Just Join IT: "40% of Polish companies are looking for developers across the eastern border"

As we’ve noted in most of our articles over the past year, the IT market hasn’t stood still, even during the pandemic. This is especially visible here in Central (and Eastern) Europe.

Poland, like its neighbouring countries, is constantly struggling with an acute shortage of developers on the local market.

As many as 40% of all companies declare they’re willing to look for specialists in the so-called Eastern Partnership countries (including Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus) as well as Russia. Incidentally, at the time these countries were covered by the Poland. Business Harbour programme (suspended since 2024, see the note above), so employing and relocating such specialists to Poland was a little easier back in 2021.

But where does this demand come from in the first place? And why should Ukrainian or Belarusian developers move to Poland, why look for work here, in a neighbouring country?

We talked about this with our partners at Just Join IT (Poland’s most popular job site for IT professionals) and its CEO, Piotr Nowosielski.

Moja Firma: Hi!

Piotr Nowosielski: Hi to you too :)

MF: So, times are changing: Polish companies are increasingly looking at specialists from across the eastern border. This is especially visible in Warsaw, Wrocław, and Gdańsk. Why is that? Why look for specialists “in the East” at all?

PN: Yes, 40% of Polish companies are already willing to work with such specialists: that’s our own data, but it’s not just dry statistics. We see it every day in the job offers we publish and promote.

The IT market was already changing before the pandemic, but the past year and this one gave it, let’s say, an extra push. Demand for specialists hasn’t gone anywhere. According to DESI 2020 data, Poland has been suffering from a shortage of 50,000 IT specialists for years, and that figure has been fairly constant. These are, quite literally, empty positions waiting for someone to fill them.

Just Join IT has already become the largest IT job site in Poland, so we decided it was the right moment to “move east” and help local developers find a Polish employer.

M.F.: What exactly is Just Join IT, and how did your story begin?

P.N.: About 5 years ago, together with my friend Tomek, we noticed that a job board focused on one specific target audience (in this case, developers) could be an interesting niche. Nothing like that existed in Poland at the time.

I asked to stay at Tomek’s place for 2 weeks so we could put together a detailed product concept… and ended up staying there for 2 years. We worked on Just Join IT around the clock, 24/7, without days off. In the first year there was no money coming from the project at all: I ate the same cutlet with buckwheat for €2 at the milk bar around the corner every day. I had to take a side job as a content marketer, writing blog content.

Back then, no company wanted to work with a startup, and we kept looking for a way to show at least some results. Luckily, we managed to. We got our break thanks to livestreams featuring developers who had left Poland as guests. We tried to show what work was really like in Silicon Valley and Dubai, Scandinavia and New Zealand, Switzerland and Japan.

We were pioneers of this format at the time, and thankfully it worked out for us. Our brand’s popularity grew by the day in 2017-2018. Along with it came a proper office, real employees, and ideas for unconventional events, like the Just Join IT Olympics, with contests like “who can throw a monitor the farthest.”

Now there are almost a hundred of us, but I feel like we’re only just getting started.

M.F.: Why is Just Join IT “opening up to the East”?

P.N.: Even back when we were sitting in Gdańsk apartment blocks, our main idea was to build the biggest IT job portal not just in Poland, but in the entire CEE region. The Polish labour market is the largest in this part of Europe, which means it offers the greatest opportunities for growth, and it’s a great “gateway to Europe” for junior developers. What’s more, culturally, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Russians are still fairly similar to Poles and feel comfortable in the Polish reality.

M.F.: Is “similar reality” the very reason to move “west”, to Poland?

P.N.: It’s hard for me to be objective here: I was born here, after all :) I could talk for a long time about Poland’s magnificent cities with rich and interesting history, like Warsaw, Kraków, and Wrocław, or about the sea being within walking distance in Gdańsk, but that’s not really the main reason. I’m sure many people already know Poland well.

Poland is, above all, a politically stable country. In the positive sense of the word :) We’re far removed from the intense political and social atmosphere raging across the eastern border. Everyone here can live however they want and be whoever they want. It’s your own decision.

Sure, we have our disagreements, like any country, but we prefer to sort things out relatively calmly.

Poland isn’t just an attractive country to live in: it’s also a launchpad for many interesting projects, a good springboard for growth. You could mention the major investments by ATM, Equinix, Netia, or T-Mobile, which had already begun, and the Google Cloud and Microsoft investments that were planned at the time. But those are the big players. We also have plenty of software houses that have been rated by Clutch, and the startup SuperBid (fast approaching unicorn status) has Polish roots.

Not to mention the cultural similarity, the similar language… Simply put, Poland is a great country where developers live well, and Just Join IT exists to give them global opportunities and open the door to a better job for each and every one of them. ;)

M.F.: And for those considering the move, what can you offer them?

P.N.: The concept is pretty simple: there are talented people from across the eastern border. There are good companies with solid offers, high work standards, and a good atmosphere. We just help them find each other.

We’ve got something for people who want to work at large international corporations like Commerzbank or Nokia, at good software companies (e.g. 360 Code Lab, JCommerce, or PGS Software), or at young but ambitious startups like Revolut, Docplanner Tech, or Glovo.

I believe these are some of the best companies in Poland and a great chance for developers to take part in genuinely exciting projects.

You could think of Poland as a new step in an IT professional’s career; for some, it might even be their first job. But in either case, working in Poland is undoubtedly a solid foundation for the future. That’s what I believe, and so does everyone who works at Just Join IT.

We’re not standing still ourselves either: we’re constantly growing, bringing in hundreds of companies from all over the world that also offer remote work. Lately we’ve added household names like Spotify, HBO, Twitter, and Amazon, and the list is long and only growing.

M.F.: What problems do developers face when they want to work in Poland?

P.N.: A common problem such developers face is relocation. As I mentioned, there are many “full-time remote” offers, in which case the relocation issue naturally goes away. But we’re most interested, of course, in IT professionals who want to move to Poland and work here in person.

Polish companies aren’t always ready for this. That is, there’s a desire to hire the specialist, but they don’t know what to do or where to start.

That’s why we’ve set up a partnership with Moja Firma (many of whose employees are immigrants themselves), which, besides its core services, also helps Polish companies employ developers from outside the EU.

We want to make the legalisation process for a worker in Poland easier, and the people at Moja Firma are the specialists who help us with that. We know the IT market from one side, they know it from the other, so from there we work together.

M.F.: Thanks for the kind words. You said Just Join IT is constantly helping developers? What do you mean by that?

P.N.: Just Join IT isn’t just a job board. Otherwise we’d just be another corporation that built a job portal. We like doing interesting things, shortening the distance between employer and employee.

We run our own portal with interesting content, an online magazine called JustGeek.IT. We’re constantly planning new, fresh livestreams where we cover all kinds of interesting topics: what a developer’s job actually looks like, what it’s like working at Polish companies, technical tips, life hacks, contests.

All of this is interesting to us as IT people ourselves, and it will undoubtedly interest anyone connected to this field in some way. We’re an integral part of the community we build for and work within.

Every month we support over 250,000 developers across Poland, and we hope you’ll find your own path here too.

That’s about it.

M.F.: Thank you, Piotrek.

P.N.: Call me again sometime :)

#### Notes

^*1 This refers to the CEE region (Central and Eastern Europe), covering countries from Eastern Germany to the border of the former USSR.

^*2 Here and throughout, “in the East” refers to Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Belarus, Russia.

This interview was originally published in July 2021; the text is preserved as a historical piece with minimal editorial changes.