Romanian Software Developers Hailed Worldwide
13 December 202116 June 2014 | People
From San Francisco to London, Bangalore or Sidney, Romanian software developers are held in high esteem for their excellent theoretical background, programming skills and creativity.
These programmers are among the most sought-after in the world by companies in need of specialists whose mastery of the code is complemented by strong linguistic abilities and convenient salary packages. Cities like London have witnessed a real “siege” from Eastern European specialists lately. Of these, Romanians are considered the most creative and skilled as well as the very foundation of UK’s current tech boom. Giants like Microsoft noticed the best Romanian coders soon after the fall of the communist regime and countless Western startups followed suit. These newcomers are now competing for our valuable specialists with major players and well established Romanian IT firms, as Darren Overby, an American entrepreneur who learned about Romania after posting a small project on vworker.com, soon discovered. The following excerpt from Darren’s blog accurately illustrates his opinion about the guys in Cluj-Napoca he commissioned the project to: “The following day I was truly amazed at how quickly they got to work. It’s the first time I’ve ever witnessed programming in parallel. Everyone immediately checked out the framework and initial code base from the SVN server and got to work. Within the course of 12 days, we rebuilt the hostel front desk system and got everything mostly done.”
Cities like Bucharest, Cluj, Iasi and Timisoara have the highest concentrations of IT specialists in the country and also a diverse talent pool. The Austrian legacy may explain why people in the Western part of Romania outclass those from the East and the South in work ethics. Bucharest enjoys the highest number of developers and the most diverse skills but companies located there face the toughest competition on specialists in Romania.
If the brains of the Romanians have been earning accolades for several decades, the dark ages faced by the IT infrastructure ended only a few years ago. The rate at which improvements have been taking place in this area astonished even the experts. Anil Polat, a seasoned travel blogger, dubbed Bucharest “a travel blogger’s digital fantasy come true”. His amazement was caused by the omnipresence of free wireless connections and the super-fast Internet, which, at about 15 megabits per second (Mbps), came second only to South Korea’s when he published the article and is about 5 times faster than the average connection of an American user. All this with a Gross Domestic Product 50 times less than that in the US and a Human Development Index (HDI) of 50. which places Romania toward the bottom of the list… The only logical explanation for this apparent paradox is the bias towards mathematics and science during primary, secondary and high school in Romania’s curriculum. Bulgaria, Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania also favored math and sciences in school and they all rank in the world’s top 10 on the average speed of the Internet connection. With the average Romanian student getting almost 8 times the amount of computer training an American receives by high school, the ranking no longer baffles us.
In his interview with Daniel Kozak, Indermith Gill from the World Bank foresees a bright future for Romania, so choosing a partner from our country seems a smart decision. According to him, the high number of Romanians working and studying abroad is a positive sign for the country’s economic future, since this high mobility reflects the education and skills of the Romanian specialists. These people will have an impact on the country’s evolution either directly, if they end up returning or doing business with Romanian companies, or indirectly, through knowledge sharing with relatives and friends. Ireland faced a similar situation decades ago, when it ranked among the last in Western Europe in economic development and topped the list with its emigration rates. Surprising as it may seem, the country is now one of the most developed in the world.
The article touched only a few of the aspects that make Romania attractive for companies in search of highly skilled IT specialists. It is up to you to discover the others and reap substantial benefits by working with our experts.
Sources:
Techcrunch
The World Bank
independent.co.uk
Foxnomad.com
CNN
Darren Overby
