What’s Going on with The Ukrainian Tech Segment Going Into Q4 2025?

So the Q3 2025 is over and it is time to think about it and what it means to the Ukrainian Tech Segment. The best thing you can say about it is that no real new trends emerged during this quarter and everything that went on during Q1 and Q2 2025 and past years just rolled all the way into Q4 2025. Сould’ve been worse, eh?

Definitely not the grim assessment but it is not like you can say something nice about it either. The thing is – the market maintains its volatility and it affects the overall business climate and its long-term potential. That doesn’t mean much for the big players on the market but why bother caring about them when you have the little guy feeling the brunt of the fun being a tech company in Ukraine during these “trying times”.

In this article we will break down what happened during Q3 2025 and what it means going forward into Q4 2025 and beyond.

The Ukrainian Tech Segment Going into Q4 2025

The most positive thing you can say about the first three quarters of 2025 is that the whole thing was kinda going steady – unlike the ups and down and sideways extravaganza that took place during the latter part of 2024. With that being said, going steady doesn’t mean much when this “steady” is basically barely maintaining a semblance of balance.

That’s where the majority of Ukrainian tech companies are right now. Except for govtech, miltech and the likes.

• The cost of living crisis both in Ukraine, EU and USA severely limits the ability of product companies to maintain their regular sales pipelines and keep the cashflow at acceptable levels. It is eating away at the foundation of the consumer tech product segment. When people live hand to mouth – good luck pushing your “tinder for movie lovers” or “ai-driven inspiration quote rewriter”.
  • The consumer niches experience the market oversaturation backlash that further fuels the recession caused by the housing crisis and cost-of-living growth.
  • The target audience still spends money on tech products (especially those that directly affect quality of life), but they spend like they used to, and the figure goes down and down year over year.
• The growing backlash against the subscription services and their market oversaturation also makes it difficult for companies to keep their business models intact even though most of the products on the market won’t survive otherwise.
  • People can’t afford to keep this many software subscriptions, they can’t afford to buy premium, and they can’t afford to blast lifetime subscriptions out of the goodness of their hearts.
• Vibe coding is slowly taking over parts of the outsourcing industry, especially those who do all sorts of brand-related commerce apps. This is yet another indicator that brand apps were always a meaningless idea driven by excessive vanity.

The overall vibe of the moment goes like this:

• The overall Ukrainian Tech Segment talent is getting smaller and smaller, the talent itself doesn’t grow in value.
• It is not like high-profile specialists really can command big-money salaries like they did in 2021.
• More often than not companies are fine with letting go of big money salary guys to reduce spending and focus on maintaining the core team for the long haul.
• The salaries seemingly grow, but their purchasing power diminishes as the economy slowly sinks.
• As a result, many high-profile specialists are forced to accept either lowball offers or stay put with no significant salary increases.

Labor market news…

The labour market crisis just keeps on going. Everyone keeps talking about it. Nothing you can be do about it. These days it is just a topic for a piece of content you speculate on.

• The mobilization continues to be a thing and it maintains its supremely inconsistent and confusing effort to push the entirety of the Ukrainian tech segment’s workforce into the shadow realm in every meaning of that term.
• The reintegration of the veterans is more of an employer branding marketing campaign than the real thing.
  • First is that no demobilization policy would enable a mass influx of tech talent to come back into the fold.
  • Second, those veterans who get discharged are injured and variously impaired. This is a can of worms of its own that should be dealt with by the government first. Let’s hope companies will follow suit eventually.

Recruitment doesn’t fare better too.

The degeneration of the recruitment workforce also doesn’t really help matters. Mechanical checklist-driven automaton style approach is here to stay.

• The implementation of AI tools into a recruitment pipeline goes on. Some hail it as a great efficiency solution. But others criticize it as further dehumanization of a domain that always struggled with personal approach.
• However, no amount of AI tools can replace recruiters who can actually do their job and pivot when needed. Because these people like getting paid for that. Over the course of the 2020s lots of tenured recruiters straight up quit their jobs. They switch elsewhere instead because that’s what happens when companies keeps on underappreciating your efforts.
• On the other hand, the new breed of recruiters barely does just enough. You can characterize them as interchangeable tools following instructions and nothing more. Combine that with false-positive heavy AI recruitment tools and you get the best ever recruitment framework.

Meanwhile, folks outside not in the loop still think there’s money to make in “IT”.

• As a result, the courses still produce a steady stream of cheap affordable entry level talent. Coincidentally, this also contributes to perpetuating the exploitation cycle with sagging wages for cheaper talent.

In addition, institutional corruption enables illicit immigration.

• some of those who can afford it are part of the tech talent pool. They will try their luck leaving the country outright. After all, greener and safer pastures are preferable. At the same time, promises of better tomorrow that ring more hollow with each coming day.
• The travel restrictions lifting for 18-22 males in late August was populist decision. It solved none of the issues but creates new ones. And it already shows its effects in gradual decrease of hiring in the aforementioned demographic group. It’s been only a month as of this writing. We already see the 10% decrease of hires and candidate presence already is concerning.
• Eventually the travel ban for males lifts entirely. This means lots of older fellers will follow suit. And it is not like the European Union will turn them away.