[yeneek]

I believe it's a good compromise on timezone (8-9 hours is manageable), political stability, safety and reasonable talent pool. You can still relocate people from cheaper countries yo richer ones. You can convince Romanian to move to Germany, but you can't convince German to move to Romania.

[ChuckNorris89]

The funny thing is, from what I noticed living in both countries, there might be more US companies hiring talent in Romania because of the big local talent pool willing to grind, low corporate taxes, lax regulations and bureaucracy, than they're hiring in Germany due to the high taxes, strict labor laws and complex bureaucracy. When US companies want to move to EU they usually go for a low-tax, low-bureocracy country, like Netherlands, Luxembourg, or Ireland. I could be wrong, but that's my anecdote.

Dev immigration from Romania to Germany was big 10-20 years ago, but now, most Romanian devs these days, unless they get offers that go above six figures, aren't rushing to move to Germany as most take home dev wages have almost caught up, but the CoL and housing is way cheaper than in Germany. I think the push to remote work since the pandemic really convinced more US companies to double down on hiring remotely in Romania pushing wages up. I think it's similar in Poland.

From what I saw, they open a small office in Germany when they either want to tap some university/research institution or open a big office when they want to bring in (and low-ball) a lot of Indian/Turkish/non-EU devs who's goal is moving to the EU, as Germany is a popular immigration destination for non-EU devs rather than Romania or Eastern Europe which are less desirable immigration destinations (although that does seem to be changing slowly).

[yeneek]

Interesting insight. Thanks!

[brnt]

> but you can't convince German to move to Romania.

I think nobody is trying, but with the right salary I'd love to. Some acquaintances did something like this: they moved from France to Poland and have a salary that's locally really good. There's more companies that hire like that on the basis that a certain salary gets you further somewhere east.