Hey everybody, I'm
Dave Hecker and today we're going
to talk about outsourcing to Ukraine.
Ukraine's been on the news a
lot lately and a lot
of people are calling us and asking is it safe?
So before we get
to that, let's just talk about Ukraine
in general and how it
is before the political unrest started to happen.
Ukraine is the number
one outsourcing destination in
Eastern Europe, there are over
a thousand companies operating in
Ukraine, it's a big country.
They have a very very good
educational system, it's sort
of a leftover from the Soviet
Union and their style
of education is very exerting,
it's very rigorous and they're
really good at problem solving, they're
very good at math and engineering and
in their culture, and this
goes for most of Eastern Europe, especially the former Soviet Union.
They put a lot of
value on solving technical
problems, science and math and things like that.
So, this yields a
huge number of graduates
from great universities who are going
to be fantastic software developers.
It's been 10 years plus
at their outsourcing industry, it's been doing really well.
So it's fair to
say there are tonnes and tonnes
of great developers in Ukraine.
The skills are really excellent.
The culture is also good
because Russians, Eastern
Europeans and Ukrainians as well,
they like to solve problems
in a very aggressive way.
They will attack a problem they'll take it head on.
So when you run into a coding
problem or a very,
very difficult challenge, the Ukrainian
developers usually are pretty happy about.
They'll really work hard on it
and they'll be head down for
a while and they'll be very proud
when they come up with the best possible solution.
They're really into it also
Ukraine is good cause the
infrastructure's great, the internet connectivity's
really good, the airports
are good, the electricity stays on,
it's pretty easy to fly
over there it's very easy
to got into Kiev, you don't need
a Visa if you are American,
it's pretty convenient and it's a decent airport.
If you're going to Kharkiv or to
Donetsk or something like that, or Odessa, other places.
It's a little harder, it's a
big country so you have to
make a connection or take
a train which takes a while
but generally speaking it's pretty
easy to get around and it's fairly safe.
Working with Ukrainians is pretty
much the same as working with
Russians and anyone from
the former Soviet Union.
The Russian Soviet style is
to treat everything as if
it were a space launch, they
are not lighthearted about anything,
even on a small project, they
want to do an elaborate design
they want it to be perfect
everything very, very serious.
When you ask a Ukrainian developer
do you think you can do this?
The answer is always going to
start with no because in
everything has to be
qualified in terms of risk
so if you ask an American do you think you can do this?
They are going to say yes and you
will say were there any risks and
they will say well maybe this or
this will happen a little bit
of risk, if you ask
a Ukrainian it's going to
be the opposite can you do
this they are going to say well no
because the sky could
fall, our computers could
explode, so we can't
guarantee for sure that
we can do it but if
we can over come some of these
risks then we actually can do it.
You have to learn to deal with
these answers they will some
times seem hot headed to
people that are used to working
with them but they are
not they see this
kind of mannerism as being
very responsible and forthcoming,
and they dig in to find
risks and obstacles which can be a great thing in software.
As a result, the cloudy is really, really good.
Ukrainians are very good at
doing agile, because they understand the agile mentality.
Which consists of a lot of speaking up.
You don't want quiet agile developers, you
want people that are going to identify
problems and they are going
to come out and talk about them, and they are going to be forceful.
Ukrainians are great at that, and they love to be in control.
In Asia, you have to lead
the developers, it's hard to make
them agile because they are very hierarchical.
In Ukraine, if you tell
fellow developer listen I want
you to speak up if you have
any thoughts, they're going to do it.
So, it works out pretty well.
Some minor annoyances, they are
not part of the EU, so
you have to deal with some of
the classic legal and
privacy, [xx] for property,
risk and concerns that happen in Eastern Europe.
Not so bad, not as bad as Russia.
The banks aren't too bad.
It's a little bit cumbersome wiring money
back and forth, invoicing and some
legal not too bad,
but it's a little bit of
a pain, and the English
is pretty good amongst younger
people, it's a
little bit spotty especially when you
leave Kiev, those who do
speak English tend to do it
pretty well, the accents aren't too
bad, but you will
find a lot of developers that
can write English but don't speak
it, things like that, but
generally speaking, there's good
reason that they are the number
one outsourcing destination in eastern
Europe, they are really good,
they are very, very mature, and I would highly recommend them.
So onto the recent political
unrest, it is
now July of 2014
and there is somewhat of a war going on in Ukraine.
I'm not going to
get into the politics of that, but in
regard to the safety of sending
projects there, I would
categorize it as it's pretty
safe, I'm not worried
about it, Just this morning we
sent a project to a company
in Donetsk which is kind
of the epicenter of where everything is happening right now.
The great thing about IT work
is that in the end
you've got a bunch of people that
go into a building they hang
out on the building for a while
and then they come out, and there's
no shipping, there's no logistics,
there's no operations, there's no
trucks coming back and forth,
it's fairly simple, as
long as the internet and the electricity
are working, and people can get
to the office, you're going to be OK.
So, to interrupt the IT industry,
it takes sort of an open
war, the power has to go
out, there has to be fighting in the streets.
My prediction is that that's not
going to happen in Ukraine, but
I am not making that
as an expert, that's just my feeling.
If you're going somewhere like Kharkiv or
to Donetsk where there
is really a lot of conflict,
it's a little more dicey than
it would be in a place like Kiev
which is really pretty stable,
but overall I'm not worried
about it, and there is somewhat
of a fire sale going on in Ukraine this summer.
I'm getting a lot of calls
from vendors I haven't
heard from in a long time,
and they're saying hey, have you got any work?
They're not saying it like that, but
they're hungry, a lot of
Americans have been scared off, and they're really feeling it.
So, generally speaking I think
Ukraine is a fantastic location,
it's a little bit pricier than some
of your other Eastern European locations,
but the quality is fantastic, and
I give it a big green light
even with the current civil
unrest, just be careful the further east you go.
Ukraine is a great destination.
Feel free to send your projects
there.