War in Ukraine Has a Negative Impact on European Software Development Market

One of the consequences of Russia’s “military operation” in Ukraine is the loss of technical human resources.  This will definitely impact software innovation and supply chain, analytics say.

Ukraine called itself Eastern Europe’s Silicon Valley with more than 300,000 technology professionals.

Before the end of February the country was a top software developer community and provided services for customers in European and other countries.

Gartner estimates more than one million IT professionals work in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, with one-quarter (250,000) working for consulting or outsourcing firms. The loss is 10-15% of European developer workforce. The crisis is already clear. It made evident how many global companies relied on Ukraine as one of their development bases.

More than three million people have already fled Ukraine and millions more internally displaced.

Lithuania has launched simplified processes for Ukrainian refugees to work in the country.

Belarus was also a significant player in the developer sourcing ecosystem. But it played in another part of the market and cannot so far compete with that current scale and level of software developing services.

Besides, there are economic sanctions imposed on Belarus. They are less severe, but still Western companies are exiting Belarus as their development hub.