For eighteen years I’ve heard the same thing. Western European tech leaders say it. “Eastern European developers cost less. But are they good?”
Let me tell you about the biggest lie in European tech hiring.
Three executives tested this.
The data changed their minds.
Three CTOs Who Changed Their Minds
The Swiss Fintech CTO
Martin Fischer runs a fintech company in Zurich. They make fifty million euros a year. He runs the engineering.
The board sought developers at lower costs during 2023. Martin said no. “Cheaper means worse,” he told them. “We can’t risk our blockchain on discount labor.”
Two years passed. Now his Bulgarian team runs the most complex systems. They handle everything.
What changed?Data.
The French AI Startup Founder
Céline Moreau runs an AI startup. She hired only in Paris. “We need the best,” she said. “The best work here.”
Her Romanian engineers filed two patents. They published papers. The authors published their research results through print-based peer-reviewed journals.
The Paris team continues to function. They produce. But they don’t beat the Romanians.
The Dutch Scale-Up CEO
Lars van der Berg told his investors the same story. “We hire local. The best are local.”He believed it.
His Polish team has the best scores now. The code they produce is always clean. They have the fewest bugs. Other teams attempt to duplicate their performance.
They can’t.
The Data Everyone Ignores
HackerRank tests developers. They test algorithms. They test data structures. They test problem-solving. No names. No schools. No countries. Just code.
The 2025 results came out.
- Bulgaria: Ranked #12 globally
- Romania: Ranked #20 globally
- Poland: Top 25 globally
- Germany: Ranked #28 globally
- United Kingdom: Not in top 30
These aren’t surveys.
The tests are conducted without revealing the answers to the participants.
Pure skill.
Western European businesses compete to hire the same pool of candidates. They recycle talent. Eastern Europe produces eighty thousand STEM graduates every year.
Fresh graduates from good schools.
Sofia University in Bulgaria. Politehnica Bucharest in Romania. Warsaw University of Technology in Poland.
The educational institutions focus on delivering challenging subjects to their students. Advanced math. Algorithm design. Systems architecture. Computer science from the ground up.
Not coding bootcamps.
Not framework tutorials.
Foundations.
What Happened When They Tested
Martin’s Blockchain Problem
Martin’s team had a problem. Their Ethereum payment system failed above ten thousand transactions per hour. The Zurich team worked on it for three months. No solution.
Martin gave it to the Bulgarians. A test.
The team located the essential system constraints which restricted its operation. The company tracked all available information. The organization introduced a new transaction queue management system. The developers used complex concurrency methods in their development. They implemented sharding. Latency dropped seventy-three percent.
The team members generated written documentation. The team members created unit tests. Six weeks from start to production.
The Zurich team observed the scene. They learned. They asked the Bulgarians to teach them.
Today the Bulgarian team handles the infrastructure. The systems that make money. The systems which result in financial losses of millions of dollars.
Martin said this. “I paid for proximity. I paid for credentials. I needed skill. I needed problem-solving. Geography doesn’t matter for that.”
Céline’s Research Output
The Romanian engineers completed tasks which went beyond their original programming duties. In eighteen months they did three things.
Patent one. A new way to reduce false positives in computer vision. Filed March 2024.
Patent two. A memory-efficient architecture for transformer models in edge computing. Filed November 2024.
Publication. A peer-reviewed paper. ICML 2024. Few-shot learning optimization.
No Stanford PhDs. No MIT graduates. Just engineers with Master’s degrees from Politehnica Bucharest. Deep knowledge in statistical learning. Strong math backgrounds.
Céline acquired some understanding. “I confused pedigree with capability. The Romanians demonstrated an innate ability to understand mathematics. They had the motivation. They cost sixty percent less.”
Lars’s Quality Metrics
Lars tracks everything. Test coverage. Bug density. Code complexity. Documentation scores. Review approval rates.
After one year his Polish team had these numbers.
- Test coverage: eighty-seven percent.
- Company average: seventy-one percent.
- Bug density: point-four per thousand lines. Company average: one-point-two.
- The documentation quality achieves a total score of 9.1 points from a possible ten points.
- Company average: seven-point-two.
These numbers matter.
The implementation of high test coverage leads to reduced occurrences of production incidents. Low bug density means less firefighting. The implementation of proper documentation systems during new staff onboarding leads to improved efficiency which enables employees to understand their duties more quickly.
Lars shares the information with investors at this point.
“The Polish team sets the standard for achieving victory.
Everyone else attempts to reach the same level.
Why the Story Is Wrong
Expensive Doesn’t Mean Good
A senior developer in Amsterdam makes ninety-five thousand euros. Maybe they’re good. Maybe they’re average. Maybe they just live in an expensive city. The city inflates the salary. Not the skill.
A senior developer in Sofia makes fifty thousand euros. Maybe they competed in programming competitions. Top one percent. They could be working on open source projects. Fortune 500 companies use their code. The family members chose local employment because they had personal connections in the area. They had Western offers. They said no.
The market system determines the total compensation that workers receive for their work. Cost of living. Not skill.
Proximity Doesn’t Create Communication
I’ve seen London teams with bad communication. No documentation. Tribal knowledge. Constant interruptions. “You had to be there” decisions.
I’ve seen distributed teams with good communication. Sofia. Krakow. Berlin. They write comprehensive documents. They make video updates. They draw architecture diagrams. They include all time zones.
Engineering culture matters. Process matters. Geography doesn’t.
Local Doesn’t Mean Culture Fit
Lars found something. His Polish team valued the right things. Rigorous code reviews. Test-driven development. Documentation first. Outcomes over hours.
His Amsterdam team had people who resisted this. Geography didn’t predict fit. Hiring process did. Team norms did.
The Motivation Factor
A developer in Sofia works for a Western European company. This means something to them.
International exposure. Interesting technical challenges. Professional growth. Resume prestige.
This process results in selection. Top Eastern European developers seek these jobs. Average ones stay local.
Many Eastern European developers want to prove something. Their region’s capability. This creates behavior.
Meticulous attention to detail. Proactive problem-solving. Continuous learning. Professional pride.
I’ve seen this one thousand times.
Eastern European developers on Western projects become the highest performers.
Not despite their origin.
Because of it.
The Money Question
Here are the real numbers.
A senior developer in Munich costs one hundred eighteen thousand euros per year.
Salary.
Taxes.
Office.
Benefits.
Everything.
A senior developer in Krakow costs sixty-nine thousand euros per year. Same calculation.
The difference is forty-nine thousand euros.
Per developer.
Per year.
Twenty developers save you nine hundred eighty thousand euros annually. Nearly one million.
The organization will use the million dollars to bring in two more senior developers. Conference budgets for everyone. Better tools. Research. Or profit.
Now ask this. The technical tests demonstrate equivalent skill levels so why must I pay twice?
The answer is this. Nothing justifies it. Just assumptions. Geographic bias.
What do i say about this? -> Old thinking.
How to Actually Test Quality
Use Blind Assessments
Remove names. Remove schools. Remove locations. Test the code. Problem-solving. Code clarity. Algorithm efficiency. Testing strategy.
Google does this. Microsoft does this. Meta does this. They don’t ask where you’re from. They ask if you can solve the problem.
Do the same.
Give Real Work Samples
Don’t use whiteboard interviews. Give real work. “Debug this codebase.” “Design this API.” “Optimize this slow query.”
These show actual job performance. Not puzzle-solving. Not memorized answers. Real work.
Run Trial Periods
Many European countries allow trial employment. Use it well. Give production tasks. Real work. Not busywork.
Watch code reviews. Check documentation quality. See collaboration. Measure learning speed. Watch adaptation.
After two months you know. After three months you’re certain. High performer or not. Location doesn’t matter.
The Real Risk
After eighteen years I’ve placed one thousand developers. Ninety-seven percent of clients keep them. Three years or more. You should not maintain employees who perform poorly for a period of three years.
When Western European companies test Eastern European developers properly. When they measure code quality. When they measure problem-solving. When they measure delivery. The “lower quality” story does not succeed in its presentation.
The blockchain system developed by Martin proves to be operational. Céline’s patents prove it.
The quality metrics from Lars show the following results.
These aren’t unusual. They’re predictable. They occur when you select candidates based on their skills.
When you hire on geography.
The actual danger does not stem from employing developers who work in Eastern Europe. The actual danger lies in restricting your potential. Expensive local markets. Overpaying for equal skills. Observing your competitors achieve rapid growth.
Your competition figured this out already.
What To Do
Test Eastern European developers according to the same standards that apply to all developers. Blind technical assessments. Work samples. Trial periods. Measure results. Not geography. Not schools. Not assumptions.
When you do this the numbers change.
The assumptions die.
The data wins.
Always.
Ready to test this yourself? Contact us to see blind coding assessment results comparing Eastern European and Western European developers—algorithm performance, code quality, system design. All identifying information removed. Just merit.
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