Arco Westbroek
Head of Products at Carerix
How Ukrainian developers helped Carerix grow and innovate
I’m really happy with Ukrainian developers. One of the reasons why is because working in the IT industry is really high in rank in Ukraine. A lot of people want to work there and that’s the main difference if to compare with other countries. It’s a very attractive sector for Ukrainian people, meaning they are ready to adjust to your timeframes, without the need to ask for that – it’s just the natural flow.
We are satisfied with the level of tech expertise, the approach, and proactiveness of our Grid Dynamics developers. Maybe it sounds strange, but for me it doesn’t matter whether they are in Rotterdam, in Paris, or in Kyiv. I mean, you should treat them as colleagues and inspire your teams on a product level no matter where they are based.
I have an emotional connection with Grid Dynamics colleagues because I’ve known them for years now and we build a lot of great things together. It’s fun to see how it has evolved over the last years, how developers are growing, how you learn new things from each other.
Benefits of using Scrum
So far, I have worked with Grid Dynamics colleagues for 4-5 years and it’s great to see that it’s a stable group. But it really started to pay off when we started using Scrum for our daily updates. Becoming more transparent proved to be really useful, but it also helped to learn how developers work. Making day to day decisions together via working with Scrum, especially when you have a remote team, which is what we have, is the key to successful cooperation.
Apart from Scrum updates, we have a session at Grid Dynamics, where we look at what we have accomplished the last quarter and what will be the focus of the next one. It’s an open discussion and it’s not that Ukrainian developers ask to tell them what they should do next – no, that’s not what we want – we want to say what we need and why, the “how” comes from the team.
Why hire developers in Ukraine?
We doubled our team 2 years ago, stopped with our Bucharest team, and hired a completely new team of 6 people. It took 3 months and then 6 people were ready to work, which would never happen in the Netherlands, where you’ll need to work for years to create these 6 new hires.
So it’s easier to cooperate with Kyiv instead of trying to hire someone in the Netherlands. Even if you manage to hire in the Netherlands, there will always be the possibility of that person being hunted by the top attractive companies.
Some companies start outsourcing because they think it’s cheaper, but in fact, it’s not cheaper. You shouldn’t do it to save money, you should do it if you want to have several new hires in the next three months, which is possible in Ukraine and most probably not possible in the Netherlands.
“Even if you manage to hire in the Netherlands, there will always be the possibility of that person being hunted by the top attractive companies.”
Tips
If you consider hiring a nearshore development team, here are some useful tips:
- There’s always more work to do than you have developers – stay focused and make decisions on what will be your next steps;
- Don’t go for remote cooperation thinking that it’s cheaper – do it for the flexibility and capacities you’ll acquire;
- Wherever your team is based, it will require attention and inspiration, yet, remote cooperation will take more effort to succeed;
- A lot of Dutch players want to start locally, but in fact they have two options – stay small or go to other countries.
Want to learn more about setting up an extended development team with us?
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