“There are Germans who come to Romania to work for ‘Romanian’ wages,” said Vlad Bog, human resources manager of Microsoft Romania, a company with over 400 employees in Romania. He recalls a conversation he had recently with the latest German Microsoft employee to come to work in Timisoara (Western Romania).
“He said he had never worked in Romania before, but that it was the best career decision he had made in the past few years. I asked him why and he said he did earn less than back in Germany, but that he was also spending less, so at the end of the month he ended up saving the same amount,” said Bog.
The reason why Germans come to Romania is, according to the HR manager, that Romanians are extremely friendly – “friendlier with him than his workmates back in Germany”. He also likes the fact that stores and restaurants are open at all times and the quality of the homes they live in.
“He finds Romania fascinating in terms of career opportunities because it’s one thing to work in a 200-people organization and another to work in one with 2,000 employees – he likes the familiar atmosphere in the company and has even suggested to many former workmates of his to come work here,” Bog also said.
The Romanian IT industry has seen a spectacular boom during the crisis years, being the only sector where both wages and employee numbers went up significantly. The number of employees in the IT sector has currently reached over 33,000 (46% more than in 2008), while wages of employees in the sector rose exponentially, by over 60% during the same period, with the average net wage in IT exceeding EUR800 per month.
This is one of the few sectors that rose during the crisis, at a time when the Romanian economy went through an extremely difficult period, with employers shedding over 600,000 jobs, cutting wages and with consumption falling drastically (by over 20% in the last three years).
Germany’s economy recorded a steady rise throughout the crisis years, but analysts estimate it could contract in the last three months of this year.
Whereas in the early days of capitalism in Romania multinationals would send expats to Romania to implement companies’ policies in Romania, and foreign executives saw coming to Romania as a “punishment,” the situation has changed significantly in the past few years: many expat managers have brought their families along to Romania, and now the trend is expanding to expert jobs and to middle managers. While expats used to ask for perks for coming to a “third world country”, now they are happy with local packages.
“None of Microsoft’s foreign employees is a manager. We have 15-20 employees who are Germans, Dutch, Swedish, French and Moroccans who came to Romania for engineering jobs, and most of them are Germans. They don’t come here as expats, on assignment contracts, they have local employment contracts. It’s an extraordinary phenomenon,” explained Florin Grama, Head of Customer Service & Support, Group Manager Central Europe and Cluster Lead Office EMEA within Microsoft Romania.
One of the recruitment policies of Microsoft Romania, the local subsidiary of the world’s largest software developer, is to also hire foreign engineers who assist managers and recruiters with the job interview.
“For most foreign language interviews there are also native speakers present, who tell us at the end if the candidates coming to the job interviews will have the ability to learn the foreign language at the level required by Microsoft within a very short space of time. It is increasingly difficult to find candidates with technical skills who also speak a foreign language,” Bog said.
Florin Grama says even Romanians working in Microsoft centers abroad, such as the research center in Redmond (US) are starting to come back to Romania and Romanians’ wish to go to the companies’ centers abroad is increasingly low.
In fact, Microsoft is a company known for having more Romanians working abroad than in Romania. Last year for instance around 620-630 Romanians worked at the company’s foreign centers, most of whom were employed in the US.
Microsoft Romania has three organizations, two in Bucharest (one that handles sales and marketing and a technical support center -GTSC) and one in Timisoara. The company reported a turnover of almost EUR32 million last year, according to Finance Ministry data.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)