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Comment by velzevur | Hacker News Reader

Bulgarian here. It is probably a long story but the IT industry is one of the very few not-heavy-regulated here and it flourishes. There is a growing start-up culture, companies are fighting over talants and people with various backgrounds are just pouring in the industry. I know a few dosens of architects, layers and medical doctors that made that step. Also a flat 10% tax certainly helps :)

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Is there a data on the average salary? Do employees forced to work as contractors like in Ukraine?

>Do employees forced to work as contractors like in Ukraine?

Or like American IT industry?

The salary really depends on the job title. Junior developers usually start 500-750E. The juniour position is a tricky one because with no background it is usually hard to spot the talent. From then on it really depends on the carrier path you take but compensations in the range of 3000-5000E are probably a soft cap for a developer position.

For QAs and DevOps is around 30% less.

Job security is something quite strange here. Once your trial period passes, it is terribly difficult for you to get fired. If you arrive on time - there is no legal mechanism for you to get fired. The only means would be for the company to trunc the position you're taking. This means they are not allowed to hire someone for the same position for 6 months or so. If they do - it must be you. This is enforced by court. So if they fire you for some reason, you can sue them and the court will return you back to your seat.

Even with this in mind, contractors are terribly rare. I know just two people working this way.

I don't work there but do know several people working in Sofia for startups or corps like VMWare, SAP, etc. I'd say that you'd get about 2-2.5k euro net if have 5+ years experience. Junior is probably 1-1.5k

Since the lack of talent is a huge problem, there are tons of _academies_ that claim to be producing developers in just a few months. This generates a lot of people with no experience, close to zero knowledge but yet eager to join the industry. A viable strategy for companies is to hire as many of those as possible, hoping that there are just a few diamonds there. That's the main reason Jrs are terribly underpaid. If one prooves to have potential - it is not uncommon to have a salary doubled in a few monthsm, otherwise other organization might snatch the person.

I had interviewed a little more than a hundred people for regular and senior roles only to eventually give up and train a couple of juniours.

Everybody prefers to be a contractor p much everywhere in Europe. Lower taxes and insurance. I can claim back VAT and expanse my car, fuel, laptop etc.

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