In this interview, DET’s Podcast Presenter, Mariem Dekhili, interviews Co-Founder of European IT Recruitment firm Optiveum: Marek Wróbel.
Based in Central Eastern Europe, Mr Wróbel discusses the negative externalities of the U.S. H-1B Visa on Europe’s IT labour market.
Why is Central Eastern Europe (CEE) leading Europe’s IT labour force and how does Europe’s IT sector work alongside emerging tech and AI centres in the GCC, India, and Pakistan?
Impact of H1B Visa Fee for Europe’s IT Sector
(00:00) Mariem Dekhili: You argue that $100,000 H1B visa fee could accelerate remote hiring. How do you see this reshaping opportunities for European IT professionals?
(00:30) Marek Wróbel: The potential increase in the visa fee from the U.S. can create a tremendous opportunity for European IT professionals.
American companies, if they won't need to import their employees, the highly skilled IT employees to the US, they will be able to use the very highly skilled European IT professionals, specifically from countries like Poland or other CEE countries.
(01:00) It is interesting to note that Poland alone is home to more than 500,000, yes, more than half a million of software developers, analysts, and other highly skilled English-speaking IT professionals.
A Double Sided Coin: Lower Costs, Higher Competition with Developing Markets?
Mariem Dekhili: If U.S. companies turn more to remote work instead of visas, does this strengthen Europe’s IT sector or increase competition with lower-cost regions?
(01:29) Marek Wróbel: In the post-pandemic world, the competition among countries in search for IT professionals has already been in place.we see more and more companies using the work of IT professionals from various countries anyways.
Whether it will be U.S. companies phishing from the European highly skilled IT professionals pond or companies from other geographies doesn’t really make such a big difference.
(01:58) Yes, the competition is here, but there are still many more IT professionals in Europe, specifically in the CEE. Therefore, additional demand from U.S. companies, which is already present, shouldn’t make such a huge difference.
The Geography of Remote Work: Europe and the Global Economy
(02:26) Mariem Dekhili: What do these dynamics mean for Europe’s own dream of retaining talent compared to the traditional pull of the American dream?
Marek Wróbel: If we’re thinking about the European talent migrating to other geographies, it is already happening because so many people work in remote professions that now the what we call the geography of work within the IT world specifically in software development has already been reshaped.
(02:55) Yes, Europe has a lot of talent but there are so many American companies, Japanese companies, and Chinese companies that are let’s say using the European IT talent that we don’t think it will make a tremendous shift of what is already happening. A bit more competition is always healthy.
A Piece of the Puzzle: Tech Expertise in the GCC
Mariem Dekhili: With your experience in both Europe and the UAE, how do you see the Gulf region fitting into this global hiring shift?
Marek Wróbel: As a company and myself, yes, we’ve had some experience with other geographies. We are supplying remote IT resources to not only North America, but also to companies in the Middle East. What is the situation according to us? Well, we do see that the Middle East and specifically the Gulf region is predominantly helped by India and Pakistan; these kind of countries that have a lot of IT potential.
Whether there are so many opportunities for people from Europe, yes, there can be opportunities for highly skilled people. We also have companies to the Gulf region that the IT professionals from even Central and Eastern Europe are not cheap anymore.
Yes, they are a bit cheaper than from the US, France, and Germany.
GCC and IT: AI, Not Raw Labour
Yet what we see is that companies from Central and Eastern Europe compete with not supplying just the IT resources, not just software developers, but software development products.
The Gulf region is an interesting place for companies from the CEE, but not in the light of supplying pure labour, but of supplying their products connected with security: connected by AI.
That’s why, yes, the Gulf region is a very interesting area for companies from our part of Europe, but for those companies that are innovative, that have interesting products and that will want to compete with companies that come from other countries as well.
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