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Comment by bhouston | Hacker News Reader

> they have a weirdly large supply of very competent developers.

I've noticed this as well. Very strange that it is so "poor" but so talented. I guess that probably won't last.

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.

70k gross is more than what a senior developer would get anywhere in Germany or France.

If you really get that much, you've got it better than all western Europe, except London and Zurich.

Yep and Norway has higher pay too but taxes and cost of living kill it.

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.

In Ukraine it can not be inflated by definition as there is basically 0 vc money. The companies are profitable and are paying market rates.

isn't a lot of the outsourcing connected to western markets and that very VC money?

i think it's all connected you'll find.

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.

Why wouldn't you just work remote and solve that problem?

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).

> In most of the US outside of the major cities it can be a struggle for experienced engineers to break 80K

A senior dev can make 80k USD in India (before taxes) working for American, non IT services companies

True. For that much money you could hire instead in Canada and not deal with language or time zone barriers.

If they could they would. Plus there are costs beyond the actual pay such as cost of heath insurance, admin costs etc.

I've gotten offers for somewhat more for Amsterdam (with booking.com).

I didn't take it, because I was getting way more in London at the time.

Yep they recruit actively in Ukraine and pay a bit above but again taxes are way higher.

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'm in Singapore now. I'm not using any tax breaks---the taxes are generally low without need for exception.

(There are some tax breaks you (or your clients!) can get for investing in IT, though.)

I had a recruiter after me with a €100k senior role in Berlin, I thought the market rate in Germany was nearing SV levels.

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.

I'm in Belarus now and I can confirm that a developer with fluent English and a few years of experience gets around $400 a month.

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.

And a lack of job prospects in the region. The decent developers have no alternative but to work in the local outsourcing shops.

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.

You're way off on Magento.

See https://magento.com/news-room/press-releases/digital-commerc...

They're not a WordPress plugin, and they are a large company.

I don't mean to be rude, but I don't think you know what you're talking about.

Magento is the biggest online marketplace platform. If you need full control over your store you would self host the software vs using shopify.

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 :)

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