Challenges and Opportunities

This study attempted to identify the degrees of importance of various job facets, map them to the levels of current satisfaction, as well as pinpoint and evaluate the key driving forces that were leading to brain drain of ICT professionals in Egypt. There were a number of challenges and opportunities identified from the findings of the study as follows:

• There exists a gap between the levels of satisfaction of respondents working in the ICT sector versus those working in the ICT sector in Egypt where 90 percent were satisfied working in the ICT sector with only 58 percent satisfied working in the ICT sector in Egypt due to poor financial arrangements and lack of proper training and development with 43 percent and 45 percent of the respondents respectively satisfied with these two vital job facets.

• ICT companies associate salaries of ICT employees directly with sales quotations that have indirectly impacted other ICT professionals who were more technical and did not receive any credibility and were not compensated on sales volumes.

• Seventy-five percent of managers expected to be employed in new organizations within in five years showing low stability and high risk to organizations with minimal communication and collaboration within different organizations leading to higher turnover rates.

• High dissatisfaction among employees with their working hours that is directly creating lower job productivity and performance and leading to the availability of inefficient systems or labor shortages.

• There is a major difference between privileges, training and development and pay structures provided by multinationals versus local companies. The gap gets even wider when getting the public sector into the picture, representing the segment that has the highest level of dissatisfaction with the opportunities they have in accessing new technologies. Public sector employees are very dissatisfied with economic aspects, compared to other respondents.

• Egyptian ICT companies are facing the problem of high turnover and are suffering from the brain drain of its ICT professionals seeking opportunities abroad.

• There exists a shortage in labor with only 5,000 ICT professionals while the market needs up to 150,000 ICT professionals.

• Overall, the majority of the respondents stated that they were satisfied with their current jobs, with 52 percent of the sample satisfied, 26 percent neutral about their jobs and 22 percent stating that they are dissatisfied.

• Results have clearly indicated that 71 percent of the respondents are willing to seek job opportunities abroad where they will receive higher training levels, and have a clear and challenging career path. Furthermore, it is evident that IT professionals holding managerial levels seem to be those most likely to leave.

• Results prove that the key driving forces for the brain drain, ranked by priority, are having a clear career path, broader scope for development, better access to higher levels of technology, better pay, and finally having more challenging work environments.

• Most respondents felt that to an extent, the Egyptian culture hinders the sector's growth. The domestic illiteracy and ignorance levels act as major disincentives for employees to progress.