies of the rating (and the full list you can find here):

The product companies that are new in the ranking are Ajax Systems – 800 specialists and 27th position, PMLAB – 621 (35th), Megogo – 456 (50th), plus one foreign company – WIX.com – 533 specialists and 41st position.

If to analyze the dynamics of growth of the 5 largest companies of the Ukrainian IT market, we can get the following diagram:

According to the authors of the research, 11 out of 50 companies from the ranking opened new offices both in Ukraine and abroad last year. 45 companies out of 50 have offices in Kyiv, 23 – in Lviv, 21 – in Kharkiv. In 23 Ukrainian cities, there are offices of at least one of the companies from the ranking.

Rated companies’ plans for staff expansion for the next six months look the following way:

10% of companies out of 40 plan to relocate from 20 to 50 specialists this year, another 28% – up to 20 specialists, but a lot of companies (62%) do not plan to do it.

Earlier, AIN.UA published the DOU-ranking of companies as of January 2019.

In 2018, the number of IT-PEs increased by 23%, while the total number of all private entrepreneurs in Ukraine increased by only 4%.

According to the United State Register of Legal Entities, Private Entrepreneurs and Public Organizations of Ukraine, the number of IT-PEs is 154k against 125k in 2017.

Computer programming remains the top activity of IT-PEs with 102k registered specialists. Computer consultancy activities (24k) and Data processing (almost 19k) are also popular. The latter increased by 25% in a year.

Geography of IT-PEs

Last year saw an increase in the number of IT specialists across all the regions in Ukraine, except for ARC (Autonomous Republic of Crimea), where the number of registered specialists decreased by 1% over a year.

Small regions were growth leaders in 2018. The highest increase in the number of IT-PEs took place in Cherkasy, Poltava and Khmelnytskyi regions, where the number of registered IT specialists increased by 28%. Most active regions also included Ternopil, Chernivtsi and Kirovohrad regions with 27%, 26%, and 25% increase respectively. 

As expected, Donetsk and Luhansk regions showed the lowest increase in the number of IT specialists, although the two also demonstrated an actual increase with 12% and 8% accordingly. In addition, other regions with the lowest rate of growth were Kherson (16%), Mykolaiv (17%) and Zakarpattia (18%).

Despite the very different growth rates of IT specialists in different regions, the rating of regions by their number has not changed: only Poltava region managed to beat Zhytomyr region in the number of IT-PEs, and Rivne region managed to overcome Kherson.

Kyiv and Kyiv region remain the undoubted leader with almost 30% of all IT-PE registrations. Kharkiv region legs behind Kyiv with 14% of all IT specialists registered there. The third place, same as a year ago, is with Lviv region (10%). Dnipro region came fourth with 9% of all IT specialists registered there.

If we take into account the population of the regions and count the number of techies per thousand population, then the rating will not change: Kyiv and the region are in the first place followed by Kharkiv and Lviv.

Curiously enough, there are 12 techies per 1,000 population in Kyiv.

75% of IT specialists are registered in large cities with a population of over 100,000 residents (in fact, this is the level of regional centers).

Sex ratio of IT-PEs

A number of women among IT specialists is growing, although very slowly – in 2018 the number of women in IT increased merely by 1% (25% in 2018 versus 24% in 2017). There is a slightly higher chance of meeting a female specialist in IT in cities with over one million people (26% of all registered IT specialists), as well as in Lviv (29%), Mykolaiv (28%) and Kharkiv (28%) regions.

In related news: a programmer compiles a rating of regions of Ukraine by number of closed IT-PEs with Sevastopol in last place with the least number of closed IT-PEs.

The first 15 positions of the rating look like this:The entire rating can be found here.

This year, the growth rate of the number of specialists is breaking the records of the last five years.

The growth of the “big five” for the second half of 2018 was 12% (2,573 specialists). In total, the top-5 employ 23,865 specialists, which is 41% of the total number of top-50. During the second half of the year, seven companies showed absolute gains of over 200 people: SoftServe (954 specialists), EPAM (900) GlobalLogic (532), Ring Ukraine (350), Nexteum (230), Intellias and ZONE3000 (200 each).The leaders in growth were Infopulse, Elex, Evoplay, Intellias, Lohika.

Two new companies also appeared in the ranking, those are TicketsUA (38th place) and G5 Entertainment (49th place), while Daxx BV returned to 48th place.

Over the past six months, twice as many companies from the top 50 have opened new offices (13 vs. 6 in January-July 2018). So new locations appeared in Kyiv and Lviv. Overseas offices were opened in Malaga, Berlin, Warsaw, Krakow, Toronto, Turin, London, Bucharest, Eindhoven, Charlotte, Chicago and even in Tokyo and Seoul.40% of companies plan to grow more than 100 professionals in the first half of 2019. Only 2 out of 45 companies that took part in the survey do not plan to increase the number of specialists.Most companies do not plan to export specialists from Ukraine abroad. Rating for July 2018 can be found here.

As usual, the compilers of the study also provide salaries for the main specializations of the developers:

Salaries of Java, C # and C ++ developers:

Non-Android Java salaries and Android Java developers:

Salaries of Android developers: Java vs Kotlin:

Salary Objective-C and Swift-developers:

Salaries of PHP, Python and Ruby developers:

JavaScript developer salaries:

QA salaries:

Salaries of system administrators and DevOps engineers:

Salaries of managers:

Let us remind that earlier we published data about the salaries of C-level managers in Ukrainian IT.

According to DOU, almost 160,000 IT Specialists work in Ukraine as of 2018. Last year, this index was 127,000 specialists, this means that the industry increased by 26%.

Salaries

For the last year, the salaries of Junior QA increased from $400 to $500 and of Middle ones from $ 1,100 to $1,300. The maximum rise was in the salary of Senior Ruby specialists – plus $800. The salary of project managers also increased by $200 last year. This is the first positive dynamics in a Project Managers’ salary since December 2013, according to DOU.

“The salaries considerably differ not only depending on the work experience but between the cities. A Project Manager in Kyiv earns twice more than the Project Managers in Odesa and Lviv. Junior Javas are better paid in Odesa, and Middle Swifts in Lviv earn by $900 more than in Kyiv,” the researchers emphasize.

Bonuses

According to the portal, the IT company employees prefer the medical insurance, compensation for gym and food as bonuses.

Vacancies

The number of vacancies published by DOU has increased by half for the last year – from 3,111 to 4,606 per month. And most often, the companies search for Front End, QA, PHP, .NET and Java Specialists.

Besides, DOU studied the best IT employers of Ukraine, best IT universities, as well as a profile of the Ukrainian IT specialist this year.

“Over 1,500 Specialists”Category

This year, Infopulse was recognized the best employer among the largest Ukrainian IT companies. SoftServe and GlobalLogic got into the top-three. Luxoft and NIX Solutions were not represented in this rating as they had not overcome the barrier of 10% votes of the total staff quantity.

“800-1,500 Specialists”Category

Genesis won in this category with minimum 95 scores in each question pool. The last-year winner Intellias took the second place, and SigmaSoftware – the third one.

“200-800 Specialists”Category

Govitall is the winner in this category. Trionika and Netpeak go behind. Terrasoft, the last-year silver medalist, did not overcome the barrier by minimum number of votes.

81-200 Specialists”Category

Codemotion wins the second consecutive year, and now in the “81-200 specialists” category. 52 interviewed employees gave maximum scores to the company. Ringostat, Technorely and ActiveBridge also got the highest scores and took the second, third and fourth place, respectively.

Food Companies

This year was the first time when DOU made the food companies rating. Ringostat took the first place, and M2E Pro and Terrasoft also got to the top-three.

In addition, the rating includes the employers breakdown by cities:

• The best employer in Kyiv — Codemotion
• Kharkiv — ITOMYCH STUDIO
• Lviv —  Leobit
• Dnipro — LANARS
• Odesa — Netpeak
• Vinnytsia — Pillar
• Cherkasy — Active Bridge