Desperately Seeking Bulgarian Programmers

Posted by Jim Stroud

April 4, 2007

Bulgarian lag Wanted: programmers. Chance to inhale a whiff of Hollywood, dream up special effects for films, and make decent money to boot. Sounds like a pretty good gig, especially in Sofia, the bleak capital of Bulgaria, the poorest country in the European Union. But Los Angeles-based Nu Image, which operates a low-cost production center in Sofia, isn’t exactly facing a stampede of computer grads to help it digitally enhance films such as the latest Rambo sequel. In fact, Scott Coulter, visual effects producer for Nu Image, says his help-wanted ads sometimes get zero response. “I’m having a hell of a time,” he says.

If you’re a Bulgarian programmer, a Romanian network-systems engineer, or a Czech enterprise-software specialist, life is good. Salaries for information technology workers in Central Europe are rising by double digits annually as multinationals such as Hewlett-Packard, SAP, and Dell dive into the region, soaking up what was supposed to be a deep pool of math and science graduates willing to work for a third of what their Western European counterparts are paid.

As it turns out, the supply of qualified labor is proving surprisingly finite. And it’s not just IT specialists, but also managers, accountants, engineers, and more. Call-center managers or IT directors in Poland can cost companies more than $100,000 a year including benefits, while even call center operators cost up to $23,000, staffing company Adecco says. So big companies are paying more and migrating to the hinterlands to find good, low-cost labor. Finnish mobile-phone maker Nokia, which already employs nearly 5,000 people in Hungary, announced on Mar. 26 it will build a new handset factory in Romania. And New Jersey-based EPAM Systems, which develops software for the likes of Microsoft and SAP, is scouting locations in Russia.

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