Ukrainian developers are a part of many technology giants and homegrown startup unicorns. IBM, Samsung Electronics, Huawei, as well as GitLab, Grammarly, Ajax Systems, to name a few, all hire Ukrainian developers for their strong technical skills. 

Ukraine is home to nearly 200,000 engineers who drive the IT industry forward while constituting a significant portion of the Eastern Europe talent pool. As such, when you hire Ukrainian developers, you can count on a vast talent pool with diverse expertise, ranging from general backgrounds to niche specializations. 

Effective virtual team communication and mutual understanding are among the most important things behind any remote team’s success. We can even go as far as saying that there is no point in hiring Ukrainian developers if you don’t have the needed resources to run an outsourced team as effectively as an in-house one. Hopefully, this article will serve you as a guide to effective communication with Ukrainian developers. 

How to find common ground with Ukrainian developers

Communication style

In our experience, the style of communication is shaped by each company individually. Ukrainians don’t have deeply rooted behavior patterns in daily activities like siesta or social hierarchy and attitude towards those higher in the rank pertaining to the Eastern cultures. As a nation, Ukrainians are pretty flexible, so the client can choose a company and instill a desirable atmosphere inside the outsourcing group. In the same room, you can find teams with different communication patterns, which holds true for nCube as well. 

The bottom line is, whether you want to be formal or more relaxed and friendly in how you interact with your unit of Ukrainian software developers – it’s totally up to you. Ukrainian developers are pretty flexible and can quickly adapt to your company’s communication patterns.

READ ALSO: Key Elements of Company Culture in Ukraine

Software developers Ukraine: Mutual understanding

Ukrainian developers are characterized by a positive mindset, high levels of responsibility, and open-mindedness. Moreover, they have vast experience working with clients from Europe and North America. Many of them have worked abroad or took over distributed projects. Thus, Ukrainian developers can exceed the client’s expectations in terms of performance, but it takes effort, a great deal of attention on the client’s side to build the right kind of team as well.

English proficiency

English is the official language of the Ukrainian IT sector – nearly 80% of specialists have Intermediate or higher proficiency, which means most Ukrainian developers are confident English speakers. Due to the fact that the lion’s share of developers communicates with the client and their counterparts directly, English skills are vital to land a job offer.

Outspokenness

Ukrainian developers are straightforward, as in being ready to share their ideas, concerns, and risks related to the project with the client directly. This peculiarity makes them stand out from their Asian counterparts. A stable feedback mechanism will let you take the team’s temperature to always be in the know about what’s going on with the team and predict possible mishaps.

Exposure to all things new goes a long way for distributed teams. Ukrainians are willing to share their experience with their Western colleagues, whereas some nations prefer to keep the knowledge inside the social groups.

When you hire Ukrainian developers, you’ll see that they are open to those who are ready to lead them. The skills mentioned above make them valuable in an environment where the client needs to nurture ideas, come up with fresh solutions, or even contribute to the RnD endeavors of a large company.

Time difference

While Europe-based companies are usually fine with a 2-hour time difference when they hire Ukrainian developers, North American companies have to find ways to handle asynchronous communication. With an 8-12 hours time difference, the cross-over hours occur early in the morning EST. Ukrainian developers usually are open to shift the start of their working day and start later in their afternoon. However, it will probably take extra effort from the client to arrange meetings in line with available communication windows.

READ ALSO: Misunderstood Positive Aspects of Hiring Ukrainian Developers 

Your remote communication survival strategy

As a tech leader, you have to be on top of your teams’ progress at all times. You probably use a wealth of timesheets, several collaboration tools, or even have a dedicated project manager on-site as a point of contact. Still, despite the effort you invested, you may find out about the issues with your team too late. Below are a few tell-tale signs of a brewing conflict.

A developer stopped responding

When you hire Ukrainian software developers, you expect them to be within a reach at all times. Thus, when a developer goes off the grid, they are likely to miss a deadline. In our experience, most Ukrainian developers treat their projects in all seriousness and tend to stay responsive even after hours and on weekends as well. As such, when a developer ignores your messages, there has to be a good reason. In this case, consider contacting the team members and if the problem persists – let the manager on the vendor’s site address it.

Missed deadlines

Although Ukrainian developers rarely miss deadlines on account of a lack of responsibility, if it happens, schedule a one-on-one meeting with the developer. Let them explain why it happened and learn the cause behind the missed deadline – whether the deadline wasn’t explicitly communicated or maybe they have encountered some roadblocks along the way. However, if the conversation didn’t have any future effect and the developer continues missing deadlines, it’s best to escalate to the vendor’s management.

Ignoring meetings

If you have expressed a clear expectation that the developer should be present at a meeting, there’s hardly an excuse that can warrant missing it. When it comes to your daily standups, the reason may lie in their running late for work. If any developer fails to make it on time to a meeting, or even worse, ignores them, then you should definitely contact the vendor’s management.

Developers may ask their clients to sway the vendor to give them a raise. When it happens, you should ask your account manager to point to a person who could solve this problem. If you feel uncomfortable with the situation, you can request to find a replacement, as this is probably an indicator of a developer’s motivation drop.

Aggressive and intolerant behavior

Aggressive employees are uncommon for Ukrainian IT companies. If such an employee somehow comes your way, it’s most likely due to a recruiter’s mistake. The right thing to do is to escalate the problem and ask the vendor to find a replacement for the developer.

What can be done to improve cross-team communication?

If you’ve decided to hire Ukrainian developers, here are our bits of advice to improve communication in a distributed environment.

• Create a well-rounded guideline for communication with the team, including the roles, meetings, reporting rules.
• On-site team visits will increase the effectiveness of communication.
• Assign a PM, Product Owner, or Business analyst as a single point for contact for the distributed team.
• Back up all decisions and tasks in writing, even if your team members claim to have remembered every word uttered in the meeting.
• Share your company culture and treating Ukrainian developers as part of your core team will undoubtedly sustain their motivation and interest in the project and, as a result, bring your communication to the next level.

If you have made it to this point, you’re probably interested in adding Ukrainian developers to your team. Let’s schedule a call so we can walk you through the process.

Ukrainian IT service market offers talented engineers and problem solvers, which is acknowledged by 110 world’s well-known companies and startups that run their remote tech teams in this region. Ukrainian developers are ranked 11th among 50 countries in terms of quality according to HackerRank.

The monthly salary of a skilled engineer varies between $1,500–$2,500. The rate is higher for DevOps and experts with rare skill sets like AI and Data Science – the cost per month for such specialist can reach $6,000, which is the highest salary for a software engineer in Ukraine. The range is primarily defined by the technology stack, seniority of developers and a city where you want to build your tech team.

The average salary for software engineers in Ukraine 

How much does Java specialist earn? 

According to a recent report, Java is the most used programming language in the Ukrainian IT community. At the same time, this language ranks 4th most popular technology according to the StackOverflow report. Java experts earn $8K – 50K annually depending on the seniority level. As a comparison, a Java programmer salary in the US per year is around $102K. 

.NET developer salary

Today, the demand for .NET specialists in Ukraine is extremely high. According to dou.ua, nearly 400 hot vacancies have been opened for this position this month. .NET developer salary in Ukraine falls within $8K – $50K per year. At the same time, their counterparts in the USA earn between $46K – $104K. 

The average salary for Golang developer

Ukrainian companies offer fewer opportunities for Go specialists than .NET and Java these days. Yet this technology made the top ten most popular technologies among Ukrainian programmers in 2018. In fact, a Go specialist remains one of the most highly paid positions with the annual salary ranging between $8K – $54K, whereas someone in this role earns $136K or $70 per hour in the USA. Compare it with the UI developer salary: on average, such specialists make $87K per year and  $61 per hour. 

What is the annual salary for JS expert?

JavaScript skills are all the rage in Ukrainian IT. This language is the runner up to Java according to the language popularity report. The JavaScript developer salary is between $7K – $54K, being the highest for the most experienced developers as compared to other languages, with the exception of Python an iOS. On average, JavaScript experts in the USA make $112K per year. As a comparison, a junior web developer in Kiev makes about $6K annually. 

PHP developer salary in 2019

Although the popularity of PHP has declined, it still takes 4th place in the rank of the commonly used programming languages in Ukrainian IT. In fact, a slew of aspiring programmers chooses it to study as their first programming language, alongside Java, JS, C, C#, Python.  The PHP developer’s salary is one of the lowest for a junior role – $3,5K – 6K per year, while senior-level specialists make $24K – $48K annually. 

The average Python developer salary 

Python is on the rise in the Ukrainian job market, and it hands down dominates the Data Science field. This language tops the list of most wanted skills to learn alongside Go, TypeScript, and Kotlin. It’s also one of the highest paid skills for senior Python programmers in Ukraine – the annual salary can reach up to $60K. Overall, Python developer salary is between $7K – $60K, depending on a candidate’s experience. 

How much does Android developer make? 

More and more Android experts start to gravitate towards Kotlin for programming on this platform. Due to its novelty, Kotlin specialists have fewer years of experience, but the language has been named among the most wanted technologies to learn. In Ukraine, a junior specialist with skills in development for Android platform earns approximately $7K per year, while a programmer’s salary in a middle and senior role is $42K – $54K. In the USA, Android specialists’ pay is around $113K per year. 

The average salary for iOS expert

iOS development is moving to Swift. This is typical for Ukraine as well, where Swift is now used by 75% of software developers involved in iOS projects. It’s no surprise that Objective-C is ranked as one of the most unpopular languages to learn. Ukrainian iOS talents make $6K – $60K annually, which is one of the highest paid skills in the market for senior level positions, together with Python and Ruby developers.

How much does QA engineer make per year? 

With more than 500 vacancies opened this month, QA certainly is one of the most demanded skills in the Ukrainian job market. The QA specialist average salary is lower than front-end developer salary or full-stack engineer salary. This situation is similar in the USA, where an hourly rate of a QA specialist is $37 (approximately $6,5K monthly). 

According to a recent report, the salaries of Ukrainian developers tend to stay without any significant changes over the past two years. At the same time, the industry keeps growing with currently 4 Billion IT service exports. The talent pool has reached 185,000 talents, offering a vast choice of skill sets and expertise. In Ukraine, it’s easy to build a team of skilled software talents with any title. Most of our clients have diversified teams involving strong juniors, several middle engineers and senior specialists.  

How to benefit from hiring developers in Ukraine?

• One of the easiest ways to save is considering different cities. Kiev and Lviv are the most expensive cities in terms of living cost. As such, it makes sense to take your search to other IT hubs like Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Odesa, where the salaries of engineers are lower. However, the search in these locations might take more time than in Kiev or Lviv.
• Aim at Strong Junior developers. These are the specialists with 1-2 years of experience that yet need to work on their portfolio to break into the Middle level. The drawback is that they will soon leave for other opportunities.  
• Hire solid engineers with Intermediate English. In Ukraine, most developers and testers have Upper-Intermediate proficiency. Specialists that speak English fluently usually earn higher salaries. To overcome the communication barriers with Ukrainian developers, you can hire a Project Manager with advanced English proficiency as a single point of contact with your team.

Afterword

Hiring developers in Ukraine will be one of the most profitable decisions you will make for your business. The talent pool is rich and the value for money is beneficial. If you are looking to build your remote tech team in Kiev, talk to our experts who will be happy to guide you through the process.