W tym odcinku podcastu DEVision, Sonny Van Assche, CEO w Ntiative rozmawia z Nikodemem, o przyszłości IT w Polsce. Rozmawiają o tym, jak będzie wyglądała branża w 2023 roku, o znaczeniu polskich programistów na świecie i o wyzwaniach, które czekają nas w najbliższym czasie.
Jeśli interesuje Cię przyszłość IT w Polsce, to koniecznie posłuchaj tego odcinka! Sonny i Nikodem wnoszą do dyskusji bogatą wiedzę i doświadczenie, dzięki czemu dowiecie się wiele o stanie branży w Polsce.
Odcinek w języku angielskim 🙂
Hello, my name is Nikodem and welcome in podcast DEVision. As you might noticed this episode will be special because we gonna speak English. Our guest is Sonny. Hello Sonny!
Hi Nikodem!
How are you?
Very good.
Before we start, introduce yourself.
Hi, I’m Sonny. I’m the owner of Ntiative. Started the company four and a half years ago. We are doing IT recruitment in Poland for international companies. I’m happy to be here today to share some of my thoughts about the Polish recruitment market.
IT industry in Poland and on the global market
And what do you think in general about IT industry?
What do I think about the IT industry in Poland? I believe it’s changing, we didn’t see the top yet, but it’s changing, it’s getting different. I believe there’s more value coming in. I would say 10 years ago the main reason why Poland became big in tech was probably the outsourcing coming from abroads. That was then gradually taken over by product companies. And now product companies are looking for a nearshore solution, cheaper solution and now since the pandemic I believe it became really a value centre where companies grow their teams in Poland not because it is cheaper but more because it still allows them to scale with great talents.
And how about global market? Could you compare them?
What we see… We see great product companies, big brands in the States laying off people. They are not necessarily replaced in the States, but they are replaced here in Poland. We see less competition from the Asian markets. We see the impact of the Russian conflict where first I thought that this would have a big impact on Poland. But was actually very limited, and we see even more companies now coming from Ukraine, from Belarus, American companies that had teams in those countries now growing their teams here in Poland. I’m more concerned on what’s going to happen next year, the global recession. I don’t know if it’s going to be a huge recession, but we feel the impact already. I would say on the first six months of this year we were riding a great way and nothing could go wrong. But then since summer you see more caution. Than a couple of months later you actually see layoffs in every big brand that you know, but then on the other hands there are still more vacancies open than a year ago. It is just changing on who. I would say if you look at our portfolio of clients and roles that we work on, we see less VC backed companies from the States, companies that are not making a profit yet. These are almost completely gone. On the other hand we see companies like Nike, Google, Grass Valley still ramping up in this country, I think that’s great. So there is still definitely an appetise to hire Polish developers.
What do you think about demands of the programmers about workplace? And do programmers want to work locally, hybrid or maybe 100% remote?
Oh, they for sure, they want to work 100% remote. No, I don’t. The majority, let’s say want to work 100% remotes. I think this is changing and even most of our bigger customers are opting for the hybrid workplace. Who is still offering 100% remote? Usually smaller UK, Irish or American companies looking for good talent in Poland and an affordable price point. And usually it’s very small teams. So they don’t really have a team where they need to connect with. The bigger companies we see more and more one day, two days a week in the office. And this is not only a feeling that I have as a recruiter. I believe LinkedIn did a study or published a study two or three weeks ago where they compared the applicants for 100% remote jobs versus the applicants for workplace-based jobs. And their finding was that for every one role that is 100% remote there were two candidates available. For every two jobs that is based in a workplace there was one candidate. So there is still a huge disconnect between people that want to work remote versus people that want to work in office. However, what LinkedIn also noticed was that since the start of this year there are 30% less 100% remote jobs available. And that will have an impact in the future.
What do you need to hire in Poland
I’m wondering how it’s convenient for those companies. I always thought that it’s easier to hire somebody who will work 100% remote because you know, you don’t have to pay attention about his workplace.
I’m a bit older right, and probably I’m from this back from the old days where it was completely normal that you would go to the office every day and now as a business owner going that went through the pandemic, that expectation is completely gone even for my team. But still I’m one of those people that believe that connections are best built in person. And I know from myself that I get energy from being around people and I don’t feel well when I am not around people, when I cannot talk to people in person. That’s why I actually I’m happy at this podcast is not like a zoom, zoom podcast that it is in an office, yeah, here in Kraków. There will be more precious to go to the office or if you want to work 100% remote, and you want to work at the discount in salary that this may be possible as well. Not everybody are rockstars. And then on the third consideration is security. Do you want to work for a big brand that you know will still exist in 50100 years and I think every developer needs to make their choices and their balance between good salary, flexibility and workplace and I will come back on that part – flexibility, and security.
Okay. Yeah, makes sense.
And I think security was always the last part of the last thing that developers were concerned about. When I speak with potential new entrance in the Polish market, usually American or English or Irish companies. I always tell them that in order to hire talent in Poland you need three things. The first one is flexibility. Flexibility in contracts and flexibility in the workplace. Contracts you have to offer B2B in Poland if you want to reach 70% of the candidates pool. And flexibility in workplace as in don’t expect that they will come five days a week to the office. At least offer a hybrid or a remote solution. That’s the first one and the most important one. The second one is a market salary.
Sorry, I will put one more word. I think that shift hours are also important. I don’t like.
Actually, flexibility in when you work.
Yeah, that’s right. I completely agree.
Second one is market salary. You will need to pay market salary or better.
Yeah, that’s right.
Yeah, but then I would argue that flexibility is higher valued than a very high salary. What most developers are earning, 10% more or less they want to sacrifice for flexibility in the workplace. Would you go to the office as, sorry, but you are bad example now because you like to work from the office, but most developers that want to work only remotes, they will sacrifice 10-15% easily.
I think I can agree with you. I like working from the office but if I would change other stuff like flexibility we mentioned like shift hours and let’s say I can make a break during the day because I went to do some stuff then yeah, I would not agree. That’s I would not sacrifice such flexibility for higher salary.
So what would you, what percentage higher will you want to have if you would need to work from the office every day from nine to five?
I’m not sure but it would be much more than that. It would be really big. I mean it should be really big offer to consider such option.
So that’s agree on the part that flexibility is going to be higher valued than the market’s salary. And the third one is product and team for me. So people, what developers want to work on? A product or with a great team. That’s why I think 2023 will continue to be a challenging year for the software houses here in the markets that are not really working on one product or for product of one of their clients. I think that will continue to be a challenge for a lot of software houses to retain their talents. And then again products, it’s way more cool to work on the next social media app rather than, I don’t know, a module for a cosmetics company.
It depends on your interests.
I won’t judge your interests Nikodem. 😆 But no, it’s for example, we have worked with companies in the defense industry, in the adult entertainment industry. We have worked with companies in the gambling industry and that’s always a little bit more challenging to find talent for then. For example, if your brand is Google or Nike. Where the brand recognition is better?
Actually, you didn’t mention about something that is interested for me. When I’m looking at the offers I always check technology that are used, and I know that this one is also very important from programmers.
Yeah, you don’t want to work with dinosaurs, right?
Exactly. And technology is changing so fast and newer projects are always something better for me than the oldest one.
And that’s why we are still really like give us React, give us Node.js, and we will get them hired. But then if you look at MuleSoft or certain PHP Frameworks there’s no demand for this almost at all. There is a shift happening in the markets in Poland. You see a shift from backend to the frontend. I completely agree with it. We even see salary pressure on certain developer languages like Java, .Net and then on the other side we see still increase of easily 20% on devops, cybersecurity is getting more and more in demand now, everything which is data, data science, machine learning, every data engineering role is high in demand and I believe this is a good thing.
This is a good thing for you or for your company?
If it is good for the company is usually good for me as well. But I think it’s also a more important, it’s good for the Polish market. You need to be ahead of the rest of the world. Companies are coming here for the great talent that they can find and than affordable price points. And the convenience of the B2B contracts in Poland, which is unique in the European market or almost unique in European market. It’s important that you stay ahead of this, that you decreased the competition with everything, with every developer that is East of Poland. We always see newest technologies coming up in the States and then usually it goes to London and Dublin, and then it goes over the water and then arrives in Poland and then after a couple of years in Poland it moves East. That is going to continued. So it’s important always to have okay, what is hope now in the States, what is in demand in the States and get this from the ground as quickly as possible here in Poland.
How to find a job in IT in 2023
Okay, so we mentioned about few tips for companies that want to hire on Polish market. You mentioned about flexibility, salary, technology, projects, and what about tips for programmers?
I would say – specialize. Be better than anybody else. I believe that Poland is a big country in Europe but it is still a small country in the world. And there will probably always somebody who is going to be as good as you, but definitely who will be cheaper than you. So give companies the compelling reason to hire in Poland by being the best talent available. I think that is the big difference that you can still make. Because salaries are not that different anymore with the States, with the UK, even I can give examples of developers earning more in Poland than in for example Northern Ireland. Write above what you do. It can even be on LinkedIn, but there are other and probably better channels. Write to your audience about what you do, what you know, what you are good in, what you’re excellent in. And then you will very quickly be recognized in the market. But at this stage it’s still better quality. And keep this quality up. I’m sometimes afraid with how companies are dealing with, for example, seniority. In order to retain people they are not giving senior titles because you’re so much senior in the company or better. No, it’s just because they want to keep you, but they don’t want to pay for it. If you start doing this you’re not necessarily improving the image of the Polish developers world. You are wondering down titles. And very often now when we provide a senior profile to one of our American clients they say “This person is not senior”. It’s not because the company calls you a senior that you actually are senior in that technology. I think that is something that we really need to watch out for so that is something that I would advise: specialize, get as good as you can in that one specific technology. Don’t try to be a generalist, yeah. Go deeper in the programming language and a framework, in a cloud technology. I think that this is where you can make a difference still.
Okay, but from my perspective it might be risky. Like we mentioned before technology is changing really fast, and it might be problematic if I focus just on one discipline, what happened if it will be outdated at some day?
But think, every language can be outdated at some stage, right, but developers that chose Java I would say 10 years ago are still pretty secure of their job and there is always a risk involved but stay interested in your technology, see where it is going, where it is developing into. Stay interested for the wider market, but be very good in what you do. Don’t give companies a reason to guess somewhere else cheaper.
So what is a good reason to still look for developers and or look at the market in Poland?
Yeah, I would say the main reason or the biggest advantage of the Polish market is still B2B contract. It makes it so easy. You don’t need to have a Polish legal entity to hire people. You can be invoiced directly to your legal entity in the States or in the UK, you don’t need to worry about employer contributions security. That’s all taken care of within by the contractor. I think this is the biggest advantage of the Polish developer market. The second one is the education. You can look for great software developers in Spain at the same price point as in Poland you will still not find them because their educational system is not build up in the same way as in Poland. I would say the Polish educational system is very good. It brings out great developers all speaking good English.
I’m quite surprised. Yeah. Usually we are saying that our education is not so good.
Comparing to what?
Comparing to countries like Sweden.
Yes.
Switzerland.
Yes, and why are those countries still hiring so many developers in Poland? I have no idea. Again, flexibility is there with the contracts. The salary price point is still good. The work culture is great and ease of doing business is also excellent. Personally, I don’t speak a word of Polish. I live here six or seven years, and I was able to grow a company to decide that we are today. Probably in my home country I would have never have been able to do this.
You mentioned about how 2022 looks like, you mentioned about companies that tried to stay calm, don’t invest too much, don’t risk anything and I wanted to ask about your prediction about 2023. What do you think?
I think it will be tough for a lot of companies. We already see probably 30-40% less work coming in. And we are usually an early indicator for what is coming.
How to prepare for the recession in IT?
Should I prepare somehow?
I don’t know. I don’t know where your priorities are like flexibility, salary or product and team and then versus security. There will be a pressure on certain salaries. There will be opportunities for new technologies. I think the companies with a big brand that offers security you’ll find a little bit easier to hire going forward. That used to be different in the last years. I do see a complete collapse of every project involved in crypto, NFT, Web 3.0, maybe against is my age, but I think this is short-lived. I see more value coming from interesting projects that brings something meaningful. I still believe that a lot of smaller companies will struggle to get through 2023.
It’s supposed to be only a prediction.
It’s a prediction, but usually I’m the big optimistic guy or the positive guy and everything. For once, I’m not hugely positive about what 2023 will bring to us. A lot of companies are looking at each other what they will do. And well, they look at each other, they don’t do anything. Yeah, I think this will last for the next three months, six months and I hope it will be over soon because yeah, we do better in a positive market and a buoyant market but it is what it is.
Are you talking now about only Polish market or is it the global situation?
The thing is the global markets. We are like I said, we are only a small country in a big world and we usually get away with a lot hearing points. But overall I do see a bit of a setback in 2023. It will recover, not every year needs to be perfect or big party for everybody. Maybe it is the small correction that we needed because sometimes I feel that the market here goes a bit too crazy as well. And when you have talks with developers, and they come to you, and they say “I want to have 54 000 PLN per month because this is what the market is paying”. Then I usually ask, what market is this? Because this is not the market. You might have heard of one friend of a friend who is earning this crazy amount of money. That doesn’t mean that everybody will earn that kind of money.
You said a few times that you are old-fashioned and actually, I’m not so old-fashioned as you but I’m also a bit older and I see differences between generations. How about you, do you see any difference in potential employees?
I think that the COVID pandemic has ruined a generation. We are now talking with employees or potential employees who for example say “I can only work well from home”. Well, they never worked one day in their life in office. There’s a lot of expectations. People want to get paid for a role that they aspire to have rather than the skills that they have today. Every generation says “It was better in our times”. Right? And that’s not true. There’s need going a lot of young people will need to have readjustment in expectations. There’s a very good Simon Sinek YouTube movie about “Why in school getting a compliment or a price, because of participating”. And then in the business world you don’t get a price for showing up in the company. You’re getting a price or a bonus in this case because you over exceeded the expectations that were there on you. I believe that this is going to be a challenge for a lot of companies to keep a young generation engaged and to keep them interested in what you’re doing. However, you want to keep this people. Because you cannot have a gap between the people that were great ten years ago and the people that will be great in two years. You still need to have all those people involved in what you’re doing. So you will need to find, every company will need to find ways to connect with those employees that are a little bit different in working as how you learned to work. And this is not new. I believe in 2015 or 2016 there was a very good article written by, or a blog post written by a developer, Romanian developer. And it was something, the title was “How outsourcing killed clues”. And this is a blog post from seven years ago which I think is still relates to what we see today in Poland, where companies need hundreds of developers in the same programming language, and they’re all competing for the same software developers. Instead of competing on skill sets and paying for those skills, they compete in titles and they come to the Nikodem “I see on your CV, I see you’re now working already for one year in the same company, and you still didn’t get a promotion to senior? Now come to us, we will pay you 5% extra. And you will be a senior in our company”. Now, vanity is always great, right? So you say, Nikodem says “Actually, it’s true. I’m undervalued in my company. I’m already now one year in the same job, and I’m not senior yet. I should make the jump”. And then this repeats itself over and over again and within three years, you’re an architect on paper. Then when you go outside of this bubble, and you go into the big world, and then you start talking with companies that are actually paying for this kind of skill sets, you completely fall through, like this is we need to watch out that we are not diluting the values of titles and skill sets. I think this is going to be continued. This is going to be a battle going forward. Yeah, because it’s easier to give somebody a better title than to pay them more.
That’s cheaper.
It’s cheaper. Titles are cheaper than a salary increase, but it doesn’t make you better.
Yeah, that’s right. But as you mentioned vanity is something that you can try.
Yeah, vanity is a drug.
I want to ask you for a few tips for people who want to get some recognition in the market.
The pragmatic engineer is a must-follow. He is very good. Highly recommended: look around, get your information from multiple sources, go to Just Join IT, No Fluff Jobs, look about what are the jobs available there? Go to ntiative.com for the jobs that we have open. Don’t take all of your truth from one source. Shop around, do some window shopping, compare what is available in the markets, not only in Poland because of the B2B you can work for any company in the world. Stack Overflow of course. Old classic. But I would say again. I’m not sponsored, pragmatic engineer, huge fan. Great.
Thank you, Sonny, for this insight into the market, it was a great pleasure to run this conversation with you.
Thank you for having me, Nikodem.
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