Over the last couple of years, Eastern Europe has become one of the most popular IT outsourcing destinations. It caught up with China, India and the US with regard to the quality and abundance of software engineering talent. As a result, tech giants like Google, IBM, and Microsoft have expanded their horizons when searching for talent with a focus of hiring talented software developers from Eastern Europe.
Eastern European developers have a lot to offer – exceptional quality of IT services, relatively lower costs, diverse skills and rare expertise with high levels of English, to name a few. These factors contributed to the region’s popularity among global companies which are facing talent shortages due to the fierce competition for talent.
Let’s dive right in and look into the reasons why hiring software developers from Eastern Europe is worth a shot.
Table of Contents
Highly-skilled tech professionals
Eastern Europe has some of the best developers in the world with its blooming tech hubs and growing innovation-oriented communities. As you look at the table below, you can see that Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are among the top 10 countries with the best developers, competing hand-in-hand with IT powerhouses like China and Russia.
Source: future-processing.com
Many Eastern European developers provide high-quality professional services to Western European and American companies, playing a crucial role in product development and execution.
Not to mention the fact that Moldova, Ukraine, and Romania are ranked in the top three countries with the best JavaScript, Python, and C/C++ developers and freelancers. Therefore, if you haven’t looked into the Eastern European talent market yet, it’s worth giving it a shot.
Significant cost-savings
Compared with the US, Eastern European countries have a relatively lower cost of living, and, therefore, the cost of hiring a software developer from that region is lower as well.
On average, a software developer in Romania makes around RON 16,000 per month (approximately USD 3,260). In contrast, a software developer from the US makes around USD 9,025 per month(additional cash compensation is excluded).
Now, that’s a significant difference.
The expertise of Eastern European developers comes at a lower price than that of their colleagues from more established tech nations like the UK, the Netherlands, The US, or Germany. However, the lower price doesn’t compromise quality, as Eastern European developers are highly skilled tech professionals with diverse skill sets and rare expertise.
Some people may argue that global companies might use these salary differences to their advantage. However, when an international company hires a developer from the Eastern European region, it doesn’t necessarily exploit the local talent. Instead, it offers an opportunity to improve their standard of living by providing competitive salaries and attractive compensation packages. It’s all about the perspective.
High levels of English proficiency
The English level of software developers plays a vital role in fostering two-way communication in an organization. It’s especially important to those who contact and work with international companies, where English is the medium of communication.
According to the EF’s English Proficiency Index, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Slovakia are among the countries with high levels of English proficiency, ranking in the top 30 out of 112 countries.
Moreover, considering the density of tech hubs and research centers established by foreign companies in the Eastern European region, developers are expected to have high or at least moderate proficiency in English as a basic requirement.
Diverse talent pool
Eastern European developers have a lot to offer with a rich diversity of skills and expertise. You can not only find developers who have experience with popular languages like JavaScript and Python but also those with rarer expertise like C++ or Haskell.
For example, developers from Poland are famous for their multi-language skills. Some of Poland’s most popular programming languages that appeared in job offers in 2021 include Java, JavaScript, and Python. In addition to those, you can also see C++, Kotlin, and Scala, among others.
The rising number of tech hubs and R&D centers in Poland, Romania, and Ukraine indicates the region’s well-equipped IT ecosystem with a diverse talent pool to support organizational growth and innovative spirit.
High-quality tech education
Eastern European countries also fuel the region’s IT industry growth by providing high-quality tech education. The number of engineering graduates in Ukraine alone reaches up to 130,000 people per year, producing twice as many graduates annually as Great Britain and Turkey.
With high-quality education in place, Eastern European developers have the opportunity to explore a wide range of different technologies and sharpen their skills, boosting their capabilities.
Convenient time zone
With distributed teams, coordinating time zones and synchronizing work schedules are a priority. Organizing a smooth workflow might be challenging when time zones are substantially different.
Eastern European countries have an advantage in this case as they’re only 1-2 hours ahead of Western Europe. In the case of the U.S., there is a 6-7-hour time difference with the East Coast and less than a 10-hour time difference with the West Coast. This makes it possible for you to organize a convenient workflow for your team, combining synchronous and asynchronous tasks effectively.
Eastern European developers have a lot to offer
As you can see, Eastern Europe has become one of the most popular IT outsourcing destinations for a reason. It provides access to a diverse talent pool with rare expertise, supports developers by providing high-quality tech education, and offers lower rates without compromising quality. Not to forget about the region’s convenient time zone, and now, it sounds like a whole package, right?
Although the abundance and quality of talent within the Eastern European region may sound promising, the fierce battle for talent makes it hard to break through the clutter of other headhunters. ‘How’ rather than ‘why’ becomes important when hiring Eastern European developers.
As a starting point, finding a reliable tech partner who specializes in talent sourcing from the Eastern European region will help you save time, effort, and money. This is where TalentGrid can help you.
TalentGrid is a platform that matches software developers with companies all over the world based on their skills and criteria. With the growing network of 40K+ developers from Eastern European markets and matching technology, TalentGrid helps companies find the developer they’re looking for fast and seamlessly without the hustle of traditional headhunting.
By creating an account on the TalentGrid platform and submitting your open tech roles, you won’t have to worry about headhunting, contacting, informing, and updating the candidates, – TalentGrid will do that for you!
