Expert’s perspective: mid-level developers are losing touch with the reality of the IT market

We all remember the high hopes and riding the wave of a bull market in the Ukrainian IT segment in 2021. Eastern and Central Europe were emerging as international leading tech talent hubs. Earnings of Ukrainian developers were skyrocketing. February reshuffled the scenarios. The war began to undermine the development of tech centres in Ukraine. Dreams and plans were bombed. The business was prepared for the darkest scenarios but still suffered, hammered in parallel by the creeping global economic crisis. Such dramatic twists and turns always give rise to the need to overwrite script and recalibrate plans. Despite this, the demand for Ukrainian tech talent remains high. Senior professionals are in ever-high demand. The problem arises, however, with candidates without experience who think they can dictate prices in the market, clinging to the vision of a bright future they forged in times of prosperity.

The lean years are coming. The scales soon might be tilting from the employee market dice back towards the employer’s favour. We can see it in the freeze on vacancies in the FAANG and numerous multinational corporations, we can see it in the increasing layoffs in the HR industry, and we can see it in the less boldness of employees to change jobs. The IT segment, despite the ongoing #WarOnTalent, is also revealing signs of change, although much more subtle. Here, hiring IT experts “on the bench” (i.e. to get and keep the most valuable talent and not give them away to competitors) is dropping away. Senior and C-level recruitment processes are far from instant – they take several weeks, with more stages in which employers take a long time to select the best fit. Tentative questions directed at recruiters are starting to arise: “Hiring talent from which country will be cheaper, more cost-effective?”
Regardless of the role, every business player who ignores these signals loses touch with reality and plunges into a non-existent fantasy world. This is no way to operate in business. Wide-open eyes and the ability to quickly verify and adapt are necessary for survival in the market.

The current situation in the Ukrainian market is therefore challenging and demanding a lot of focus. The most important aspects are:

• Regular blackouts cover almost the entire country.
  The power shortage for a few hours may not be noticeable when working on a laptop, but along with the lack of electricity, houses are also cut off from the Internet. For now, the only solution to data transfer shortages is Starlink. Still, firstly, not everyone can afford this solution, and secondly, transport and delivery across the country can be lengthy at the moment.
• Mobilisation hangs over many men,
  and as we know, they make up the majority of the country’s tech talent. Every day, new recruits are being drafted into the army – men who until yesterday were working remotely on overseas contracts.
• Ukraine’s recruitment market is frozen.
  In a country at war, the last thing on anyone’s mind is a job change. Layoffs and unemployment are the bread and butter of most families. Many recruitment interviews with Ukrainian candidates are postponed due to connection problems. Employers continue to proclaim that they support the Ukrainian nation, but they see how troublesome it can be for the smoothness of business processes to hire an expert from such an insecure area. Increasingly often they are asking candidates about power generators and Starlink and, at times, they refuse to hire them at all.

These are all significant burdens on the economy and especially on the remote workforce in the tech market. Employees work under stress. Despite this, they are still in demand and the need for their services is not decreasing. This is especially true for seniors, high-skilled workers and engineers. Employers in Europe and other parts of the world hire Ukrainian tech specialists without much negotiation and at favourable rates. But this situation negatively affects non-expert IT talent, and I am surprised by the attitude of some tech newbies.
Some IT juniors and mid-levels, with 3–5 years of commercial experience, are behaving like kings of the castle. While Software Devs in Western Europe are more than happy to make €5,000 gross per month, Ukrainian colleagues expect between €8,000 and €9,000. Although I believe we have some of the best Developers in the world – as evidenced if only by our numerous victories in the digital war with Russia – this does not explain such lofty demands from entry-level candidates. The endless rise in wages has ceased of its own accord. Perhaps it will recur, but certainly one will not evoke it by repeatedly stating abstract figures on a contract and believing that it will work like a magic spell. The Ukrainian IT segment will survive by doing what it has been mastering since 2001, which is to immediately correlate business navigation tools and adapt to the new normal in the market.

Each and every day business in the country accomplishes the impossible and continues operational processes, but to conclude from this that nothing has changed is naive. It is time for junior Ukrainian tech workers to see through and bring their financial expectations in line with wages in the rest of Europe and their own relative position as an employee.