Belarus is located in the heart of Europe, 2-3 hours by plane from the UK, Germany or Scandinavia. To Minsk there are direct flights from Geneva, Vienna, Frankfurt, London, Berlin and many other European cities. There are direct flights from Minsk to Tel Aviv, the flight time is less than 4 hours. Since March 2017 citizens of over 80 countries, amongst those all European countries and the US, can travel to Belarus without visa if their stay doesn't exceed 5 days and if they travel via the Minsk airport. Belarus and Israel waived visa requirements already in 2015, Israeli citizens can enter Belarus without visa for stays not exceeding 90 days. More information can be found here, or contact us for more details.
Belarus has 9,5 Million inhabitants, around 2 million are living in the capital Minsk. The monthly average salary in the country is less than 400 Euro. Belarus was the technologically most advanced country of the Soviet Union and a training ground für engineers and technicians. The world class technical educational level has been maintained, the little country is nowadays one the world-leading countries what regards the availability of highly-skilled IT-staff. There are 55 technical universities which produce over 2,500 IT-specialists year on year. The government recognises the importance of the domestic IT-industry, there are various state initiatives that support investments in this area.
In the West often entitled as "Europe's last dictatorship", Belarus is actually a politically very stable country. It hasn't let itself get entangled in the recent East-West conflicts triggered by the Ukraine crisis, but tried to take a mediating position (Minsk Agreements). Common stereotypes can't be confirmed by visitors, most of which are mostly intrigued by the friendliness of the Belarusians, the tidiness and perceived safety, and the vastness of the country. Many software developers keep faith with their homeland. With an average monthly salary of around 1,600 Euro they earn more than trice the average, and therefore have a higher buying power than if they would live and work abroad. In Belarus there are around 40,000 IT-specialists, most of them are based in Minsk. The most common technologies are Java, .Net, PHP, Ruby, Phyton, C/C++. Also there is a good availability of resources in QA and front-end technologies (JS etc.) as well mobile development (around 2,500 Android/ iOS and Cross-platform developers).
Some of the worldwide biggest companies have outsourced IT to Belarus, among which are: SAP, Google, HTC, Microsoft, Orcacle, IBM, Siemens, Coca-Cola, T-Mobile, Philips.
One more important factor that speaks for Belarusian Software Developers, and what differentiates them from Ukrainian or Russian developers, is their inherent European mentality. That makes things much easier as to what regards cooperation and direct communication. Most of the Belarusian software developers have already a family at the age of 20-25, and unlike their western counterparts they tend to seek stability in their job. Our clients work together with their developers over many years. The majority of them speaks good English. Compared with developers that have been educated in the West, they for the most part have a broader mathematical and technical background. They are predominantly not only experts in a small field and can therefore think of solutions in a broader context. Moreover, working for the domestic IT-industry is perceived as a privilege, developers undertake continuous efforts to keep their fingers on the pulse what regards latest technology trends. With this in mind, many top companies get their software architecture or other key areas developed in Belarus. Classical outsourcing countries like India or Vietnam are increasingly critically assessed, many companies start considering these only for support and standard application development.