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Comment by photonios | Hacker News Reader

That highly depends on which city you are in Romania. If you're in one of the bigger cities (Bucharest, Cluj, Iasi or Oradea) then it's going to be ok. If not, then you're screwed, unless you can work remote. At least, that has been my experience.

There's also the thing that the average developer salaries are surprisingly low. They are well above the national average, but it's only the top 1-5% who really pulls in the money. The latest numbers I have seen is an average of 5300 RON net (1185 EUR). While the national average is at 2100 RON (485 EUR). The top 1-5% pulls in more than double the average: 10000 RON (2170 EUR), if not more. You're gonna need a salary like that to live comfortably.

It makes sense for him to count in US dollars because even though prices for apartments and cars are expressed in euros in Romania, the rest off the world is still very much US dollar centric.

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You can live quite comfortably, even in Bucharest, with $1200, as a dev. No need to be in the top 10%.

Do you have any (online) references available for the average salaries? I'm quite interested in this but can't seem to find decent sources...

I work for a start-up and when we started we bought research on this. Let me see if I can share the report we got. I'll report back in a couple of hours.

I was in Cluj last year and was surprised to see an ad in the street saying "Are you a coder? Living in Floresti (a neigbothood)? Come send us a resume!".

Salaries are low compared to the rest of Europe (and the US). But it sounds easy to get a tech job there.

Afaik Romania's IT is doing very well thanks to outsourcing. Oracle moved a big chunk of stuff there. Education is alright, salaries are low, timezone is European and authorities are accommodating; if you can get over the language barrier somehow, you get a good bang for your buck, probably better than in more expensive Czech or Poland. The country is hungry, so to speak; it's the new frontier of labour-cost arbitrage. Their only challenges are political stability and corruption.

You mean the language barrier between your own native language and English? Because from what I've experienced, most younger people in IT speak English very well.

EDIT: Yeap, Romania has been doing well. However, I'd argue that the biggest risk is not corruption. From the Romanian workforce's point of view, its becoming too dependent on outsourcing. As salary costs rise, it becomes less and less attractive for foreign companies to outsource work to Romania. Right now, in the city where I live in Romania, 80% of the IT companies are outsourcing companies. It's getting better and better, and most good programmers know to avoid the outsourcing companies as they generally pay peanuts and the work is boring and repetitive.

I was not arguing that it's not easy to find a job. I was arguing that its hard to find a well paying job.

See my comment down here, 80% of the companies offering jobs are outsourcing companies, which are not the greatest to work for IMHO. Or did you have a different experience? I worked for one for about 6 months and left. I've seen people around me with similar experiences. But those are just my anecdotal experiences.

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