IT Nearshoring Poland: Why Hire Dedicated Developers in Poland?

Poland is at the heart of Europe, and its location gives it plenty of advantages. Bordered by seven countries and a body of water, it’s an economic hub that’s easily accessible to a lot of countries throughout Europe. Unsurprisingly, it has shown economic growth throughout its history. Among the members of the European Union, Poland is the sixth largest economically, and is the largest among those belonging to the former Eastern Bloc. What’s more, it’s the sole country in Europe to not have undergone a recession in 2007-2008. As a result, it holds the record for the longest economic growth in the EU, having experienced economic growth for the past 26 years.

Accordingly, Poland’s IT industry is on the rise. As of 2018, Poland’s IT industry is valued at nearly 19 billion USD, accounting for 3.3% of the country’s gross domestic product. This is projected to exceed 27.5 billion USD, showing an annual increase of around 6.6%. This is an effect of Poland’s expansion of its IT services towards new and emerging technologies, including the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and cybersecurity.

IT Nearshoring in Poland

Given Poland’s great IT industry, it is a ripe place for IT outsourcing or nearshoring. The country is rife with IT talents, producing well over 15,000 IT graduates annually and over 99,500 high school students having IT-centric courses. In fact, Emerging Europe claims that the first outsourcing company was established in Poland, and this happened to be an IT outsourcing company. IT is also claimed to be the fastest growing sector of Poland’s Business Support Services. Poland as a nearshoring location or offshoring target is, therefore, a great decision.

The IT industry is also a somewhat lucrative sector, with the average salary of IT specialists being above the national average salary by around 57%. The demand for IT professionals in the country is therefore undergoing rapid growth. In terms of IT service Poland became an attractive nearshoring destination for European tech companies.

Poland isn’t the sole contender in the IT space in Europe, however. Its neighboring country, Ukraine, is also showing a lot of growth in the information technology field. Ukraine is home to over 185,000 IT professionals from over 4,000 technology companies, making it the largest IT service exporter in the continent. Moreover, over 1,000 of the 5,000 Fortune 500 companies have outsourced some of their IT services to Ukraine.

IT Nearshoring Poland Methods

There are several methods for IT nearshoring in Poland. Let’s take a look at the most common methods for IT outsourcing to Poland.

Hiring Freelancers

One way of outsourcing IT projects is to hire freelancers in Poland. These freelancers may be found through freelance portals like Upwork, Toptal, and Freelancer. This method is among the cheapest, but this low cost comes with several risks. First would be the quality: it’s difficult to adequately measure the capabilities of freelancers, especially if you aren’t very technical yourself. Second would be reliability: freelancers usually take multiple projects at the same time, and they aren’t bound to any legal contracts, so they’re likely to miss deadlines or, worse, can opt to just stop working with you in the middle of your project.

Project-Based Outsourcing

Another method would be project-based outsourcing or nearshoring in Poland, where you outsource the entire project to a third party outsourcing company Poland. In this way, you essentially transfer the responsibility of completing your project to the third party vendor: they will be providing business analysis and project management services on top of the development services, and will oversee the entire development of the project. While this takes a lot of load off your shoulders, it doesn’t come without its own risks. First, it tends to be expensive due to overhead costs. Second, slight misunderstandings between you and the vendor at the start of the project can lead to large deviations from your requirements, which could cause a lot more money to correct.

Dedicated Teams

Another option would be to hire a dedicated development team in Poland to work on your project via staff augmentation from an offshoring vendor. Here, your developers will be working full time on your project and will report to you directly, but will remain in the vendor’s office and utilize their resources. This method gives you full control over your project but is cost effective because you only pay for the needed development service for your project. It’s also scalable, as you can add or remove resources from your project as your requirements change. One point of concern is communication: depending on the vendor location, there may be language and timezone differences that can compromise timely communications. Therefore, it’s critical that you choose your vendors wisely. To avoid these differences, you may want to hire from neighboring or nearby countries, which is referred to as nearshoring. If you would like to hire nearshore dedicated development team Poland or Ukraine can be the right solution as close to Western European countries. When hiring from Poland or Warsaw, for example, you are IT nearshoring Poland or nearshoring Warsaw.

Of course, you can also engage in nearshoring outsourcing from Ukraine instead. With over 110,000 global companies having established research and development offices in Ukraine, and with Ukraine’s IT outsourcing and nearshoring sector projected to reach 5.4 billion USD by 2020, you’ll be wise to consider outsourcing to Ukraine now.

Software Developer Salary in Poland vs Ukraine

After selecting the most suitable method for outsourcing to Poland, the next main concern would be the cost. The cost of hiring developers varies immensely across different countries. For this purpose, let’s take a look at the typical salaries of software developers in different countries to see where it’s best, cost-wise, to hire from. For this comparison, we use PayScale as our source. According to the PayScale website, the average yearly salary of software developers in various countries are as follows:

• US – USD 70,388
• UK – £30,996 (USD 38,565)
• Poland – USD 96,935
• Switzerland – CHF 88,029 (USD 89,248)
• Ukraine – USD 24,833

Comparison of Average Annual Salaries of Software Developers in Different Countries (Source: PayScale)

From the above comparison, it is evident that Ukraine offers the most affordable rates for software developers. Also located at the heart of Europe, it’s strategically located to provide outsourcing services to other countries in Europe.

Let’s zero in on the two countries that have the most potential for IT outsourcing: Ukraine and Poland. Let’s perform a comparison of the average yearly salaries of developers in different technologies from the two countries.

It is evident that Ukraine offers the better value for money for software developers across different technologies between the two countries. Moreover, with both countries having an abundance of IT professionals (250,000 for Poland and 185,000 for Ukraine), and both being central hubs for innovations with top-notch developers, the competition comes down to price, where Ukraine beats Poland.

Hire Developers in Poland or Ukraine Now

The IT outsourcing industry is on the rise, and Poland is among the most strategic locations to outsource IT resources from. We’ve taken a look at the landscape of IT outsourcing Poland, the various methods of outsourcing IT projects, and the cost of outsourcing in different countries. We’ve seen that while Poland is a strategic country for IT outsourcing, Ukraine proves to offer a more cost-effective rate, and is equally strategically located.

If you’re looking to outsource your IT projects, you’re in luck! We at Mobilunity are here to help. Located in Ukraine, we offer incredibly affordable dedicated developers to address all your software needs. At Mobilunity, we strike the perfect balance of quality and affordability. Let us help you drive your next IT project to success: hire a dedicated development team in Ukraine!

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