Digitec/Galaxus outsources software dev jobs to Serbia, praises it as some form of innovation. Gets bashed in the Comments.

30 comments

  1. Well it’s a common thing to do – all banks, pharma and product do it, so why not E-Commerce.

    Nearshore is also easier to manage due to better timezones and similar work culture.

  2. Call support for any tech related product and it’s likely that you’ll speak to someone from the Balkans. It’s common practice for many brands, don’t understand all the fuss.

  3. I love how its always dressed up and they avoid the actual reason

    ‘Its cheap’

    Its cyclical anyway. Theyll onshore it again in a few years when they realise it doesnt work.

  5. Software Development can be done anywhere. You pay 10x less per hour or per app with the same result.
    Guys will wrote what you ask – if you can’t explain your needs/ideas it will be disaster anyway.

  6. But it’s ok for the big Swiss companies to profit off the misery everywhere? Like the one buying water resources.

  7. I kinda played this system and now I live in Warsaw doing an outsourced job lol German and Swiss German is a big bonus, so it was way easier to find a job here thanks to that and life is pretty neato potato.

    But man, it sure is not something companies should be bragging with lol

  8. I work as an software engineer here in switzerland (swiss company) and there are already serbians working remotely (not in my department) from serbia

  9. I left my company some years ago, when they started outsourcing IT jobs to Greece and Ukraine… asked a friend of mine who still works there and he told me it became a real shit show 😅

  10. Actually yikes, I used almost exclusively digitec to buy digital goods in order to support Swiss businesses. Seems like Amazon is back on the menu boys.

  11. Using the Swiss market to make profits but then not spending that income with local workers.

    What a crappy company.

  13. Europe is getting more and more connected, COVID proved that sitting in one place makes little to no difference depending on work and this is hardly surprising but just normal flow. There is also a positive impact of avoiding overpopulation of country but hiring support as needed.

  14. I only heard they dont pay very well, especially for Zurich, so no wonder they don’t find local devs

  15. Personally I don’t support this move, it is pure greed from them, I will not buy from digitec anymore. Swiss companies outsource to increase their profits, swiss people loose jobs, also swiss companies “why sales are down? Why nobody wants our products?” Because you fired them and when people have no jobs they tend not to buy shit they don’t need. Prices are up everywhere but salaries stay the same and even more, people are getting fired. It’s not that the Serbians do not deserve this opportunity, it’s how it has been done and presented, it’s not like the company is struggling and they need to do something to stay alive, no, it was done solely for greed intent. Amateurish management and they pat themselves on the back for the good management job they did.

  16. I work at a Swiss company with developers in Serbia. It’s a great setup but the salaries and the competition is getting bigger and bigger in Belgrade. It is already hard to find good people there.
    I think in a few years the market rates will be at a level where the increased effort isn’t really worth it anymore.

  20. Their CTO contacted me once on Linkedin , because they were looking for some IT-Security specialist , from the beginning on I told him in what field i’m specialized in. After some chit-chat, he invited me to the HQ in ZH for a coffee and having a chat with the team. was actually pretty ok until we talked about the salary.. when i told them that a good security specialist costs CHF 120k +/ yr they looked confused and afterwards they told me they’re actually looking for somebody with a different skillset lol

  21. This outrage is way overblown. There are not that many good devs in Switzerland. Adding teams abroad makes sense, and is very common.

  22. Wait until you guys find out that they pay their warehouse workers abysmally and employ a huge amount of people from poor eastern European countries that come here just for work, I mean like minimum wage for back-breaking, mind numbing work.
    Source: I’ve worked there for a few months as a subcontractor so I got paid a lot better than the permanent employees. I would not even consider working that job for the pay they get.

    Edit: I don’t want to downplay their outsourcing with my comment, it is an awful practice and they should rightfully be criticised for that move. I just want to bring some attention to another kind of outsourcing, just by importing the workers instead of exporting the work.

  23. I love how nobody is considering their move to expand internationally. Serving only Swiss customers with Devs from abroad? Questionable, yes. But Digitec Galaxus is operating both in Germany and Austria, and will most likely expand to further countries. This requires more developer resources, which will be quickly exhausted in Switzerland alone. People immediately going for “bad code quality” purely because it’s Serbia is borderline racist. Yes, the labor is cheaper, but this has absolutely no influence on “quality”. Developers in Serbia are highly educated workers.

    Bad code quality from abroad comes from these factors only: Companies seeking the lowest rate possible without questioning it once, and not properly vetting them. There are very bad developers in Switzerland too.

    People who are outraged about this, have no clue what agreements were made internally.

  25. wow so much racism in this thread, crazy.

    spoiler alert: Swiss devs suck just as much as any other devs, there is no such thing as Swiss-quality when it comes to code

  26. Not surprising. I know a bunch of people who went to work there as software engineers and at one point considered doing that myself. This is souring the mood quite a bit. I also left comment.

    $edit: If they delete my comment, I am going to repost it on LinkedIn. I am in this industry and am grabbing beers with people at Hardbrücke almost weekly. Pathetic.

  27. Tamedia does the same. There is a technological centre in Belgrade that was built by the Swiss government and Tamedia has a whole floor there (or had at least until 2019). 20min, Doodle (I think), Ricardo… all have (or had) people in Belgrade. Flixbus is there too.

    The shitty part though was how the company that Tamedia hired to provide the developers, treats their employees. Actually, they are not really their employees. They were hired as “companies”, for tax reasons and with no benefits whatsoever. I really liked the Serbian team and I felt really bad and guilty when they told me that.

    I must say that the Belgrade team I worked with were very competent, and friendly and they always delivered very good quality software.

    Also, I remember once meeting the owner of this company during a Christmas party and he was bragging about his Porsche or whatever fancy car he had bought.

    Source: me. I worked for a Tamedia company and I went to this place in Belgrade. The office there was much better and with much better coffee than ours here. :~

    Edit: I read some of the comments here and Galaxus page and I decided to give more context.

  29. These companies think they are being smart with these strategies. They fail to see long term effects. Such as lack of knowledge transfer and culture which is essential to deliver coherent quality products.

  30. For people working in the IT industry, do you think more and more middle-skilled jobs will be outsourced to other countries? I’m a career counsellor and I get a lot of info and articles that all states the IT-craze and that it’s the future, the perfect sector, and what so ever.

    I’ve come to the conclusion, from experience though, that high-level skilled worker (EPF & Uni) are not really threaten by outsourcing, but what about IT people with an EFZ/CFC or HES/FH level of qualification?

    What do you think will happen for these kinds of profile?

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