Most IT companies specialising in software development are concentrated in the central part of Russia. Moscow accounts for the biggest number of programmers working in web studios remotely or on a regular basis. St. Petersburg takes second place. In the eastern part of the country software development centres working with PHP are concentrated in Western Siberia. In spite of the accessibility and simplicity of the scripts, advantages of an open source code and the potential to solve the most difficult tasks, not every company can now offer the services of a competent PHP-programmer with work experience. It’s worth remembering that PHP is the most widespread language for development of web applications.

The IT industry is versatile and vast. Price assessment here as in many other areas depends on the difficulty of the task, the level of the specialist’s professionalism and the timescale for the ready project. In spite of the various characteristics of PHP-programmers and differences in their working speed, there exists such a notion as a standard hour and standard hourly rate.

Twenty-five large companies from Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk were chosen for the research; among them were Luxoft, EDISON Software Development Centre, Elar and others. The lowest rate was registered in Novosibirsk, of $20 per hour. And that presupposed team work. The actual developer is an intermediate specialist, whose work is fully supervised, controlled and tested by a project manager, a programming supervisor with more than 10 years of experience.

Large Moscow companies value the work of their PHP-programmers at between $25 and $50 per standard hour. Some of them work only in a foreign currency (usually US dollars). This can be explained by:

• Focus on the western market
• Collaboration with large commercial organisations which have foreign branches
• Marketing strategy: visually the price looks smaller and it gives the company a certain status

The average hourly rate in Moscow is $31.54; in Novosibirsk it is $33.43, given that the exchange rate is 35 RUB/$1. When choosing a PHP-programmer, one should consider the great value of good specialists. An hourly rate will not tempt professionals in most cases. Top flight specialists work towards the result, which is a resource developed from scratch and ready for proper operation. In such case the total sum for the completion of a confirmed requirements specification is decided upon in advance. At the same time, young workforce and specialists with less than one year of experience are not admitted to work on commercial projects.

With the spread of simple engine-based sites, the number of really good PHP-programmers has sharply decreased. That is why it would be wrong to consider only the hourly rate while searching for the right candidate. The difference between a medium and a high rate isn’t that important if the website directly accounts for optimisation of company technological processes, reduction of advertising costs, potential customer traffic and as a result the growth of the company’s income on the whole.

EDISON Software Development Centre