More IT Expertise In Eastern Europe Becoming Visible Globally

Global freelancing platforms, like UpWork and JobRack, are becoming an increasingly important source of IT talent. These sites have been really popular with freelancers in many countries in Asia for some years now. It’s become quite normal to hire a contractor in India or Bangladesh to perform defined jobs, such as setting up a WordPress server, but JobRack has recently noticed something interesting about the people on their site.

Many of the new experts arriving on the site are from Eastern Europe. This is demonstrating that there is not only a large amount of technical expertise in Eastern Europe, but also that these people are available for short contracts.

On the surface this may not seem important at all – you can find IT expertise all over the world – however I think that we are observing some big changes in the way that IT services are deployed and managed and this growth in the availability of expertise in Eastern Europe is just one indication of that change. Summarised, I think there are three big changes taking place:

1. Big IT Brands Focused on Customisation and Configuration; rather than trying to deliver enormous bespoke software systems, the larger IT players are becoming experts at bolting together various Big Data or CRM platforms to create entire systems for customers based on existing systems or toolkits.
2. App platform is global; software companies releasing apps can go global instantly. There is no real focus on where a product was developed as the app store is global and customers rarely ask where a product was developed.
3. Global talent pool; as the JobRack numbers suggest, it is becoming easier to recruit globally for short or long-term projects and areas that are full of technical expertise, such as Eastern Europe, are included in this.

The JobRack data indicating a growth in Eastern Europe technology expertise is interesting, but is just one component of a wider picture in how technology services are being delivered today. It’s clear that Eastern Europe is becoming more highly regarded as a leading area for IT development projects – large and ongoing or small and temporary.