5 Reasons To Hire a Developer in Eastern Europe

With the planet moving faster and faster towards digitalization, high-quality software development and outsourcing have become highly valued services. Luckily, the IT sector and talent pool of Eastern Europe (with its vast number of top-notch companies to partner up with) have proven to be a perfect match that combines good pricing with top quality.

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Eastern Europe’s Top IT Destinations

You have software or web development needs? Likely you have considered the possibility of outsourcing at least some of your development work. Developers can be found around the world, but we’d like to highlight Eastern Europe and three Eastern European countries in particular as especially promising regions to find developers for your project.

Belarus

Opening the list is the Republic of Belarus that the Wall Street Journal has named:

“The emerging Silicon Valley of Eastern Europe.” 

Operating its High Technology Park (HTP) since 2005, it boasts a special economic zone with its own tax and legal regime, established especially for the development of IT businesses.

Out of 1500+ IT companies successfully running in Belarus, over 750 of them are residents of HTP, including such renowned ones as EPAM Systems, IBA Group, Game Stream (aka Wargaming.net), Itransition, and many others. Moreover, 7 companies with Belarusian development offices were included in the IAOP rating of the best outsourcers in the world “Best of The Global Outsourcing 100.” Thus, numerous global corporations are customers of the High-Tech Park, and the numbers only continue to grow.

The country is also home to 21 high-level tech universities, specializing in professionally educating IT specialists, and over half of the specialists are young men and women under 28.

In addition to outsourcing, Belarus is famous for its successful products the whole world knows about. That said, over 1 billion people in more than 190 countries use mobile applications developed by residents of the Park: Viber, World of Tanks, MSQRD, Flo, to name a few.

Poland

The Polish economy is growing quickly and with it its reputation for being a top destination for Eastern European outsourcing. As of recent, both the capital, Warsaw, and the city of Krakow have shown a huge leap in the IT industry. With that said, according to the IT outsourcing market report of N-iX:

“Poland has the largest IT talent pool in Europe (279,800 IT professionals).”

One of the things that Polish developers pride themselves on is their input in the advancement of Agile software development. Plus, the country has its own large ecosystem called Startup Poland that’s aimed at supporting start-ups, including a large share of tech ones.

Some of the well-known products that were developed in Poland include: IVONA software, BlaBlaCar, LiveChat, and the Brainly platform for learning.

Ukraine

Did you know that Ukraine is a European leader in IT outsourcing and software development? According to the report by European ITO News:

“Ukraine has become Europe’s #1 IT outsourcing and software development powerhouse.”

The number of developers in Ukraine is growing every day and there are more than 1,600 companies that are engaged in IT services. Over the past couple of years, the Ukrainian IT market has doubled and reached the figure of over 180,000 specialists. Furthermore, the industry has become one of the main directions for the export of services in the country. About 85% of all the Ukrainian IT industry workers are located in the following cities: Kiev, Kharkiv, Lviv, Dnepropetrovsk, and Odessa.

Some Ukrainian products that are well known include: Grammarly, DepositPhotos, Jooble, and GitLab.

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Why You Should Consider Hiring Eastern European Developers

Reason 1: Superb Skills & Education

There are many different branches of IT services, be it software development, creating a native app, getting eCommerce assistance by hiring Magento Developers in Eastern Europe, etc. So when it comes to choosing the right people to team up with, education and skills should count.

Eastern European tech education focuses on giving skills of coding and beyond, meaning that people not only have in-depth knowledge of code, they understand the business needs of their clients. For instance, let’s take the field of eCommerce as an example, you’ll not only receive a nice-looking online store, you’ll get a website that’ll sell. This is because the developers not only know how to build the website that you need, they know what they are building it for and how to make it successful.

Reason 2: Cost & Value for Money

Hiring developers in Eastern Europe is cost-effective, indeed. Yes, the services of specialists from Asian countries can come at more affordable rates, yet the value you get for the money that’s paid will differ. On a similar line, the hourly rates of US-based IT specialists generally cost thrice more than those of Eastern Europe. This gives a pretty clear picture of why the IT market of Eastern Europe is appealing.

Reason 3: Rich Selection of Companies

As previously noted, there are thousands of IT companies to choose from in Eastern Europe. You can sift out the choice of the company based on the type of field that you need (for example, online retail, app building, website development, etc) and then compare the deals on offer to find the best match for you. To give some specific examples, you may look through this list by Clutch on the top Eastern European custom software development companies.

Reason 4: High Performance & Quality Results

Having a results-oriented team working on your project always feels rewarding. Most developers in Eastern Europe treat your project like it’s their own. Thus, they are often considered to be a constant part of the team even after the project is released. Multi-tasking and achieving good results at optimal speed are among the top qualities that make them stand out from the crowd.

It is common that instead of just coding with “no-questions-asked”, they often give you their expert advice on which solution would make more sense. Usually they happily share their hands-on technical expertise to reach better results. What’s also equally important is that these programmers are in step with current developments and know about all the trends since they’re always standing right on the frontline.

Reason 5: These People Don’t Only Speak English Well, They Get You

Solid English skills are among the major requirements for working with foreign clients. Therefore, boosting the knowledge of the language on a regular basis is a mandatory thing for the developers. This is why there’s no need to worry about miscommunication.

What is more, it should be mentioned that taking responsibility is among the main things that make up the cultural mindset of Europeans. These are people who you can count on for delivering things in a timely manner. Moreover, with the IT world advancing and changing so quickly, they understand the importance of keeping up with the trends and thus tend to constantly learn something new.
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Are There Downsides to Development in Eastern Europe?

Perhaps the main pitfall that you can encounter when collaborating with Eastern European developers is the difference in time zones. With the dev team being on the other side of the world, some companies find it inconvenient that the meetings and project discussions with their partners may be hard as they most likely won’t be held live.

But the truth is that this myth of “communication difficulty” can be easily shattered. Eastern Europe’s time zones don’t differ that drastically from the USA or Australia. This means that developers in Europe manage to communicate easily with their overseas partners using modern technology right within the time frames of their working hours. Scheduling is the key that solves the mystery, so there’s no need to be afraid that you’ll face issues with reaching your developers. See for yourself using this time zone converter.

In summary, Eastern European developers certainly deserve the attention of those seeking professional IT partners. The high level of education of the specialists, good knowledge of the English language, superb performance, the large selection of strong companies, as well as the overall price-per-quality ratio, are among the main factors that have already made thousands of companies around the globe happy with the services they received.

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Alex Husar, a CTO at Onilab with 8+ years of experience in Magento and Salesforce. He graduated from Czech Technical University and obtained a bachelor’s degree in Computer Software Engineering. Alex’s expertise includes both full-stack dev skills and a strong ability to provide project-critical guidance to the whole team.