Not to mention if your only competitive advantage is price, there always is or will be a source of labor that is cheaper than you. For example, a number of startups I work with are now moving their IT support and basic dev to the Philippines. The quality of work is equally bad or worse, but it's even cheaper than India and the language barrier is comparable.
I noticed a lot of outsourcing work is going to Ukraine and Belarus. India got a head start because of English language but right now many devolopers in Eastern Europe speak fluent English as well.
I don't think Ukraine is catching up to India, it's just different work. In my experience, the typical job going to Ukraine is a different breed. If you can deal with the time zone and language barrier, they have a weirdly large supply of very competent developers.
In fact, C++ devs from that region are the secret sauce to a lot of large codebases I've seen.
It's very far from "poor" when IT industry is concerned :).
While pay rate is obviously lower vs US it's higher or on par with most EU countries. So for say Senior Java Dev (the pay is much more dependent on a stack vs US) making 66K - 72K which would be about half of what same person would be making in US (outside of SV), but tax rate will be around 3% vs 30% and cost of living is a fraction of what it is in US. When I was living in Ukraine my disposable income was like most of my salary vs in US it's a small fraction of my salary.
Parent is still in an inflated labor bubble. In most of the US outside of the major cities it can be a struggle for experienced engineers to break 80K. I had to walk away from a lot of hideously low priced opportunities when I lived in the mid-west.
I'd say very little of that work is for startups it's more for large financial companies, large established software companies, telecoms, hollywood etc.
Even in my limited consulting experience, it's not uncommon at all for a sizable org to have a small team in Ukraine.
A couple of times, even though that team does not have an officially important role, you would see stalls on major decisions until the remote team had a chance to weigh in.
This is what I chose, but there are some tradeoffs: there was a biomedical engineering in Cincinnati, OH company who recruited me that I interviewed with that wanted to hire me (and I was very interested in the work seeing as it was stuff that I did but in another field), but they wanted me work onsite…
After a couple of more years working remote, I may just go work for another lab again because its not too hard to find very interesting work, but the pay sucks (for non-degreed folks).
I looked at Amsterdam as they had/have some nice tax incentives for expats. And as I had the max no of years in the UK state pension I could built up a Dutch pension as well.
Holland also has Mortgage interest relief so you could rent your UK property out and buy a property in Holland with some nice tax breaks
I know that of the people that I know who moved to Germany everyone is making about the same as they were at home (which is obviously anecdotal evidence). I have no doubt there are some jobs that pay more at the same time I know people making that kind of money or more in Kiev but it's fairly rare.
It is actually a €120K position - the only company in Berlin paying that amount, with very alarming reviews on Glassdoor - Thinkcell. So the recruiter was trying to low bail you.
I have a cousin who has a small SaaS business out of Belarus, and he says the top end of what he pays his devs there is $500, which is quite a bit lower than the numbers you're quoting here.
This is relevant to Ukraine in what way? I have unbelievably huge doubt that a Senior Java Developer with fluent English is making 500 in Belarus. Wargaming is Belarus company and they pay 50K in Kiev for Senior Python Developers and have a large office there. First random article on the subject http://goaleurope.com/2016/09/26/15960-software-developers-s...
EPAM generally quotes lower salaries vs what they actually pay as they think it helps set expectations in the market.
My guess this is due to the remnants of the good soviet math/science program in schools and universities. Which was originally heavily influenced by Kolmogorov by the way.
There is a good number of product companies that have large offices there (Magento, Samsung, GitLab, Wargaming, Grammarly, Ubisoft and a ton more) plus large outsourcing companies pay well and are generally working on large scale serious products
Magento is a wordpress plugin, or similar enough. Hardly a large company.
Samsung is a big hardware company, I'm not sure what they would have in software job but why not.
GitLab is a fully remote company, they don't recruit anywhere specifically. Their full disclosure on their (low) salaries and losing customer data is certainly driving away the senior folks I know.
Game companies are the shithole of the industry, the worst conditions and pays, worse than Indian sweet shops and failed SV startups. There is no sane job or career to be made there.
Back to the point. You're going to work in a consulting shop, soon enough.
I am not sure I follow :) the logic. This is a random list of product companies that I remember it's a small fraction of companies with large dev. offices in Ukraine. GitLab was a Ukrainian startup and has a large number of developers in Ukraine. Samsung had about 700 developers as far I remember.
The compensation trends have very low correlation to how things are in US. The largest local $ making companies are mainly gambling, crypto and porn but they are not very public although many of them a really huge.
I mean that good developers will migrate toward local companies that have good work conditions, good money, good projects, and good co workers.
The companies you quote are not better than a middle grade outsourcing company in these regards, so they're not stealing their talents. If they are the best companies you could think of, that explains why you can find decent developers in the local outsourcing firms.
Well the above to one extent or the other have all of the above but outsourcing companies are on par as far as perks. I am working for fairly large public US company and all of the above mentioned have nicer offices and more perks :). The reason I mentioned these is because they are to some extent well known.
Exactly you can see that in the eu the former WP countries with poor economies - causes a massive brain drain. I seem to recall seeing a quote that one of the Baltic stats some huge % f hat years graduates where working abroad.
The country, as a part of USSR, used to have an accent on industry development. Its higher education used to be free, and largely remains so. In 1990s, it turned very poor, and is still far from average European level. Hence a generation of very advanced developers asking rather moderate money. I hope it will not last, because the level of consumption and wages will rise :)
If they had a weirdly large supply you can be guaranteed an army of recruiters from FB, Amazon, Google et al would be lining up at campuses the way they do in India.
The only limitation these firms face in growing faster is getting their hands on talent.
Bullshit. Tech companies are not competing for worldwide talents. The companies you quote have at most 3 offices in Europe: London, Zurich, Dublin. The first thing a recruiter will tell you is to abandon your life and your family.
Google has offices in almost every countries but they are administrative offices with almost no employees. If you're a tech worker, you can only be in one of the very few tech locations.
They do have tech workers in multiple locations in Germany. At least one of them is almost only tech, but small.
But you are right, that those are not big major tech offices like the three mentioned. So most engineers in Europe would still be working out of London, Zurich or Dublin.
And also leaving your language, your currency, your bank, your culture, the entertainment you know (movies, culture, songs), the shops and brands you are used to...
I've worked with Belarusian developers and they were top notch. Belarus is very close with Russia and is considered the last dictatorship in Europe, so weigh that with a decision.
Having said that, the old Soviet / Eastern Bloc countries are very sharp. They were of course on the other side of the Cold War, which is what birthed most of our modern technology.
I don't know if this is still the case but the Eastern Bloc developers I have met years ago were all super strong in math and other science fundamentals. Very impressive.
I've had opposite experience. In my case, they were sharp but they were also toxic to be working in a team. So, we had to move our R&D centre to Poland.
I'm not the person you replied to, but I suspect they tend to be very headstrong and don't have a problem telling you that you are wrong with vigor. Then are willing to argue the point for an hour or two.
If you are not accustomed to it, it can be a shock, but it certainly can lead to finding the best solution.
Actually in Philippines pretty much everyone speaks a quite understandable English compared to the average Indian that thinks to be speaking a perfect English while the reality is quite different.
Maybe so, and many Americans aren't understandable to me as an Indian. I just wanted to point out that not being understandable is a statement about the person making it as much as it is about the people it's ostensibly about. Indians, in this case,
I grew up in a weird household, with half my family with strong Irish accents and the other with strong NYC accents. When I moved away from New York, almost nobody could understand me at all for a few weeks. A few teachers thought I was a non-native speaker.
