Romania is a lot cheaper than any much any other place in the Western world. Granted, $1.2k a month wouldn't be enough to go on shopping sprees every weekend, but it's enough for quite a good life.
I think a good senior software engineer makes around $2.5k per month, but I think that's sort of on the higher end unless you're really a hot shot, and for Romania, that's an awesome salary, way above the average.
It's probably worth noting to the US audience that salaries in Europe are almost always quoted as net, with (usually) no further taxes due.
So if someone's getting $2.5K per month it's not the same as an American getting 12x that in annual salary, because it's (presumably) the after-tax number in Romania while it'd be the pre-tax number in the US.
Still, I get that tech talent is a great value in Romania. I wonder if there's a problem finding good people because so many would go to the West to make more money. But it seems the OP solves that problem by hiring beginners, which is probably what I'd do.
Yeah, generally salaries in Romania (any maybe other Eastern European countries) are quoted as net, per month. In the USA/UK it's almost always yearly-based, with hourly rates for contractors. In Romania people mainly talk about how much they take home from their salary every month.
With regards to the tech talent, I definitely think there is some truth to that. I'm no expert, but I'd say it might have something to do with the education system, or maybe even culture, which is quite heavily focused on maths and physics. With that said, we always rank quite low on most international education indices and the like. I think it might be some sort of educational inequality where children in the cities get quite good education and are pushed by their parents to study, while the ones in rural areas get the short end of the stick.
Also, something that really pisses me off is how many Romanians overstate our IT prowess. "Romanian is the second language spoken at Microsoft" is now part of folk wisdom, despite being proved to be false and just a media hoax in the '00s. We have many big companies with offices in Bucharest (and other cities), but they aren't really flocking to get all of this "enormous talent" just laying around. Don't get me wrong, we do have many reputable engineers and university professors, but nothing that would warrant this common perception about how incredibly skilled Romanians are in IT.
There did seem to be a little bit of PR about it... Cluj positioning itself as a very startup-friendly city, a documentary about all he evil hackers in Râmnicu Vâlcea IIRC, though it does seem a bit random.
Any idea how it compares to neighboring Hungary?
In Budapest there's anecdotally a lot of software talent and a fairly visible coworking/hipster-hacking/startup scene, but I still see Tata bringing people in from India to work.
And in Berlin there are people from all over the world toiling in the Salt Mines of Samwer, I would assume a lot of them from the former Eastern Bloc.
Romania is a lot cheaper than any much any other place in the Western world. Granted, $1.2k a month wouldn't be enough to go on shopping sprees every weekend, but it's enough for quite a good life.
You can also take a look here to get an idea: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
I think a good senior software engineer makes around $2.5k per month, but I think that's sort of on the higher end unless you're really a hot shot, and for Romania, that's an awesome salary, way above the average.