Russian programmers “threw” tens of millions of rubles

Russian programmers were faced with systematic failure to pay their customers. This was reported to socialbites.ca by the law firm RTM Group. According to the experts of this organization, several dozen such cases have been identified in the past two months.

“RTM Group is correcting the growth of “scammers” in relation to programmers of large companies that order software development by outsourcing,” the press service said.

In one of the cases, about 30 million rubles were not paid to outsourced programmers (freelancers. – socialbites.ca). The deal was breached by a Russian IT company, a major client.

“Victims are legal entities that provide software development services. “The RTM Group turns to IT litigation experts to sue and recover damages.”

Victims claim that their client companies withheld evidence of the work performed.

why don’t they pay

RTM Group experts have identified two main reasons why developers are more often denied payments.

First, due to the departure of the Jira scheduler from Russia and security issues on GitHub, customers are increasingly persuading outsourced programmers to work in companies’ closed systems.

Jira is an issue tracking system that can be used for project management. It is a kind of diary where all the actions of each of the developers are recorded. GitHub is an Internet service for hosting IT projects and joint developments by programmers from different companies and different countries of the world.

Both of these foreign projects allowed programmers to retain evidence of their involvement in a particular development. Now customers are asking them to abandon Jira and GitHub in favor of their internal counterparts. In this case, developers lose control over their projects, as well as the opportunity to prove their authorship.

“According to our estimates, in the case of development in the customer’s warehouse (a place to store data. – socialbites.ca), every fifth project ends in a dispute. The programmers don’t even have the opportunity to sue for the lack of evidence of the conduct of the business,” he said.

Secondly, companies that use outsourcing services have budgetary problems.

“They (client companies – socialbites.ca) try to reduce costs in any way, sometimes they refuse to pay third-party companies,” said RTM Group.

Jira is not guilty

Representatives of Russian IT companies have a different opinion. Dmitry Parshin, director of the Artezio development center (part of the Lanit group), told socialbites.ca that the problem of non-payment has nothing to do with the restriction of access to the usual planning and development tools.

“Such services (Jira. – socialbites.ca) have analogues or can be replaced by other accounting tools. “There are hardly any companies that fully rely on this tool when evaluating the work and paying for it,” he said.

A similar point of view was expressed to socialbites.ca by Nikolai Potapov, director of the business development department of Reksoft. He is sure that this attitude to contracts with Russian IT specialists has nothing to do with the departure of Jira.

But Potapov explained that the changes in the budget led to difficult decisions for companies.

“Many Russian customers are in the process of reviewing their IT programs and priorities. A number of projects have been concluded on foot,” he said.

You can’t delete it, it’s useless to sue

IT specialist Ivan Barchuk told socialbites.ca that large Russian companies can always deal with programmers in bad faith.

“Personally, I encountered this for the first time in 2012 and I continue to encounter it from time to time. With the onset of the next financial crisis, the situation repeats itself – the development and implementation of software often falls under the cost cuts, ”the statement said.

According to Barchuk, often the refusal of customers to pay for work done is associated with work without concluding a contract with “parole”.

The specialist explained that if the results of outsourced work are not used in the future, customers are not afraid to “throw” an IT specialist. “Often a project is abandoned entirely and results are not needed,” he said.

Barchuk added that if the project is active, to “delete or corrupt everything”, the programmer will likely need to abuse access to the client’s infrastructure or take other actions that are considered a hacker attack.

In this case, we are talking about violations of articles 272, 273 and 274 of the Criminal Code of Russia – about illegal access to computer information protected by law, the creation and use of malicious programs and the interruption of work with storage systems, information processing or transmission, respectively.

In his opinion, it is unprofitable for programmers to sue the client for non-payment of wages. “It may take a year or two. The success rate in court is well below 100%. Proving that you have developed software is more difficult than proving that you have built a house. In my experience, it is definitely not worth relying on a payment that exceeds the contractual amount,” explained the IT professional.

The West also “beats”

Barchuk noted that foreign customers may not be able to get paid for the project either. This mainly concerns companies on the new “non-friendly countries” list. It includes the United States, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom, and European Union countries.

Both Artezio’s Dmitry Parshin and Reksoft’s Nikolai Potapov said that problems with paying outsourced developers are often associated with IT exchanges. This applies primarily to developers who cooperate with foreign companies under personal contracts.

“As practice shows, the problem with payment is often associated with the banking sector, when external transfers at the initiative of intermediary banks are blocked or significantly delayed due to “manual” control by the security service,” Parshin said.

Dmitry Parshin from Artezio is confident that it is possible to solve the problem of non-payment of outsourcing programmers by planning the entire payment system under sanction conditions.

“We need to make clear agreements with the client and properly assess the ability to transfer funds through specific intermediary banks,” he said.

According to the expert, given the constant restrictions in the banking system, companies should rely on reliable partner banks that are ready to participate in solving problems with finding Western counterparties and making payments.

how to insure

RTM Group advised artists to save the task completion facts from alternative sources if it was impossible to use GitHub and Jira as per the client’s terms.

Experts considered video recording of the monitor screen an ideal option during the entire development process of the client’s project.

“This will help avoid disputes with unscrupulous contractors and have evidence of the work done,” the experts said.

IT specialist Ivan Barchuk recommended programmers keep a diary on their own to control the entire outsourcing process.

He also pointed out a few points that should imply an increased risk of running out of money to the developer when choosing a project.

“There is always a risk if business is done without a contract, if a single client company has more than 25% of the business and the contract only stipulates the payment of a monetary amount.” He finished Barchuk.

Programmers from Russia began to refuse payments for work performed under the contract more often. Gazeta.ru became aware of dozens of such cases. In one of them, the Russian IT company did not transfer about 30 million rubles to the contractor. IT professionals are confident that this practice has been established for a long time and is getting stronger in times of crisis.



Source: Gazeta

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