To Hire Bulgarian Developers or Ukrainian? Who Is Better?
Over the last couple of years, the IT industry made an enormous jump ahead and became one of the leading ones in the world market. As the industry grew so grew the competition within it. Eventually, it led to a situation where some companies had to look for ways to reduce their expenses. One of the branches of the IT industry that required such methods the most was software development. Mostly that happened because of the extreme complexity of this field and high prices for developers’ services. That is why most companies these days are turning to outsource practices as it allows them to find great talents and significantly reduce expenses. However, which country is the optimal place for such a business? When deciding whether to hire Bulgarian or Ukrainian developers, consider your specific needs such as whether you need to find Ruby on Rails developers or require a full stack .NET developer, as the strength of these skill sets can vary by region.
Nearshoring Bulgaria: A Brief IT Industry Overview
Bulgaria has always been well-known for its great IT specialists and over the years it managed to become one of the most popular places for IT companies of all sorts to outsource their tasks at. These days Bulgarian programmers are offering various services, beginning from software development and ending with business processes outsourcing (BPO).
These days Bulgaria programming services are slightly shifting from outsourcing to more complex software development tasks which highly influences a country’s economy in a positive way. According to the latest reports, the IT sector is one of the most important ones in Bulgaria’s economy and annually attracts huge amounts of money to it. Most Bulgarian IT companies are offering their services abroad and are outsourcing-oriented. Due to this fact, IT nearshoring Bulgaria became widely known among foreign clients. Currently, there are over 65,000 specialists who are working in this industry which makes Bulgaria outsourcing destination one of the best ones in terms of talent availability. According to the same source, Bulgarian high education within the sector is also quite vast and includes over 53 profile universities.
IT Outsourcing Bulgaria: New Trends
Outsourcing companies in Bulgaria are at their peak of popularity these days. More than just that, Bulgarian developers are featured on the A.T. Kearney Global Services Location Index among the first 15 countries, which is pretty impressive and indicates the high level of the IT industry development in the country.
Just a few years ago Bulgaria was also ranked as the only country, located in Europe, that made it to the list of the Top 10 outsourcing destinations in the world. Also, according to this source, Bulgarian developers are among the very best in the world.
What makes it so popular and in demand for outsourcing? First of all, it is its convenient location, which makes it really close to the main European countries. This means easier communication, similarities in culture and traditions, a similar attitude towards business and many other benefits. The last but not least benefit is great Internet connection speed in this country as according to Ookla’s Global Index back in the day Bulgaria was among the first 30 countries with the fastest Internet connection.
Having considered all that, it becomes obvious, that Bulgaria is a great place for nearshoring practices as well. It is especially relevant for European countries, as there will not be many differences in the way of conducting business or language barriers for all that matter. That is the reason for many Bulgarian IT companies to provide outsourcing and especially nearshoring services these days.
IT Outsourcing Bulgaria: Bulgarian Developers vs Ukrainian Developers
IT outsourcing Bulgaria and Ukraine are both very popular destinations for outsourcing these days. However, if you are thinking about considering these two countries for such purposes, you need to learn about the main differences between them from this point of view.
High education
Both these countries are well-known for the high level of their tech education. Most Bulgarian developers, as well as Ukrainian ones, come with a strong technical educational background in the form of college or university. This mostly can be explained by the fact that IT jobs are being overpaid compared to other types and this attracts youth to them.
Number of specialists
Ukraine is a perfect country for IT outsourcing when it comes down to the number of potential candidates for the job. According to the data, provided by DOU, 53% of the total number of Ukrainian specialists – are programmers.
A pretty similar situation can be spotted with Bulgaria programmer representatives. Recent data shows, that currently, this country can provide the labor market with over 65,000 potential employees within the IT sector.
Level of professionalism
According to DOU’s data, nearly 49% of all Ukrainian programmers have at least 1 or 2 years of experience in the field. Also, most of them work as Middle-level specialists which indicates a certain level of skill already.
At the same time, Bulgaria is well-known for the high level of its profile education. This statement has been often proved by outstanding results of Bulgarian IT students on the various talent competitions. This way it could be said that Bulgarian education is competitive on the worldwide level and web development Bulgaria has to offer is on the high level as well.
Outsourcing Companies in Bulgaria and Their Specialists
Services of IT outsourcing Bulgaria provides these days are pretty vast. Currently, there are almost 250 outsourcing companies in Bulgaria that are eager to provide their services to foreign clients. But before you turn to any of those companies, you need to learn about all the necessary skills that your future software developer must have. Usually, those include, but are not limited to:
- Proper certification. Any member of the Bulgaria remote team should be able to prove his or her skills with a proper certificate or diploma. This way you get your guarantee that the specialists you are about to hire are worth their money.
- Coding skills. Make sure that all members of your Bulgaria dedicated team are proficient in at least a few programming languages and have several years of experience writing code with them. They should also know how to run tests on their own code and debug it if the need occurs. Usually, the list of the necessary languages includes Java, C++, C#, Node, and Ruby.
- Ability to think logically and take responsibility for their own actions. IT outsourcing Bulgaria has one more positive trait: software developers are able to perform even without constant strict supervision.
- Ability to work as a part of the team. Being a software developer, one will often have to perform as a part of the team. So it is essential that the new person will be able to successfully communicate with the rest developers who are working on the project.
- Attention to details and great writing skills. Software developers are not allowed to make mistakes, as even the slightest one might ruing the work of the whole application.
- Front and back end development skills. When speaking of front end skills your outsourcing Bulgaria specialists must know how to operate JavaScript, PHP, Python, SQL, and other programming languages. In the case of back end skills, one must know a few technical languages at least in addition to SQL and Node.js.
IT Outsourcing Companies in Bulgaria vs in Ukraine: Rates Comparison
Before you hire a Bulgaria software development team you need to learn about their rates first. To get a clearer understanding of the situation we will present you with a comparison table for both – Ukrainian and Bulgaria developers.
* Ukrainian salaries are provided based on Mobilunity’s Recruitment Team research on the local job markets. All salaries are net and do not include the service fee (in case of hiring on a dedicated team model). The salaries are provided for comparison purposes and could be not entirely accurate. Contact us to know the exact cost of hiring a developer corresponding to the required parameters.
As you see, both these countries suggest pretty cheap software development services. Such low rates are mostly explained by the low currency exchange rate in these countries which makes it really convenient for foreign companies to outsource to. However, in comparison to Ukrainian developers Bulgaria with its experts is not so competitive in terms of developers’ experience, knowledge of English, and the IT sector growth.
Software Companies in Bulgaria: Are They in Demand?
Due to the enormous rise in popularity of the outsourcing practices any Bulgaria software company is getting tons of clients these days. Today a Bulgarian software company can easily make a competition for an outsourcing company Poland. As we discussed previously, there are nearly 250 companies that provide such services on this country’s territory.
One of the biggest advantages of outsourcing to Bulgarian companies is the size of taxes that one would have to pay for doing such business there. You see, Bulgaria is the second country in Europe that has such low taxes, according to the latest research.
Due to the multilingualism of Bulgarian developers, their professional attitude towards their jobs and all the necessary certifications – this country is one of the best outsourcing destinations now. To some companies’ opinion, even Hungary outsourcing lags behind.
Speaking of skills of Bulgarian developers, you can be sure, that they possess all the necessary ones in order to perform at the very peak of their abilities while working on your project.
Software Developers from Ukraine: Why Mobilunity?
Even though Bulgarian outsourcing companies are great, Ukrainian ones are even better. Especially the one, that is called Mobilunity. There are several reasons for you to consider choosing it for your project:
- Quick HR turnaround process – you receive your team in just a few weeks.
- Low and transparent prices.
- Big base of resumes to choose from.
- All of Mobilunity’s specialists have all the necessary certifications.
- Convenient location.
